One-dimensional portrait of American businessman

Rating: 3/10 (10 February 2008)

I haven't read Upton Sinclair's "Oil" which "There will be blood" is based on but I understand that the main character in the movie is depicted as being far more demonic than the character shown in the book. So apparently it's the screenwriter who we can heap scorn upon here and not the novelist responsible for the original source material.
Paul Thomas Anderson, the screenwriter, has borrowed a page from the second half of "Citizen Kane" where a multi-dimensional character suddenly morphs into a one-dimensional bad guy. But in "There will be Blood", our anti-hero, Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, is one-dimensional throughout! There seems to be a mantra uttered these days that Day-Lewis's performance is a masterpiece and he deserves the Oscar. Except for a few dramatic angry outbursts, Day-Lewis's performance appears to me as entirely one-note! That's really the fault of the screenwriter, who believes in the "I'm not OKyou're not OK" school of screen writing. Make your character someone who openly admits that he has contempt for everybody and also (unconsciously) dislikes himself.
Anderson's Plainview is a metaphor for big business past and present. It's a puerile view of American business and American businessmen since no one is like that in real life. Evil characters need to have likable and hence charismatic characteristicsthey attain their objectives by seducing their constituents (e.g. Tony Soprano). One wonders how such a surly and nasty character as Plainview actually succeeds. Notice how the peripheral characters in this film have virtually nothing to saythey are completely underdeveloped. The screenwriter is content to explore only his relationships with three main characters, his son, Eli, the minister and his pseudo half-brother (who he ends up killing after he realizes that the man is really a con artist).
One wonders why Plainview has to be so demonic and unlikable. Would a person whose main goal is to be successful jeopardize his entire career by murdering the man who pretended to be his brother? Would a person who purportedly did everything for his handicapped son throughout the boy's childhood suddenly turn around and disown him simply because he wants to move away with his wife and start his own company in Mexico? And finally, does it make ANY SENSE AT ALL that he would risk imprisonment by murdering the minister who comes begging to him after he's lost all his money in the stock market crash? I understand that Plainview was getting back at Eli for humiliating him after he was forced to undergo Baptism in order to lease the land from one of the parishioners, but to suddenly murder the fellow with a bowling pin at the end made no sense at all!
"There will be blood" is melodrama which descends into cheap propaganda. While Daniel Day-Lewis will probably win for best actor (and I don't think he should), my prediction is that this picture will not win the Oscar. The truth of the matter is that it's too much of a downerand downers don't win Oscars!