A film that desperately tries to be a masterpiece, but forgets what that means

Rating: 7/10 (16 March 2015)

"There Will Be Blood" tries everything within its power to be a modern masterpiece. This is one of those films that one can tell was specifically designed to be loved by critics and to receive attention. However, in spite of all of its great strengths and great moments, it muddles down into a rather pointless film that leaves no real lasting connection.
I will not lie and say that "There Will Be Blood" was not beautifully shot and doesn't have great characters. It does! The camera shots in this film are down right brilliant, and very close to that of Stanley Kubrick's style... almost too close. The soundtrack is also VERY good, because it sets the mood perfectly. From the very beginning of the movie in its 2001: Space Odyssey atmosphere, you can tell that things are going wrong and that tension is building. I would say that the first 20 minutes of the movie are ingenious. Everything about it is brilliant.
The movie follows the life of a man named Daniel who starts as a humble silver miner, until he ends up discovering oil. At this point he starts earning more cash. When one of his workers dies on the job, he adopts the man's son. The majority of the movie follows Daniel and his attempt to get oil from a small-town. However, many difficulties arise, and Daniel becomes exceedingly desperate to get access to the last part of the land so that he can make a pipe through the land.
What makes the film's plot good is its actors and the characters they play. You get a real sense of Daniel's decent into madness and rage. Over the course of the film you start to realize that he was actually always a psychopath, its just he becomes so rich that he stops caring if he shows it. This makes for a very interesting and well-written character.
However, the movie still has one major glaring issue: Not only does it not amount to anything, but it doesn't really lead anywhere... or do anything. I am all for a movie that messes with the viewer's expectations, but the last 30 minutes of this movie really screw it over... and not in a good way. The movie uses all of the classic "Oscar movie" clichés: Let's see the main character years later as they grow old from wealth, let's see them go mad, let's have the climax of the film be an argument from one character to the next so as to reveal their true personalities, and the list goes on... if you've ever watched a drama like this before, you've seen this ending before.
The main issue with the ending in this movie (and pretty much all of this movie) is that a lot of the movie's themes and content never lead to anything. Yes, they might be tied together with a plot, but almost every scene (except for the beginning) solely exists to make you feel like something much larger is happening. Since this movie builds so much tension, you think it would get somewhere... but it doesn't.
Now, that isn't to say that there aren't obvious metaphors and that the scene's don't correlate with the characters. The very finishing scene of the movie seems to be showing years of Daniel's hatred towards humanity being released at once to a point where he is satisfied... however it also makes him a complete and utter psychopath.
This is the other issue with the movie: the character named Eli. Eli is a preacher who is a minor rival to Daniel, but he sees Daniel as a brother, regardless if Daniel humiliates him constantly. The issue with Eli is... he is a 100% stereotypical cliché Christian nut-job. I don't understand why directors think that having an "insane Christian preacher" is original or thought provoking. Literally EVERYONE has done that, and it comes across as... well... simple- minded. Not saying that there aren't insane Christian preachers (there definitely are, and I have certainly met some), but there are also plenty who weren't, and basically everything Eli preaches in the movie is actually incorrect based off of biblical teachings.
Now, you could say that this was intentional so as to show that Eli really was a clueless false-prophet who didn't know anything (which he seemed to be) but the movie doesn't seem to know that... the movie seems to just be saying "He is an over-the-top clueless Christian". This cliché is just so overdone that it is sad to see good directors think that it is clever.
All in all, There Will Be Blood has some great acting, but it has some major issues as far as its ending goes, its rival, and what it is trying to say. Nothing in the film truly adds up to anything significant. It is a really well made movie, but that doesn't make it a great movie.