"I have a competition in me"

Rating: 10/10 (19 April 2008)

I feel bad that I wasn't able to see much of the great films of 07 in theaters because in the hindsight it was an extraordinary year for movie goers. Last year's Oscar race really was a battle of the giants and There Will be Blood was one of the masterpieces up for the gold that year. Like the eventual winner "No Country for Old Men" There Will be Blood is a tale dealing with the evil side of the soul but Daniel Plainview's evil is driven by his ambition, which really blinds us all.
Daniel Day Lewis is something else, every role he performs he excels with. I've been a great fan of his work for sometime and it's all ways a treat when we see him in a picture. He chooses his projects well and some say he only really excels at playing villains or twisted men, but to say this about Daniel Plainview is a wrong assessment. Daniel Plainview isn't evil in the ordinary way and Paul Thomas Anderson wrote him in a way that rings extremely true to his Sinclair origins. He is driven to madness by his pursuit of the black gold. We wonder if Plainview really does love his adopted son H.W or did he really believe for all those years that he was a "bastard in the basket". The answer is never clear but that adds to why this character is so engaging. There Will be Blood is a brilliant character study on greed, and it will inevitably be compared to the granddaddy of them all, Citizen Kane. The comparison may be a bit much but certainly both characters were men who cared more about having their name in the light rather than the lives around them. There may be some redeeming sides to Plainview, he opens his arms to an obvious conman claiming to be his brother played by Kevin J' O Conor. In a scene that is truly spell binding, Plainview lets out his heart and soul to this man and tells him what really drives him. O'Conor doesn't know what to think of it and is somewhat taken a ghast just like the audience but I was taken a ghast by the intelligent writing and the intelligent actor who poured his heart and soul into that monologue.
Anderson really deserves a great deal of credit for this picture. It is completely unlike any of his other works. The world of There Will be Blood is cold and distance from any glimpses of the real world. Anderson creates a great setting, he makes this Little Boston seem like a hell closing in on Plainview, and when we leave the town and enter the mansion it becomes a Xandau too big for one mans ambition.
Ambition doesn't only affect Plainview, it effects Eli Sunday who aspires to be an evangelical preacher. We know Sunday is very much like Plainview, I imagine he doesn't care much about spreading the word of the Lord but rather more so about having a congregation in front of him absorbing his every word. Sunday bothers Plainview for money to the point were the two make it their goal to undo the other, Plainview eventually wins in one of the most brutal scenes in film.
There Will be Blood is a must see