There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood Review

When I first saw "There Will Be Blood," I was disappointed. While I enjoyed the performance of Daniel Day-Lewis and I appreciated the gorgeous cinematography, the film did not do much for me. For one thing, it felt pretentious and overlong, the work of a talented, but self-indulgent director.

What a difference a second viewing makes. One of my favorite film critics, Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune, picked the film as his favorite of the last decade, so I decided to revisit it. After that re-viewing, I watched it a third time. This is the rare film that grows on repeated viewings.

The second time around, I did not find the pacing of the film to be slow, but patient. The film, to me, really penetrates to the heart of the American tradition of rugged individualism and the good and bad of capitalism (put roughly, the first half of the film shows the good of capitalism and the second half shows the bad). Daniel Day-Lewis is just mesmerizing as Daniel Plainview, a character so mysterious, he makes Kevin Spacey in "The Usual Suspects" look like Mary Poppins. The lack of any backstory or context provided for him and his son, H.W., will no doubt frustrate some filmgoers, and this film is certainly not for everyone, but for me, it's really excellent stuff.

Every time I come back to this film, I find something new in it; the more I see it, the stranger and sadder and more ambiguous the film seems to me. Many critics have taken issue with the last forty five minutes or so of the film, which takes place much later than the earlier part of the film, but for me, that is what really makes the film great. I would compare the ending of the film to the ending of "Apocalypse Now"; frustratingly eccentric for some filmgoers, but for me, absolutely great.

If you haven't seen this, see it, and if you have, see it again. Whether you loved or hated it the first time, seeing this film once is not enough.

Five stars.

There Will Be Blood Overview

A sprawling epic of family, faith, power and oil, THERE WILL BE BLOOD is set on the incendiary frontier of California’s turn-of-the-century petroleum boom. The story chronicles the life and times of one Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), who transforms himself from a down-and-out silver miner raising a son on his own into a self-made oil tycoon. When Plainview gets a mysterious tip-off that there’s a little town out West where an ocean of oil is oozing out of the ground, he heads with his son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier), to take their chances in dust-worn Little Boston. In this hardscrabble town, where the main excitement centers around the holy roller church of charismatic preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), Plainview and H.W. make their lucky strike. But even as the well raises all of their fortunes, nothing will remain the same as conflicts escalate and every human value – love, hope, community, belief, ambition and even the bond between father and son – is imperiled by corruption, deception and the flow of oil.

There Will Be Blood Specifications

Unmistakably a shot at greatness, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood succeeds in wild, explosive ways. The film digs into nothing less than the sources of peculiarly American kinds of ambition, corruption, and industry--and makes exhilarating cinema from it all. Although inspired by Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil!, Anderson has crafted his own take on the material, focusing on a black-eyed, self-made oilman named Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), whose voracious appetite for oil turns him into a California tycoon in the early years of the 20th century. The early reels are a mesmerizing look at the getting of oil from the ground, an intensely physical process that later broadens into Plainview's equally indomitable urge to control land and power. Curious, diverting episodes accumulate during Plainview's rise: a mighty derrick fire (a bravura opportunity that Anderson, with the aid of cinematographer Robert Elswit, does not fail to meet), a visit from a long-lost brother (Kevin J. O'Connor), the ongoing involvement of Plainview's poker-faced adoptive son (Dillon Freasier). As the film progresses, it gravitates toward Plainview's rivalry with the local representative of God, a preacher named Eli Sunday (brimstone-spitting Paul Dano); religion and capitalism are thus presented not so much as opposing forces but as two sides of the same coin. And the worm in the apple here is less man's greed than his vanity. Anderson's offbeat take on all this--exemplified by the astonishing musical score by Jonny Greenwood--occasionally threatens to break the film apart, but even when it founders, it excites. As for Daniel Day-Lewis, his performance is Olivier-like in its grand scope and its attention to details of behavior; Plainview speaks in the rum-rich voice of John Huston, and squints with the wariness of Walter Huston. It's a fearsome performance, and the engine behind the film's relentless power. --Robert Horton

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