A film reminding of Citizen Kane

Rating: 9/10 (15 February 2020)

"There will be blood" is about the rise of the oil industrie in America (like "Giant" (1956, George Stevens)) and about the rise and fall of a tycoon (like "Citizen Kane" (1941, Orosen Welles)). So the film can be compared with not the least of films in film history. Nevertheless it withstands this comparison rather well.
Central to the film is the conflict between the tycoon Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis) and the evangelist Eli Sunday (Paul Dano). This is however not a conflict of principles. Eli Sunday is also interested in money and for Daniel Plainview oil is a holy substance. This is illustrated by the way he baptizes his stepson H.W. with oil. The conflict is rather a powerstruggle in the course of which the two combatants mutually humiliate each other.
H.W. is the stepson of Daniel Plainview. They have a rather curious relationship. For Daniel his stepson is a way te present himself as a family man (a necessary condition to do business in this very religious part of America), something he definitely is not. H.W. made me think of Oskar Matzerath from "Die blechtrommel" (1979, Volker SchlÃ¶ndorf), although he does grow up. As a grown up he disappears however from the scene.
Both Daniel and Eli have "the gift of speech", and they use it to cheat on the farmers of the neigborhood. The voice of Daniel is so confidence inspiring that it can only belong to a crook. The film starts with a long silent opening, after which there is a speech of Daniel trying to buy the land of farmers in order to drill for oil.
The cinematography is very beautiful, in particular in the scenes of wide landscapes. Landscapes who will be damaged forever by the activities of Daniel Plainview. Coincidentally the Coen brothers filmed in the same part of Texas as Paul Thomas Anderson for "No country for old men", a film from the same year (2007).
The score sounds very much like a Philip Glass score, but is actually by Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead. There are dissonants in the music by uncomfortable scenes in which the hard selfishness of Daniel Plainview is revealed.
In "Citizen Kane" there is some sort of redemption at the end. In "There will be blood" there is only madness.