Brilliant but flawed

Rating: 9/10 (13 March 2008)

I came to the screening of There Will Be Blood not knowing much about it except for Day-Lewis's reportedly searing performance. True, it's an epic both in scale and emotion. Wonderfully engaging from the start you know after a few minutes that you are in for something special. Day Lewis's performance is exhilarating as prospective oilman in turn-of-the-Century American west. I do think it's one of his finest performances (so far). The cinematography is at times breathtaking and gripping, as in the scenes of one of the oil mines going up in flames, which is brilliantly staged. The wonderfully intriguing score also serves to pull you in at just the right moments. Characterization is fine and performances by everyone concerned is not in any doubt. However what lets this film down ultimately is the screenplay. One cannot help thinking that the many themes of this film (greed, power, religion, loyalty, to name just four ), coupled with it's scope, eventually connive to render it short of a masterpiece. I left the cinema both emotionally drained but also angry that the final scenes had ultimately let it down. Until that point it was very close to being one of the finest American films I'd seen in a very long time. Day Lewis's performance is what one remembers most and it's a bittersweet experience. Instead of stepping back and allowing the scope and breath of what we had witnessed on film being given some space and general conclusion, we are instead smacked in the face by Lewis's character baring his soul by way of a frenzied and disparate attack on his adversary, both physically and verbally, in order to demonstrate his 'power' as some kind of 'king of the mountain'. Whatever ones views about this scene, and yes it does address important points, it nevertheless doesn't tidy up the story, and hence the film, sufficiently enough, and so instead of the three hour experience being a totally uplifting one, I for one left the cinema with a bitter taste in my mouth which took ages to shake off. If writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson intended as much, then he certainly succeeded.