Masterpiece or Over Hyped Melodrama?

Rating: Null/10 (3 February 2008)

Well I can't decide. Although I'm tending towards the latter conclusion right now. I'd been looking forward to seeing this after the Oscar nominations came out, and my son gave me a good report too, but after sitting through all two and a half plus hours with a friend, we turned to each other and "Hmmmm?" was about as philosophical as we could get. This movie is not as good as it thinks it is. It treads a narrow line veering dangerously close to pretension, and has "Look at me, aren't I a masterpiece?" written all over it. But the jury is still out on that. If I wanted to be really cynical, I could just dismiss it as another movie about men doing manly things. But it does deserve more thoughtful analysis than that.
I'm prepared to concede that Daniel Day Lewis gives a tour-de-force performance and the musical score is good. There are some other things about There Will Be Blood which are very good too; the cinematography for instance. It's an interesting story, both as a character study of a strange, driven man and as a history study of the early days of the oil industry. The time is turn of the 20th century, the place the western USA. Daniel Plainview (D D Lewis) survives a mining accident to become an early wildcatter, strikes it lucky, and then, after a tip off from one Mr Paul Sunday, heads west in southern California to drill one of the biggest finds in the state, on the Sunday's dirt poor, hard scrabble goat farm. He gathers leases on land and eventually overcomes the locals' religious fervor, to build a pipeline to the coast, thwarting 'big bad' Standard Oil, but running foul of the preacher, Eli Sunday, Paul's brother or possibly his alter ego, I couldn't quite decide. (Paul Dano, trying hard but miscast in my opinion.) Along the way he adopts a child, the orphaned son of a worker, and the child is rendered deaf as the result of a spectacular, explosive blow out at a well. So far so good. The first hour is far better than the second.
To me a film needs more than a strong central performance, music and gritty filming of an oil fire, to be nominated for Best Picture. It also needs good editing, and strong writing, and to fully engage the attention of the audience. And there were times in There Will Be Blood, especially during the second half, when to call it ponderous would be putting it kindly. It is painfully slow in places, almost to the point of tedium, and the fact is that Plainview is an unpleasant man, with whom it is hard to sympathise on any level. He is unpleasant from beginning to end, and except for a few moments of affection for the son, we see a one dimensional character. The obvious character to arouse our sympathy is the adopted son, but he is presented as pretty much functionally mute even before he loses his hearing, so there is little even there to grasp on to as a character with whom to identify. The rest of the cast are bit players, and this is definitely a girly-free zone. Plainview reneges on a promise to give $5,000 to Eli's church, and seems to renege on other promises too, such as drilling for irrigation water, building a road and a school (situation normal for the oil industry, I'm sure viewers are muttering.) He does whatever is needed to succeed, shunts his deaf son off to boarding school by cruelly tricking him onto a train, beats up the preacher in a weird scene, murders a man who poses as his long lost brother and generally seems to be someone for whom arrest and a strait jacket are long overdue. We are given little insight as to why he is such a piece of work.
Eventually he makes his huge bundle of money and lives as an alcoholic in a vast mansion. The final dénouement is played out in his private bowling alley after his son, now grown up, has left him to set up on his own as a rival. The pesky preacher  who strangely seems not to have aged a day. Very poor characterization in my opinion  meets his maker via an appointment with a bowling pin.
So what are we to make of this? Is there some message to be read here? Power hungry control freaks often meet a nasty end? Beware preachers who have read Revelations once too often? Goat's milk is better for the liver than whiskey? Insulting your adopted son and mocking his use of sign language will leave you lonely in your old age? I wish I knew.
I'm glad I saw this. I don't want to be totally negative. It's certainly interesting in concept. But it's far too flawed to deserve Best Picture, and I've seen better movies this year. Sweeney Todd, for example, which truly IS a masterpiece, or even Michael Clayton, which I thought excellent. There Will Be Blood is, however, far, far better than Juno, a movie whose nomination for Best Picture has left me truly bemused.