An epic tale of biblical proportions

Rating: 10/10 (15 August 2010)

Paul Thomas Anderson has never been shy of high ambitions or grand statements. In Magnolia he drew up a complex set of themes and characters whose interactions were profoundly touching, and in Boogie Nights he made an equally ambitious depiction of the porn industry as well as the people within. There Will Be Blood, his 2007 masterpiece, is, however, an epic tale even grander in scope, a story of almost biblical proportions that feels like the kind of film that Anderson has been working his whole career towards making.
There Will Be Blood spans several decades and follows the oil man Daniel Plainview (a fantastic Daniel Day-Lewis), whose economical success is juxtaposed by personal tragedies and an increasing detachment from the world. It is, in a way, a traditional character study of a person's rise and fall, but the scope and the direction is almost unparalleled in recent filmmaking. In fact, it reminds me quite a bit of another one of my favourite films, Barry Lyndon, both thematically and stylistically, and in a sense you might say that it is the Barry Lyndon of the 2000's; they share the same stunning cinematography, the same mesmerizing score (here by Radiohead member Johnny Greenwood), and Daniel Plainview's fate is not entirely unlike that of Redmond Barry.
In one of the best scenes of the film, Daniel explains to his brother how he doesn't want anyone else to succeed, how he sees the worst in people and how he has built up his hatred over the years. To me, this is a key scene for different reasons. First, throughout the film, there is something slightly strained about the way Daniel Day-Lewis talks and acts, and this is the reason why; we see a man trying to maintain a façade of kindness and sympathy, when all he really feels is contempt for the world and the people he meets. Furthermore, in his brother he finds someone he can confide in, and when this man is later revealed as a fraud, his whole world turns apart and he loses his last parts of sanity.
In another powerful scene, Daniel Plainview is being washed from his sins by the pastor Eli (Paul Dano in another Oscar-deserving performance). He is made to confess his sins, that he has abandoned his child, in order to build a pipeline through the land of a very religious man, and seems to feel remorse. And yet, when the procedure is over he whispers to himself that he can now finally build the pipeline. I am not suggesting that Daniel is a cold man; on the contrary, I do think he feels remorse for some of his actions, but his highest motivation is nonetheless his oil and the success leading from it.
Near the end of the film, Daniel finally dissociates himself from his son and is ostensibly left with little else than his money and his oil. While he said that this is what he wanted, there is nothing but tragedy written over the final act. His recurring conflict with the aforementioned town pastor is also given a macabre ending. We are not sure what happens to him then, but his final words certainly bear a sense of impending doom; "I am finished". And since Daniel Plainview ultimately is the heart of the film, so it finishes as well.