Film Review: There Will Be Blood

An extremely well-made film that is ambitious in scope and originality

Ever since I first saw Daniel Day-Lewis portray Christy Brown in Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot, I understood that he was one of those rare actors who could completely immerse himself physically and mentally into the characters he chooses to play. Although I thought the film was greatly flawed, his performance as Bill the Butcher in Scorsese's Gangs of New York is one of the most memorable ones I've had the pleasure of watching. It is, therefore, no surprise that Mr. Lewis has again hit pay dirt acting out the life of an early 20th-century businessman on a collision course with madness.

There Will Be Blood, a film based on the book by Upton Sinclair called Oil, begins with antagonist Daniel Plainview (Lewis) digging for silver in a desolate place in the American Southwest. It is an adventurous sequence that offers not one word of dialogue for the first part of the story. During this section, we witness Plainview's metamorphosis from lone prospector to oil entrepreneur as he myopically toils to exploit the earth's natural resources. Plainview also becomes the adopted father of a baby belonging to one of his workers who is killed in a freak rigging accident. Plainview passes the boy named H.W. (Dillon Freasier) off as his own son while selling himself to clients as a "family man" and congenial businessman. While searching for his next big score, a mysterious young man named Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) comes to Plainview’s office. After brief negotiation, he sells him information about a rich deposit located at his father's farm near the central coast of California. With H. W. in tow, Plainview immediately heads for this parcel; and as an excuse to verify the existence of oil, tells Sunday’s father Abel (David Willis) that he wants to hunt quail on his land. When Paul’s story pans out, Plainview quickly offers to buy Abel’s farm but Paul’s identical twin brother Eli (Paul Dano) runs interference and jacks up the price to $10,000. The keen-eyed businessman also buys all the other farms surrounding the Sunday property with the exception of one holdout named Mister Bandy. Plainview l’s oil company descends on the area while he assures the local residents that he will be respectful of their rights and spread the wealth. During this time we learn that Eli claims to be a faith healer and wants to start his own church with the money promised to him by Plainview. A strange rivalry begins when Plainview slights Eli at the blessing of his first well and he performs the ceremony himself, in spite of promising to allow the young preacher to do it. Things go smoothly until one of the riggers is killed in an accident, which is soon followed by an oil well explosion where H.W. loses his hearing. On the heels of this bad luck, Plainview melts down when Eli confronts him demanding his five thousand dollar payment. After he throws him a nasty beating, he accuses the healer of being a fake for not offering to cure his son’s deafness.

With his personal troubles mounting, Plainview encounters a man claiming to be his half- brother Henry (Kevin O’Connor) who has traveled to California to notify him of their father’s death. After testing Henry’s family knowledge, Plainview offers him a job and begins to confide his inner thoughts to him. Their bond is reinforced when H.W. tries to burn down the house and Henry awakens Plainview from a heavy sleep. Because of his rebellious and withdrawn behavior, the boy is sent away to a special school for the hearing impaired. With this imposed separation from his adopted son, Plainview loses his remaining humanity and begins to become unhinged. While surveying land purchased to develop a pipeline for Union Oil, Plainview discovers that Henry is a fake, coldly shoots the imposter in the head and inadvertently buries him on Mr. Bandy’s land. The next morning, holdout Bandy (Hans Howes) surprises Plainview and threatens to reveal his murderous secret unless he repents and joins Eli’s Church. In return, Bandy also promises Plainview the lease rights to his property upon his conversion. In a painfully humiliating ceremony, zealous preacher Sunday repeatedly slaps and verbally grinds the self-sufficient Plainview while making him shout that he has betrayed his son by sending him away. After this public embarrassment, the pipeline is built and Plainview becomes incredibly wealthy.

During the film’s final scenes, the story fast-forwards 14 years and we find that the once driven Plainview has become a bitter, complacent drunk. In spite of bringing H.W. home from school immediately after his phony conversion, their relationship has sadly deteriorated. After he marries his childhood friend Mary Sunday, H.W. informs Plainview that he is moving to Mexico to start his own oil company. Plainview disowns H.W. and cruelly informs him he is adopted and was only used as a ploy to attract more business. Soon afterward, Eli comes to visit Plainview to negotiate for the drilling rights of Bandy’s land on behalf of the deceased man’s son. Plainview tells the preacher that he will agree to a deal if he renounces God and admits that he is a bogus healer. After some hesitation, Plainview gets Eli to shout it loudly in the same way he was compelled to do during his conversion ceremony. Afterward, Plainview gleefully informs Sunday that he already has drained all the oil from Bandy’s parcel and attacks and kills him with a pin from his private bowling alley.

There Will Be Blood is an extremely well-made film that is ambitious in scope and originality. At its core, the story is a classic Greek tragedy transplanted into the American West with detailed depictions of period action and entrepreneurial philosophy. The acting is uniformly superb, the cinematography is high quality and the film score is exceptional. Though the narrative unfolds in a conventional chronological fashion, the relentless lack of genuine humanity by the principal characters creates an uneasy feeling that sustains itself throughout the film. For this reason, I almost felt guilty about continually rooting for Plainview and admiring his savage desire for survival and success. The film has some storytelling flaws and I was confused by the Eli/Paul Sunday characters and at times wasn’t sure if Paul was Eli’s alter ego. Though the director insists that is not the case, the viewer is left wondering why after his initial visit to Plainview’s office, why Paul mysteriously disappears. Apart from the few holes, it is a challenging film that leaves you with something to think about after it’s over.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD
Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Kevin O'Connor
Company: Ghoulardi Films