A tour de force for Day Lewis

Rating: 9/10 (21 January 2008)

I remember well the dark and gritty novels of Upton Sinclair and Sinclair Lewis that explored the belly of the American beast in the early 1900's. This movie reawakens the mood of those novels with it's unflinching look at the hard scrabble heart of the capitalist manifesto: "buy, produce, and sell, and to hell with whoever gets in your way." Daniel Day Lewis is mesmerizing and truly awesome. I cannot think of another actor who could have done this role in quite this way. As usual he inhabits the character so that immediately one forgets the actor and becomes immersed in the man and his being. In a voice and cadence reminiscent of, if not an outright imitation of, John Huston's, Lewis's presence expands on screen into a Dickensian/Shakespearean grand guignol for the ages. Lewis specializes in recreating these humans who are forces of nature; unstoppable, unrepentant, builders and destroyers, and ultimately the seed that sprouted into America, like it or not.
Just as "No country for old men" the movie is clearly the work of genius. One can see the staging and thought behind every scene, and the blessed pauses to let it all sink in. The dialog is key, and Lewis a master of enunciating every line for affect. The landscape is California bleak, wind swept and desolate, and even at the end in Daniel Plainview's mansion the imagery is of emptiness and soulessness.
Also to be commended is Paul Dano as both twins; the boy who sicks Plainview onto his father's oil and his brother the preacher who strives to tame the beast in Plainview but ends up unable to tame the beast in himself, whose character, while as ambitious and amoral as Plainview's is no match for his antagonist, in spite of besting him in one of the movie's few comedic moments.