Really suffers on second viewing.

Rating: 3/10 (24 March 2008)

Anderson is the best American director working with big budgets, period. Which screenwriter who has penned a masterpiece on paper (and not wanting to do the dirty work themselves) would not want Paul making their film? I have the highest regard for him. The highest. In the league with Mikhalkov and Almodovar. I think I know what's wrong with this film. To me the catchism "character study" has always been a cop out for not making a film which works on what Robert Mckee terms the "extra personal" level of conflict. That, or has not classically arced the character which feels completely wrong for this film. It is fantastic to begin to show this devastating greed of the American flavor in such detail, but to what ends? To the spiritual and moral devastation of one man, but so what, meaning that what Anderson has here is the primordial greed that is still destroying this country, and with what he has written it is not enough to make an aesthetically definitive statement on how it effects everyone of us.
Many people are confused by its message, as they were with the central message of Magnolia...which was unavoidable actually..(who's fault is it that people aren't versed in the Bible....The plague will come if we don't wise up.)
If the film were to have shown, for example, how this redoubtable myopia affected at least the townspeople already in the film, or to write more emboldened (WARNING: The budget just went up considerably) if Mr. Plainview becomes Senator Plainview and naturally continues his cultivated habits of the perfect businessman really in the political arena, then we would start to care, because then it would be plain to comprehend and appreciate what a felt monster this character truly has become, and the consequences of the propagation of this cherished American ethos (when unchecked by other forces like religion, or love of family) when applied unilaterally ....work hard, be number one, etc. This film does not go far enough.