There Will Be Blood

Rating: 10/10 (22 March 2008)

WARNING - MINOR SPOILERS - WARNING
Paul Thomas Anderson, like his idol Altman, is known for his epic movies with huge ensembles of character actors, stories set in the modern world about desperate people hooked on addictions caused by unsolved traumas like Magnolia or Boogie Nights. By contrast, this Oscar-nominated period piece seems a departure, and I've read many comments complaining that it's a more conventional turn from the Anderson man. Nothing could be more far from the truth. There's absolutely not a second of this incredible movie that can be called conventional. From its overbearing and unusual soundtrack made by Johnny Greenwod from Radiohead to the crowded shot composition to its surprising, brilliant ending, this movie is far more daring and inventive than it seems - like an experimental version of Giant.
Most of the time the screen is occupied by Daniel Plainview, a character who enters the movie almost breaking his back looking for silver and ends it living in a palace bought by oil, an outcast of the world, hating everything, everyone and himself above all things. The movie is the chronicle of Daniel's misantrophy, but that's not a trait he acquires due to any dramatic turn of the movie. It's who he always was inside. For Daniel, people are always means to get to something, usually money and power. His kindness is a tool. Early on, when he adopts an orphan (then always introduced by him as "my partner and son H.W."), it's the only noble, primal act he does in the entire movie and he even blows that afterwards. We're led to believe that Daniel loves the kid, yet his unfriendly, bitter side gets the better of him after a tragic accident changes their relationship completely. Daniel Day-Lewis shows Plainview like a hunching, smiling bulk of a man who rarely shows his emotions. When he does, it's usually in a bout of rage and he ends up punching somebody. He's "an oil man", and he's nothing more, desperate to become powerful for power's sake. He sleeps a lot and is hard to wake up, like a man who's not eager to see the real world. He likes inventive pranks and is an expert intimidator and spokesman.
While it's a performance worthy of all the praise and the Oscar it got, another one that doesn't stay far behind is given by Paul Dano. He has two characters, twin brothers. One of them, Paul, gives Daniel the information about where to search for oil. The other brother, Eli, living in the land that Daniel wants to drill, becomes his lifelong antagonist. He's a priest in a strange fanatical church where he screams like a madman and heals evil with his hands. Plainview hates everyone by his own admission, but he hates this man more than any other. It might be because they're so alike. Like Plainview, Eli is a manipulative, disgusting, baby-faced con artist. Daniel can smell the rat because he does the same. The beginning of their war is a funny moment where Eli makes Daniel promise that he will allow him to bless the drill before they start looking for oil, and at the next day waits in the first line of the crowd, ready to do some preaching. Daniel completely ignores him and the blessing. In a way, while Plainview is the obvious protagonist, the movie is the portrait of the hatred between these men with no soul.
This is a long movie, over three hours, and an extremely slow one. Shots linger on, and there must be surprisingly few of them if you decided to count 'em. During conversations, there are very few cuts. Either the shot shows all of the characters or it focuses on one for longer than it's customary, having the other one say his lines off camera. Sometimes characters walk great distances on screen and there are frequent soaring, impressive landscape takes. Anderson has said the movie is inspired, apart from the Sinclair novel, by Huston's Treasure of Sierra Madre. While that's true about the theme of greed, I see a lot of John Ford in the style. There's even a shot that resembles the famous closing image of The Searchers.