"There Will Be Blood" is a Masterpiece!

Rating: 10/10 (16 January 2008)

The first shot we see is that of a barren landscape punctuated by three small hills. There are no trees to be seen anywhere, only grassland. Suddenly, the soundtrack kicks in with the sound of violins reaching a loud crescendo. The sound is creepy and disturbing and just as you can't bear it any longer the music quiets down and then stops. The next few scenes contain almost no dialogue and it's quite some time before the plot kicks in to high gear.
In these first few scenes of "There Will Be Blood" great emphasis is placed on creating a feeling of isolation and a sense that madness lies just around the corner. Insanity seems to lurk beneath the surface of every shot and every scene. While watching the film I was reminded of Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" which also used creepy violins to create a sense of dread and menace. This uncompromising tone, which is maintained throughout the film, is the key to the film's great success. It's a perfect example of how style can serve to enhance a film's subject matter rather than merely provide a distraction.
At the end of every year one film always pops up out of nowhere and catches me by surprise. "There Will Be Blood" is such a film and I'll be frank: this is the best new film I've seen in about four years. It was written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson who is most famous for directing "Boogie Nights," a film about the porn industry, and "Magnolia," a three hour long epic starring Tom Cruise. Anderson is highly regarded among critics and film fans but has yet to really break out into the mainstream. "There Will Be Blood" may change that as it's very likely to do well at the Academy Awards. It will most certainly be talked about for years to come.
"There Will Be Blood" is a big and ambitious film about a man named Daniel Plainview who strikes it big in the oil industry in the first couple of decades of the twentieth century. The story is a very loose adaptation of Upton Sinclair's novel, Oil!, and takes place in California. This is not your standard rags to riches story, however. "There Will Be Blood" is essentially a character study, a story about an obsession and how that obsession comes to consume a man's entire life to the point where he's essentially lost his soul in the process.
At the beginning of the film we see how Daniel Plainview engages in a desperate quest to find oil deep within the earth's soil. These scenes are appropriately shot with gritty detail. We see Plainview and his men, for instance, crawl down deep man-made chasms in the ground risking their lives in the process. Life at the bottom of these holes is unbearable: all sunlight is blocked out, dirt and grime is everywhere, and the feeling of claustrophobia is enough to drive one crazy. Later, as Plainview strikes oil and begins to build his oil empire, we witness with horror as one of the wells catches on fire. Great streams of fire and smoke reach for the heavens as the sky turns black. These scenes have an intoxicating pull: we're drawn in by the mad quest to find and manage the oil at any cost.
Daniel Plainview is played by Daniel Day-Lewis in a truly great performance that is the best I've seen this year. It's no surprise to see that he just won a golden globe award for his performance. Day-Lewis plays the character as a man who always wears a poker face and always guards his speech. He walks with a hunched back and always seems to keep a certain distance from other people. In a rare moment of revelation that takes place about halfway through the film, Plainview reveals the motive behind his demeanor: he hates people. People, as it turns out, always want something from him and he has neither the inclination nor the willpower to help them. He's only interested in himself, his oil, and his money.
There's a fascinating parallel plot here, too, that involves a religious fanatic living on the farm where Plainview is drilling for oil. Paul Dano plays the preacher, Eli Sunday, and his twin brother Paul. Eli Sunday and Daniel Plainview just about hate each other from the moment they first meet. Much of the film is devoted to the nature of their relationship which mostly involves intense jealousy: each one desires what the other has. It's with this secondary plot that the themes of the film really shine through. "There Will Be Blood" is essentially about competition and greed.
The narrative arc of "There Will Be Blood" deserves comparison with "Citizen Kane." Both films are about ambitious men who crave success and money, achieve it, and then realize their success comes at the cost of their humanity. The ending of "There Will Be Blood" is likely to generate a great deal of debate. I found it to be brilliant and there's a great monologue delivered by Daniel Day-Lewis that involves a milkshake which I'm sure will be quoted by people for years to come. Don't miss this film. "There Will Be Blood" is a masterpiece.