Absolutely Mezmerizing

Rating: 10/10 (22 January 2008)

The movie opens with an almost Wagnerian prelude of discordant chords and leitmotifs, of flickering candlelight and abstract images, that climax in Daniel Plainview's birth from the ground, fully grown and covered in oil, the blood of the earth. Like some kind of primal being from ancient mythology, he has no childhood, no family, no background. He exists for oil and the power, not the wealth, that it can give him. He is matched against an equally ambitious and ruthless individual in the form of Eli Sunday who, like Plainview, has no real interest in wealth, but in power. As Plainview exploits the blood of the earth in his quest to manipulate those around him, so Eli exploits the blood of Christ.
And so we have an American Epic that is reminiscent of John Steinbeck and Sinclair Lewis in its depiction of the nation's formative years and the battle between the excesses of capitalism and religion and the weakness and frailty of Man in the face of temptation. Loneliness, desperation, love, betrayal, greed, pride, and a ruthless and unquenchable thirst for power are all explored in a dozen degrees of subtlety. It's played with the full-bloodied brio of archetypes with a sweeping grandeur of image and theme that used to be common fifty years ago but is almost extinct in modern cinema.
Overblown, fascinating, beautiful in its period detail, "There Will Be Blood", is a richly rewarding intellectual and aesthetic experience that deserves much award recognition.