Mesmerising saga

Rating: 8/10 (16 April 2008)

Paul Thomas Anderson's mesmerising oil saga about a gold digger who strikes oil around the turn of the 20th century enraptured audiences as much as it disoriented them. The critics were wowed mostly by the majestic acting talents of Daniel-Day Lewis, who plays the titular anti-hero, a man slowly dissenting into a purgatory netherworld of moral and social bankruptcy. But it is far from just his film, or indeed Anderson's. The brooding score by Johnny Greenwood is mournfully unnerving, and the cinematography creates a vision of both a man and his hellish world that would give any monster movie a run for its money. It is difficult to comprehend the profoundly enigmatic aura of the film, without repeating the sound bites of a thousand other cineasts. you know what you have just witnessed is some kind of masterpiece, but you can't explain why.