Renews hope that film can hold its own with a great Faulkner novel.

Rating: 9/10 (23 March 2009)

The acting, the settings, the cinematography, the uncompromising editing (rejecting the familiar shot/reverse shot relay in favor of long takes), the spectacular scene of a fiery oil strike (recalling the air strike in "Apocalypse Now"), the nuanced richness of the film score, the Olympian performance of Day-Lewis (perhaps only Orson Welles' Kane compares) require that anyone who is the least bit serious about film make this experience a top priority.
But the end of this disturbing spectacle doesn't produce the catharsis of either a "Citizen Kane" (whose protagonist has at least an intimation of the truth, i.e. Rosebud) or an "Oedipus Rex" (whose protagonist not only eventually acquires self-knowledge but acts on it), and for that reason I'm withholding a star. Films that are ultimately the most powerful and enduring are those that put the verisimilitude of "everyday life" first and foremost, leaving the deeper allegorical implications to those who choose to pursue them.
At the half-way point, the film takes a surrealistic turn, and more than likely many spectators who have begun this lengthy film (with Lewis dominating every shot and scene save one) will tune out. It's even more likely that most casual spectators will, at the end of this seemingly out-of-control scenario, simply breathe a sigh of relief that it's over and dismiss the whole business as wild and wacky, crazy stuff.
But now that I've seen the film, it's become rooted in consciousness much like a Faulkner novel, in which a single character (named Compson or Sutpen) comes to represent an entire culture, from its idealistic, heroic and noble beginnings to its delusional and narcissistic, pathetic and decadent end (Faulkner's thunderous "Absalom! Absalom!" is the modern prototype). You will see no blood in this film. That would require a character capable of forgiving and being forgiven, of loving and being loved, of being not merely the sole god of his universe (who abandons his son, after denying that he's even begotten him) but the lamb, willing to sacrifice himself for others and able to function as a member of a human family whose bonds are not merely the artificial ones based on greed, radical individualism, and unrelenting competitiveness. Instead, we are left with the certainty that the ambition and arrogance we have witnessed can only beget more needless destruction of human life. In that sense, there indeed will be blood.
Yes, the movie is especially relevant to our present political-economic situation (toward the end of the film a character makes reference to a bad "economy"--and the year is 1927, 2 years before 1929--or, if you prefer, 2009). But it hits even deeper and closer to home than the culture surrounding us. It doesn't require a lot of soul-searching to see the protagonist as a symbol, or magnified reflection, of one's own selfish journey in life. The discovery is more than a little disturbing, exposing the wounds of ethnic pride, family insularity and, above all, the constant denial and prideful isolation practiced by the willful self. Nonetheless, the film ultimately fails to achieve the delicate balance between "pity and fear" that Aristotle required of great tragedy. Daniel Day-Lewis's character is obviously fatally flawed if not hubris personified (the other part of the Aristotelian definition), and that's a pity of immense proportions--but no more.
Later: This is a film that continues to play out long after the final scene. If there's a hint of redemptive blood in the story, it's not in the protagonist but his son. The early shots of him as a baby are sufficient proof to this viewer that Daniel Plainview is (despite his final disclaimer that he took the child merely to promote sales) the boy's father and that the son is not a mere innocent claimed by the father as a sales gimmick. The spectator's "reward" occurs when, for a fractional moment at the end, we see the "deaf-mute" son respond to his father's voice. That moment tells us that the son has deliberately chosen an indirect, defensive route of communicating with a non-communicative father, wisely (as it turns out) hedging his bets should the father prove adamant and unyielding in his bloodless inhumanity. The son, not the father, has seen to the completion of the "Abraham-Isaac" story, an archetypal drama that offers hope for a future in which the son, rather than repeat the sins of the father, acquires an identity of his own.