All style and no substance

Rating: 6/10 (11 January 2010)

This is not a bad film, but it is a seriously flawed one.
It is clearly the work of a highly original and creative mind. The opening wordless sequence is visually and dramatically stunning, setting up expectations which the rest of the film does not fulfil. The cinematography is of an extremely high standard throughout. Lighting is realistic and atmospheric, camera angles are arresting and disturbing. The depiction of Texas in the early 1900s studiously avoids the clichés and sentimentality of say, Ron Howard's Far and Away.
There Will Be Blood could have been a masterpiece. Unfortunately it lacks three elements vital to good story-telling, namely, character development, suspense and motivation. The whole movie is constructed around Day-Lewis's detailed and mesmerising portrayal of a man driven by his own hatred of his fellow men. The problem is that once you have seen five minutes of this meticulously observed, barnstormingly Oscar-friendly impersonation of a ruthless misanthrope you have seen the whole performance. The same can be said of Paul Dano's disappointingly lightweight Eli Sunday, who brings a much-needed comedy element to the film at the expense of the character's credibility. The only character who develops is Plainview's son H.W, who in one of the strongest scenes of the film, challenges his father in a few broken words after Daniel mocks him for using an interpreter. Is it believable that this man would not have learned to sign, fifteen years after his son became deaf?
There are many other aspects of Plainview's character which are equally unconvincing. Although he claims to be motivated by anger and hatred , his violence has more glee and good humour than blind rage. He shows no remorse for his actions, not even his appalling lack of paternal responsibility to the boy he claims to care about more than anything else. Identification with character is an essential component of tragedy. Plainview has no redeeming features and is thus utterly unlikeable. We feel for Macbeth, for Michael Corleone, for Yves Montand as the father who misguidedly kills his own son in Claude Berri's Jean de Florette. We observe Plainview with detached horror, but we feel nothing. He is inhuman, a man reduced to mechanical actions dictated by his own hormonal urges. Although admirable from an existential philosophical perspective, such a character is boring as hell on the stage or the screen. Emotions are the life blood of drama. There is no love in this film, so the hatred is meaningless and mundane.
The lack of suspense should have been addressed at the scripting stage. No amount of stylish camera-work and modish lighting can compensate for the absence of plot which becomes apparent around the halfway mark. After the arrival of Henry the storyline simply stops. One of the greatest opportunities for conflict ( another dramatic essential) could have been the relationship between father and son. Apart from the penultimate confrontation mentioned above, there is virtually no interaction between the man and the boy. Paul Sunday is another character who could have played a useful part in the story, but he never appears again after his first tense meeting with Plainview, one of the best scenes in the film.
The near-total absence of women is one of the film's major weaknesses. Incredibly, two of the critics who lavished the most praise on the movie saw this as some kind of positive factor. Was the West built by men alone? Seriously? The appearance of a wife and mother could have given a real injection of drama to the plot as it meanders unconvincingly towards its end.
The music has been praised as groundbreaking but for me is intrusive and annoying. At times it signals plot too clumsily - the accidents in the mineshaft would have been so much more shocking without those spooky sliding strings alerting us to imminent doom (Nic Roeg demonstrates the suspensefulness of silence in the sequence in Don't Look Now where Donald Sutherland has a nasty accident high in a church tower) - while at other times it seems superfluous, inappropriate and jarring.
A minor fault is the absence of visible signs of ageing by most of the supporting actors. In particular Dano looks exactly the same throughout the film's twenty-year timespan. Day- Lewis's accent at times betrays hints of Surrey, and the revivalist church alternates between a windowless barn and a Tele-evangelist's set complete with giant illuminated cross.
All in all, a huge disappointment.