There Will Be Blood (2007)

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Writer: Upton Sinclair (novel), Paul Thomas Anderson (screenplay)

Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a successful oilman at the turn of the twentieth century. A young man's tip leads Plainview to California where a local preacher and the hazards of free enterprise are but a few of the obstacles between Plainview and incredible wealth.

Yet another film I wish I'd seen in theatres. Even once the DVD came out it took me a long time to get around to watching it because I had the feeling it required one sitting to really appreciate the film. Apart from his short films and Sydney (a.k.a. Hard Eight) (1996), I've seen his other three features: Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999), and Punch-Drunk Love (2002). There Will Be Blood is quite like these films and is at the same time quite different. There Will Be Blood is not as much an ensemble piece as his other films, much like how Punch-Drunk Love focuses on Adam Sandler and Emily Watson's characters though they're surrounded by over-the-top human foils and accents. Like Boogie Nights, this is a historical drama though far less tongue-in-cheek. This is also an adapted work, from the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair, whereas his previous films are original screenplays.

Anderson's film is a tough one to get through at times. The two and a half hour running time is daunting, especially when coupled with the methodical pacing and specific visual style he implements. Several times during There Will Be Blood, I got the sense that the Anderson was channeling as much David Lean as John Cassavetes. The location and landscape is just as important a visual feature as any of the characters or the narrative. He uses the widescreen to his advantage to show the vastness of the location (e.g. the vanishing point railroad, Daniel and adopted son HW [Dillon Freasier] hunting) but also to show the intimacy and opposition of his characters in closer framings (Daniel and HW after the accident, Daniel and William Bandy before the baptism). Other times, such as when HW returns from boarding school, Anderson's camera is positioned very far away from the two but their voices are aurally "close" to the spectator. This gives an uncomfortable, voyeuristic quality to the scene, which is one of the film's narrative strengths. Anderson's film allows the audience to tag along with Daniel Plainview at specific points in his oil-oriented life. From his solitary prospecting in 1898, to a small oil drilling team in 1902, to our main chunk of story in Little Boston in 1911, and finally jumping ahead to 1927. The elliptical storytelling requires some dedication on the behalf of the viewer but is ultimately a rewarding experience.

The reward comes in the form of the central, personal conflict of the film. At the forefront of the narrative is the clash between oilman Daniel Plainview and preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano). The two actors play off each other wonderfully, presenting opposing side of ambition. Plainview is interesting in one thing: oil. Where he can find it, how he can get to it, and how he can profit from it. Eli, however, is driven by his faith and the development of his church, The Church of the Third Revelation. However, by the end of the film Eli is the fallen man, driven more by his own greed than his supposed faith.

I find it significant that neither man looks any older in final 1927 scenes as when they first meet in 1911. The men come to represent the frailties of human endeavor and how those frailties never age. Daniel Plainview is a bad man, you know, I know, Anderson knows it, and Daniel Plainview most of all knows it. This is what sets him apart from Eli Sunday. Sunday has allowed his self-delusion to overtake his being. From the beginning of the film, he sees himself - as I imagine most cult leaders do - as the guiding light for all those who dare follow him. He persists in this fantasy as he tries to build his church and his followers, always keeping himself on a pedestal. Daniel sees through Eli and at every turn knocks him down a peg and often does it literally. This self-delusion has landed Eli in the early grips of the Great Depression and Daniel in a more cushioned environment. Their final confrontation in Daniel's in-home bowling alley (a hokey set piece but effective nonetheless), is dramatic sum of the past two-plus hours. It is here that many of the images and narrative themes of the film repeat and come to full maturity. The revelation that Eli's twin brother Paul was the true prophet (bringing Daniel to Little Boston) and Eli's subsequent forced admission of such (like Daniel's beleaguered baptism) is Daniel's final emotional, spiritual, and physical assault on Eli. It is in this scene, despite Day-Lewis' excessive performance, where I am most reminded of the work of John Cassavetes and Robert Bresson. In many of Cassavetes' films (specifically Shadows [1959], Faces [1968], and A Woman Under the Influence [1974]) and Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest (1951) and Pickpocket (1959), the viewer spends nearly the whole length of the film absorbing these vignettes in characters' lives then. It's in the last few scenes and moments that the sum total of the previous images rushes back, swells up, and locks into place. You have to watch from start to finish in one go or the whole effect is significantly diminished. There Will Be Blood is not a film designed to make the viewer feel good. There is no one to root for (as a friend pointed out), it's a wholly pessimistic about industry, and our sympathies are consistently subverted by characters' actions. Even when we are manipulated to feel sorry for HW's lost hearing, he is sent away to school only to return as yet another reminder of what a terrible person Plainview is. However, I find these ostensibly negative qualities to be the real source of the film's strength. There Will Be Blood stands in opposition to generic Hollywood product and I hope more filmmakers will be bold enough, as Anderson has, to work in such dark cinematic terrain.