One of the greatest films of all time

Rating: 10/10 (25 February 2008)

"There Will Be Blood" is a movie written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and loosely based on Upton Sinclair's book "Oil", which itself was based on the Harding Administration's Teapot Dome Scandal. That being said it is quickly apparent that the movie is about the life of one man, Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day-Lewis in the most powerful performance of his distinguished career. Plainview is ambition, greed and the desire for power incarnate. He pursues silver and by accident finds oil on his claims. One of his partners is accidentally killed during an oil extraction operation and he takes the orphaned child of the man as his own, naming him H.W., and uses the boy as a device to establish himself as a family man as he obtains claims from poor farmers, making himself one of the wealthiest oilmen in California. H.W. is played by several child and one adult actor over the course of the movie but during most of its course by Dillon Freasier in an effectively understated role. Soon he is approached by a man named Paul Sunday, played by Paul Dano, who informs Plainview of oil on his family's land in Little Boston, California, information for which he obtains a bribe. Plainview goes to Little Boston and finds evidence of an "ocean of oil" under the land while under the pretense of a quail hunting trip with his son, H.W., at the Sunday farm. In obtaining the rights to the oil under the Sunday farm Plainview pays the family $5,000 in advance and promises another $5,000 to Eli Sunday to establish a church, of which he imagines himself pastor. Plainview then takes steps to ensure that he can monopolize the oil under Little Boston against all competitors.
The plot is thus established so that the characters may play out their lives in what is to be a tragedy of epic proportions. The film explores Plainview's exploitation of the farmers of the poor community, his false concern for his workers, his manipulation of H.W., of which he seems only vaguely aware until later in life and the love-hate relationship with Eli Sunday and his church; a complicated dance of death that eventually plays itself out with the inevitable murder of one of the characters.
What Anderson has created is a story of our time. Plainview is rapacious Capitalism and greed while Eli Sunday is both Plainview's agent and antagonist, simultaneously using religious fervor to assist in the exploitation of his flock while living off of Plainview's largess. Were it only a polemic, however, the film would have failed as many polemics do. Instead the writer has created his characters as living, breathing people: people who change their stripes in front of different audiences, who themselves act within worlds of their own making; people who are only vaguely aware of their own motivations and blind to the motivations of others. All of this is laid out before the viewer who is forced to be a participant in the drama, to take sides as the story plays itself out, only to be surprised by each twist and turn of the plot and the surprising and disturbing ending.
The cinematography in the film is outstanding, the editing and writing first rate. The first 20 minutes of the film is absent dialog, making the imagery that much more important, forcing the focus of the film, Daniel Day-Lewis as Plainview, to embody the character in movement and nuance--a talent more attuned to the silent era than the modern era of film. The camera moves with the characters and participates with them carrying the audience with the characters and the action, challenging the viewer's perceptions and understanding of events at every turn, just as the characters themselves are confused and manipulated by those same events.
The bottom line is that this is a film at the level of Citizen Kane and Casablanca. I believe it will continue to enthrall audiences for many years. Its snubbing at the Oscars will only imbue it with greater artistic credibility. This is a film meant to challenge the viewer, the society, the powerful and conventionality. As such it is high art. Bravo.