A masterpiece!

Rating: 10/10 (28 February 2008)

Daniel Day-Lewis' performance is an act of genius and one for the ages. He shows us so much in this character who changes, gradually, from a hardworking everyman that one roots for, to a villain one is repulsed by. How does he do it? I simply don't know. The behavior is all so believable and integrated.
What strikes me as especially brilliant about Paul Thomas Anderson's directing is the way in which he has combined slowly moving, drawn-out, sparse scenes and notes of music, barely creeping camera movements, and frequently black, silhouetted figures, all of which serve to build tension and support the imagery of oil seeping underground everywhere.
Of course, the oil is a perfect symbol of the blackness that seeps into Daniel Plainview's heart inexorably, over the years, until finally it is saturated. When it is finished, there is no humanity left in Plainview because the two substances cannot occupy the same space.
It's a story to brood over, as difficult to get off your mind as it would be to clean the oil out of the dirt, or the blackness out of Plainview's heart. One wonders, how it could have been avoided. It seems so inevitable. I guess it would take a saint to combat the ferocity of a Daniel Plainview. The naive, and ultimately, weak-willed, country preacher, Eli Sunday, beautifully portrayed by Paul Dano, was not an equal match, according to the author. Although, indirectly, you might say that Sunday contributes to Plainview's downfall more than anyone, except for Plainview himself.