A sinister allegory.

Rating: 10/10 (1 November 2009)

With an opening score that could have been used for any of the really scary bits in Kubrick's The Shining, this film is in many ways just as terrifying. Although not written as a horror film, the terrible things that we humans do for power and gain are on display for all to see in this allegorical tale of how capitalism spread across America like some kind of slick plague.
Daniel Day-Lewis plays Daniel Plainview, an oil prospector in the early twentieth century who has a very plain view indeed of how the world should be. He sees America as one big lake of oil and himself as a very elite fisherman. He will stop at nothing to get what he wants, which is essentially to gain until there is nothing left to gain. He is greed personified with a voice so unearthly that you may believe that he is some kind of capitalist deity. He is human, however, and a father. His fathering skills are focused entirely on training his son to be like him; that is until his son is deafened in a freak accident. Then the world is not so simple. Then he can only do what he does best: put out of sight and mind that which stands in his way between getting and not getting.
Plainview's nemesis and counterpoint in this film is at the centre of the community that he is trying to rape of its black and precious natural resource, a small town preacher Eli Sunday (played by the excellent Paul Dano). Sunday is the mouthpiece for the town and the only one ready to ask Plainview difficult questions. He is the white purity to Plainview's black soul and these two very big characters come to extraordinary blows metaphorically and physically. Plainview baptises Sunday after being asked for the payment he agreed to drill the land with a gigantic fat-cat-slap-around-session where he rubs Sunday's face in the soil that, interestingly, they are both in some way slaves to. This is reciprocated when Plainview seeks redemption through an actual baptism in Sunday's church (for purely selfish reasons) and is slapped around whilst having water poured on his head in the name of Jesus. Through this conflict we see two very powerful symbols of religion and capitalism at a crisis point and it is very much about who is going to blink first. Will Plainview see the light or will Sunday see just how shiny oil can be? I loved this film. The actors are tremendous and play their parts as if this is the last film to ever be made on this subject. Thomas Anderson's direction is masterful - he may only make a film every decade, as it seems does Day-Lewis, but by Jove does he make it count. It is a rare thing that you can stop a film practically anywhere and have a picture worth framing on your screen. Although, the most memorable aspect of this movie for me, again, was the soundtrack. It is just so eery. Something terrible is coming and you know it in the first two seconds of the film; it sets you on edge like few other films can. Marvellous.