Chilling, Haunting and Beautiful. There Will Be Blood - One Of The Year's Best

Rating: 9/10 (2 February 2008)

Daniel Plainview strikes oil while mining for silver. Knowing the riches there are in this field he quickly changes his career and adopts a son after his father is killed in an oil rigging accident. Daniel's greed for power and money consume him and turns his loved ones into enemies and quickly becomes the target of a young pastor, Eli, to turn to God.
Every time you hear that there is a performance so good it will win an Oscar, the first thing that comes to your mind is how boring is the film going to be? Monster, Ray and Capote all suffered this fate of not being able to keep up with the performance. With There Will Be Blood, P.T. Anderson gives us a stunning film that is as chilling as the performance from it's lead actor Daniel Day Lewis. If the film itself doesn't draw you into it's web, the performance from Daniel Day-Lewis without a doubt will. As it stands, it is impossible for him not to be recognized this year.
For the first twenty minutes or so there is no dialogue. It's just Plainview working underground, he's dirty and broken, but manages to find a way to still get money. Later on he becomes an oil man and uses his "son" as a cute image to get people to side with him. Lewis is remarkable here as you've all been told. He becomes to character, he is the character. While there have been amazing performances in the past few years, this one is without a doubt one for the books. Even if the film isn't remembered fifty years down the road, DDL's performance will be. Paul Dano is the supporting actor as the young pastor Eli, he also has a smaller role as Paul, Eli's twin. At times Dano is frustrating, his overacting is obvious for the character, who drives demons out of the residents, but there are times when his stone cold face is just too bare. Hearing him scream and whine like a little girl every now and then is a bit annoying as well.
The cinematography is beautiful. Anderson knew exactly how he wanted this film to look like at he got his wish. The landscape is so beautiful, it becomes a character itself. It holds the oil or main character wants, the people who live on this land stand in his way. The film opens, much like No Country For Old Men, with views of the mountains and the land. Both films are beautiful to look at and watch.
P.T. Anderson's previous films are pretty fancy. With There Will Be Blood you can clearly see his maturity as a director. This is not to say his other films are bad, on the contrary they are very good. But There Will Be Blood seems to be in another category all by itself. It doesn't belong with the others, it stands on it's own. If you were to watch Boogie Nights one day and Magnolia the next, you would be able to tel it was from the same director. Here he manges to hide his style within the film so well that it doesn't jump out at you like the others. He is more restrained with fancy camera movements and more concentrated at what the film is about. It's about this man and his greed for working.
If the visuals are beautiful, then the music is chilling. Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead supplies the film with the score it needs to be the film it wants to be. Without it, it might not have had as much of an impact in some scenes. It's the music that drives these few scenes and it works perfectly. The thing that makes it work so well is that it's unusual and bizarre.
There Will Be Blood is one of the years best films. It has one of the best actors giving us a powerful performance for the ages and a score that is chilling to the bone. There are bits and pieces of comedic fare, but most of the film is dark, much like the main character of Plainview. The final act of the film is heartbreaking and shocking. If you didn't like the ending to No Country For Old Men, you might not like this one that much either. While it is a more finished ending, it does kind of just happen. But it goes out with a bang and yes the film does live up to its title.