Who has the milkshake?

Rating: 10/10 (5 January 2008)

Curious that both of the two best films of the year (the other No Country for Old Men)- likely two of the most daring and great of American films I've ever encountered- both are measured, classically told stories of the pit of greed that encapsulates in the soulless. In the case of Paul Thomas Anderson's film, he uses a source which, as one might expect if one's read Upton Sinclair, there are as many metaphors to be had as blood.
But not poorly laid metaphors at all, or ones that hit you on the head without reason or proper impact. These are the kinds that enrich a work of art, where they can be thought of later as with the themes, while in the midst of things you're just wrapped up in the solar-plexus of the story, and more crucially the storytelling. Daniel Plainview is a prospector at the start of the picture who has an image of himself, one that must never be broken. He digs for silver, then digs for oil, and strikes it rich. But he wants more. He buys up land from an Able Holiday, who's closest related Eli is welcoming, but at a price that the Lord has set (assumingly). Soon there is much oil, lots of it, and a pipeline as well. Eventually, like CF Kane, he's by himself in his big, dark mansion, without a Rosebud to boot.
Daniel Plainview is such a great character because he is, as played to complete astonishment and embodiment by Daniel Day Lewis (reincarnating, ever so slightly, his volcanic performance in Gangs of New York), a servant to a God that leaves nothing in its wake. He and Eli, in a more-than-subtle sense, are kindred spirits: they worship their idols, one being money and one being God, but they also have a commonality, which is that what they want is never really enough, and what they want relies on those around them at their blind will. When the two, after years of "ups and downs" as Plainview says, have their final meeting in the bowling alley, it becomes less a revelation than a staggering scene of hell. It's one of the most absurdly dramatic endings in all movies.
But there's also a greater metaphor, which is the oil itself (by the way, Sinclair's novel is titled "Oil!" with exclamation point). Anderson's picture is carefully constructed around a man who for capitalism is his lifeblood, for lack of a better term. The oil keeps flowing, and flowing, as does the money. But it's never really enough. There's an inherent fascination with watching a man, like Kane for example, who can never have enough because of a crucial defect in his humanity. No real friends, no real family (a re-emerging "brother" is a big sub-plot), and a son who, when a tragedy befalls him, can never be apart of his own self-created image. Rarely has a character been portrayed, by the actor as well as the director, in such a way that makes him so hateful, so unsympathetic, but never one we can look away from. It's capitalism unforgiven, if that makes sense.
And meanwhile, with his characters of Daniel and Eli locked in to the web of money and religion in the center, Anderson crafts a film loaded with visual beauty. He's a director known for elaborate long-takes and tracking shots, but here it's even more measured, more in tune with a classic epic, as though the Grapes of Wrath were turned on its head. The dialog cuts like a knife, the cinematography has a visionary quality that brings out the spectacle and the personal feeling (less mood, though there's that there too) of the compositions. And the music by Greenwood is unlike any ever produced, with strings and wailing chords that pierce right along with the narrative.
Altogether, it creates in There Will Be Blood a truly horrific and yet ever so recognizable truth in the American dream. And like No Country for Old Men, none of the characters have a "happy" ending. Not that a bleak ending a great films makes. But if it fits, it should be rode out till its logical conclusion. There Will Be Blood can be called all the big words- masterpiece, classic, essential, must-see, and that it's maker is worthy of comparison now (more than ever) to the great filmmakers of old. But it's above anything else a precise drama of conscience, or lack thereof. It's a fine, fine milkshake indeed.