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Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood

by Kathryn Durfee
01/26/2008

Daniel Plainview is an oil man. With a voice warm, reassuring, and unfaltering, he speaks of how he started by extracting silver, but now owns the rights to multiple wells producing thousands of gallons of oil each week. He runs a family business with his son, H.W., and encourages his workers to bring their families with them. He aims to increase his land leases and number of wells, and plans to repay the surrounding communities by building schools and churches. But, this confident and winsome voice is dripping with lies.

Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson's newest epic, There Will Be Blood, very loosely based on Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil!, spans almost 30 years in the life of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his quest for land and wealth. One night, young Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) arrives in Plainview's office with the desire to trade information on the location of an ocean of oil for a price. Plainview travels to the Sunday farm under the pretense of taking his young son quail hunting, and offers to buy the land for next to nothing.

Plainview begins buying leases for all of the land surrounding the Sunday ranch in order to clear himself a straight path to the ocean. Eli Sunday an evangelical preacher, either Paul's twin brother or a shifty split personality (they are never seen together and it is never expressly stated that they are twins), sees Plainview as an opportunity to get money for his congregation, the Church of the Third Revelation. One small problem: Plainview doesn't believe in God and therefore sees Eli as a false prophet and a minor annoyance easily cast aside.

Thus, the two men begin a competition for control over the community. Plainview promises to allow Eli to bless the first well, but when he plainly ignores the boy at the small gathering, Eli develops a life-long hatred for the man. Meanwhile, Plainview watches as more and more rigs are built, all while drinking whiskey from a small shack on the land. This is far from the American Dream come true. Men are killed while working on the rigs, and little H.W. is deafened by a blast. Plainview, who at first appeared to be a doting father, now lets his true personality creep through. For him, H.W. was a prop; a cute face to help with the buying of land. Now injured, the boy is of no use to him.

Plainview is so isolated that it's no surprise that he's completely unaware of the existence of his half-brother, who soon shows up on his doorstep looking for work. Plainview admits that he hates everyone, needs no one, and is quite content to stay that way. Reminiscent of Citizen Kane, There Will Be Blood focuses on it's protagonist's desire for unmeasurable wealth. And wealth he gets, but he keeps it all to himself.

Thus, the almost three-hour-long film follows Plainview's descent into madness, Howard Hughes-style. Paul Thomas Anderson's direction and Robert Elswit's cinematography recall the old westerns of the 1970s with sweeping barren landscapes perfectly balanced with extreme close-ups and dramatically-lit scenes. Pay attention to the scene in which Plainview is talking to his alleged half-brother by the fire; he is invisible except for his demonic greedy eyes, crooked nose, and lying mouth.

The film has been nominated for 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Direction, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor in a Leading Role, and will probably take home several of these. Daniel Day-Lewis, who was awarded the Golden Globe for Best Actor, is frighteningly perfect as the soulless Plainview who, even covered in oil and holding his deafened child can think of nothing but money. Likewise, Paul Dano's performance as Eli Sunday recalls that of Casey Affleck's nervous and tactile Robert Ford in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Though Eli at first appears to be an innocent and devout preacher, he really harbors the same greed Plainview does. The difference is that he masks his in the will of God instead of human behavior.

Blood has few characters and considerably sparse dialogue when considering its 158 minute run time. In fact, it is almost fifteen minutes before the first line of dialogue is uttered, a wonderfully refreshing feature that may deter some audiences. The soundtrack, however, functions almost as another character. The whining instrumentals are beautiful, but unnerving. Each note unsettles the audience, emphasizing the underlying evil of the film's story and warning of the next haunting events to come.

Watching this film is like trying to tear your eyes away from a derailed train or a natural disaster. This is in no way meant to deter viewers. The direction is nearly flawless, the acting superb, and the cinematography dazzling. Blood, for all of its wide open landscapes and oil glory, is a character study of a greedy individual who wants everything and ends up with nothing. The end, not to spoil anything, may leave audiences unsatisfied, just as did that of No Country for Old Men. But, to those who have seen it, what other ending could this film possibly have had?

Despite a few minor pitfalls -- there are no prominent female characters, the characters don't grow or change, and the film is relentless in driving home the point of Plainview's self-hatred -- There Will Be Blood is an epic achievement for Paul Thomas Anderson and a film not to be missed. I only wish I had seen it in time to include it on my Best of 2007 list!