Lacked explanation of the changes in the lead character's personality.

Rating: 3/10 (25 March 2009)

I saw this on a large screen HDTV on Showtime. Even with a large screen TV the screen is minuscule compared to a movie theater's. Thus I could appreciate the huge vistas that must have been awesome in a theater, although on TV the effect is greatly diminished. There were some additional good things about the film, including some unusual closeups of the Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) oil man character using a pickax. Also there are a great many highly dramatic scenes that are staged and acted well.
The negatives, on the other hand, included a style so minimal that it was difficult to comprehend the changes in the Daniel Day Lewis character. In the initial scenes I could view the oil man as a sympathetic and even heroic character. But when his character changes drastically, we are given no explanation. It is hard to care about any of the roles in the film, except perhaps for the oil man's son, H.W.
Apparently, according to other reviews, the earliest scene showing Daniel in a deep hole using a pickax was to indicate he was looking for silver, and perhaps accidentally found oil just bubbling up in the deep hole he made. That was not clear to me at all.
Neither was his character development. The film offers no explanation or clarification of the changes he undergoes, except at one point he says that he never really liked people. When he says that, I couldn't tell whether he is being truthful or not. If we accept that explanation for his character defect (and there is no explanation of why he doesn't really like people), then that means his earlier friendly attitude and the interest he showed in his child were just put-ons to fool the suckers he was taking advantage of. But some of that earlier behavior was when no one else was around. Perhaps what the movie is trying to illustrate is that as people get wealthier they get nastier, a corollary perhaps to "power tends to corrupt." I really couldn't tell from the story development.
Despite the cutting out any explanation of the character development, the film is a bit long (2 hrs and 38 minutes). Why didn't they cut instead some of the lengthy scenes showing nothing but a character walking from one location to another?