Method-acting revived through a brilliant script and direction

Rating: 10/10 (18 July 2012)

Daniel Day-Lewis chooses his movies assiduously. He chooses a script in such a way that he gives his hundred per cent involvement in the role he is supposed to play. It's a 158-minute long movie with more than 95 per cent of the running time showing the actor in the lead role and no one else could have given an unblemished performance as Daniel.
I was quite convinced it was a biography until i realized it wasn't. Daniel Day-Lewis gives life to a character that exists in the form of written text. He, with the help of Paul Thomas Anderson, has created a hard-working turned money-devouring, impertinent, petulant owner of an oil company. While the present day audience demand CGI and breath-taking visuals, Paul Thomas Anderson has shown us what the movie-making in its pristine form and standard really looks like.
The movie revolves around the life of a certain Daniel Plainview who struggles over the years searching for the 'black gold' until his efforts bear to fruition one day. He expands his empire and with money comes the pride and power and thus a plutocrat is born. He talks in terms of money and likes to prevaricate when it comes to buying land. He even abandons his son, feels betrayed by a person who convinces him to be his half-brother and beats up a local evangelist. He resorts to feigning to have faith in god in order to acquire land, land that would help him lay pipeline all the way up to the sea.
He ages with time and the obduracy and petulance he once possessed do not seem to have dwindled. He admits to not having any blood relatives when his son announces he was to start an oil company in Mexico with his just-married bride. He beats up the preacher he long despised to death.
The movie may have lacked the gravitas that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science demands to vote it the Best Picture of the year but by all film-making standards set by The Godfather, One Flew over the Cuckoo's nest and The Shawshank Redemption, the movie has found a place among the most-vaunted movies of the world.