Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, US, 2007, 158mins
Cast: Daniel Day Lewis, Paul Dano, Dillon Freasier, Ciaran Hinds, Kevin J. Connor
Review by Matthew Rodgers
Paul Thomas Anderson’s first film since 2002’s wonderful Punch Drunk Love is an epic in every sense of the word; A sprawling canvas of greed, oil, and religion in turn of the century Texas featuring some awe-inspiring imagery and an intimidating performance from Daniel Day-Lewis to present the air of a film that truly does belong to the “they don’t make ‘em like that anymore” school of movie-making. But while excelling in its individual components and construction make it masterful, it is by no means the lauded masterpiece the quote splattered posters would lead you to believe.
Charting the rise of Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) from committed but flawed silver miner to self-made oil tycoon, via the death trap mud pits of nowheresville to the black river fields of Little Boston where he is confronted by egotistical local preacher and part-time schizo Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), There Will Be Blood tackles issues of patriarchy, love, faith, friendship and The American Dream, all in the face of the fallibility of man.
Said man is played by with an over-bearing intensity by the perennially brilliant Day Lewis, transforming Plainview from a quiet prospector – its testament to the role that we learn as much from his dialogue free opening twenty minutes than other actors accomplish in an entire movie – to a monster of a man bereft of any semblance of humanity or sanity. It is at times an uncomfortable turn to watch, a criticism that could be levelled at the movie as a whole. The character will captivate as many people as it will frustrate others, he is the singular driving force at the core of the movie that although impressive threatens to smother the other elements.
His shadow also looms over the rest of the cast as only Little Miss Sunshine’s Paul Dano gets a chance to.. erm.. shine. Eli is the antithesis of Plainview at the outset and his journey is as much a criticism of the weakness of man as the central role, a fully fledged member of the belief system, even he succumbs to the aura of greed emanating from Plainview's booze stained past. The rest of the main players are cast asunder much in the same way that Plainview does to those he tenuously loves.
What stops this being a truly one man show is PTA’s stunning direction; the Hollywood wunderkind tackles a completely different landscape to that of his socially peripheral human studies with a touch of the “weird” a la Magnolia. Instead we get a controlled, claustrophobic look into one mans warped world, and it’s almost as if PTA is simply pointing the camera at events not knowing what’s going to happen himself, its that natural. The stand-out scene in which one of Plainview’s embryonic oil plants goes up in flames leading to personal tragedy is breathtakingly framed but is given extra gravitas by the excellent and original score from Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, a better sound mix you will not hear all year.
What’s lacking amongst the thesping (or shouting as it annoyingly becomes in the final third, one man's opinion!!) and eye-popping scope is any sense of the compassion that permeated Anderson’s previous work. This is not a tale of redemption for Plainview but there is no empathy at any stage, he is a complete and utter bastard from start to finish. A hint of salvation may have meant a more emotional climax to proceedings that subsequently end with an “oh, is that it?” moment. Maybe it’s greedy for us to ask for anymore from the narrative? Maybe that’s the point?
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