What the hell was all that about?

Rating: Null/10 (22 March 2020)

I've seen one Daniel Day-Lewis film before now (Gangs of New York with DiCaprio), and I wasn't massively impressed then, but There Will Be Blood is a completely different beast. The premise - a man driven to build his family oil business as big as he can - really appeals to me, and the stills I'd seen of some scenes only added to this anticipation. After the tortuous 2 hours and 38 minutes of screen time, I was left scratching my head, wondering if I'd even seen something I would remember tomorrow morning.
The first half an hour is devoid of speaking: only the sounds of oil bubbling through the ground and the grunts of the men drilling it can be heard. It's probably the most emotive and accurate of the film, and I was really enjoying the finality of every decision Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) made whilst he was starting out his business. Unfortunately, the director then feels the need to add more characters - they are well-acted, that isn't the issue, it's more just the lack of necessity to each one. One moment they are barely acting at all, speaking at a murmur, the next they launch into a volley of screaming tirade, acting irrationally.
As the plot creeps along, you wonder what the point really is. Plainview succeeds early on (this is no spoiler), and has some nonsensical relationships with his adopted son and a local preacher who told him where to drill. It doesn't offer any peril, any drama - weirdly, this felt like a film that might have been better fleshed out as a television drama over the course of a season. There are nice shots throughout using oil as the artistic medium, almost to represent blood within the plot; the music, however, is quite erratic and jarring, not always fitting the moment comfortably.
Day-Lewis won an Oscar for his portrayal, but frankly all I saw was really aggressive over-acting alongside a "method-acting" ethos that seems to earn more respect than it sometimes should. When the end credits rolled, my mum and I looked at one another, and the first thing she said was "What a waste of time" - so Happy Mother's Day to you.