There will be blood

Rating: 8/10 (8 March 2008)

There will be Blood The new trend has emerged. Some good movies when released instantly become so highly rated that they break into the top league of IMDb top rated movies. I find that formula very strange that it does not discount the recentness of movie craze wave. This movie is at number 30 in top movies list of all times! Is not it amazing? Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis), an obsessive hard working miner learns and rises to become shrewd oil extracting businessperson  when he is approached by a poor Sunday family with a prospect of selling their oil-filled Texas rural hinterland to him. Daniel presents himself as a social family man by projecting a boy HW (Dillon Freasier) - he has adopted from a dying miner  as his own son. There is Paul Sunday (Paul Dano), an aspiring boy wanting to become a prophet  who wants his vested interest of building a church fulfilled by the richness of Daniel who is using their land. Daniel despises Paul's religiousity. In an accident HW looses his hearing and that presents suttle changes in Daniel's personality of father and businessman. At the end of the movie, Daniel is shown as a grudgy filthy rich old man hating everyone around him. And movie ends up with a climax that is minorly representative of its title  BLOOD.
This epic saga is loosely adopted from Upton Sinclair's novel OIL. The young talented director Paul Thomas Anderson, rides big on the mega opus venture and fortunately on the strong and reliable shoulders of Daniel Day Lewis who agreed to do the role with this upcoming director.
Even though the movie is a story about several characters  Daniel Day Lewis captures each and every frame of the movie. He brings life to one of the most interesting characters. The physicality that Daniel Day Lewis provides to this role is so enormous that he is like a Demi-God in the art of learning good acting. His eyes, his movements are spell binding.
Throughout the movie the character show-case a varied range of emotions  white, gray and dark, and it is so interesting to watch the circumstances that bring out different sorts of characters. But in last 20 minutes, the character becomes totally dark  though good, that becomes one dimensional and not as much appealing as the entire story.
The music composed by Jonny Greenwodd is starchy and starkling. Many people have found it mis-placed and out of sync with the movie. I did not find that way. I found the music's presence to be quite conscious and intended.
The title of the movie is mis-leading to many movie goers who expect quite a bit of blood, gory and violence in the movie, and what one finds is a trying absorbing (to them slow) narrative on the beautiful terrain of Texas deserts.
Overall, a wonderful movie to watch.
(Stars 8 out of 10)