There Will Be Blood Is A Contemporary Cinematic Classic

Rating: 10/10 (15 January 2017)

There Will Be Blood is a cinematic masterpiece. It's a sprawling (at two and half hours long) spectacle of a film, exploring the lives of two very different and yet very similar men at the turn of the twentieth century. Directed and written by Paul Thomas Anderson, this doesn't just tell a simple story and leave it there. Like oil drilling, Anderson slowly breaks the surface and then everything that was underneath comes out to see the sun in a massive spurt.
Starring Daniel Day Lewis and Paul Dano, this was a phenomenal showcase for both leading men. But Lewis gave one of the best performances of all time as a sociopathic, charismatic, egocentric, and ultimately pathetic man. Truly mesmerising and formidable. The direction and screenplay was rich and dense, creating an entire world in only two separate places. The dialogue was always solid.
The score, led by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, is haunting and gorgeous, and sometimes juxtaposes the scenes it's in to remind the audience that while something may not seem exactly bad on screen, what is happening might lead to something awful later on. The cinematography is just exquisite.
An American epic of the twenty first century is the ultimate take away from this film. It's bold, ambitious, and perhaps obnoxious for some, but at the end of the day, it is a near perfect character analysis of someone most won't relate to at all, but someone we can't there eyes off. Rich visually and thematically, There Will Be Blood is a masterpiece.
5 / 5