There Will Be Blood
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano
Prospector, Daniel Plainview believes in plain speak. With oil under his fingernails, and money lining his pockets, Plainview has strolled into many a small town with the promise of riches. Daily, he walks among the townspeople, saying “good evening” and “thank you,” and then he swindles the oil from their land. It’s a “family” business model, and with each derrick that goes up, with each eruption of oil, Plainview gets over on the unsuspecting. He’s as slick as the crude he produces.
I could go on and on about Daniel Plainview. It’s gotta be said, that he is one of the more interesting movie characters to geyser on to the big screen in recent memory. In that regard, “There Will Be Blood” is a success.
Daniel Day-Lewis plays Plainview like the Carney that he is. His performance is taut and deliberate, almost appearing painstakingly so. Yet, if you took Day-Lewis out of the equation, the film would not stand out for much else.
Director/screenwriter, Paul Thomas Anderson (“Boogie Nights,” “Magnolia”), working from an Upton Sinclair novel, excels at bizarre character studies. Often, he utilizes unconventional scenes to pull something out of his celluloid creations. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work here. The first hours leads you to believe you’ll be watching the roots of modern American business. Then we hit the second hour and --- the movie isn’t lost, but distracted.
If you don’t believe me then look at the introduction of the Sunday family.
Eli Sunday (played by Rizzo the Rat/Paul Dano) is a man just as proud as Daniel Plainview. He’s the pastor of the local church, and, coincidentally, the first home that Plainview has to encounter in order to begin digging for oil. Plainview makes the usual string of false promises, and the Sunday family accepts, despite Eli’s hesitance. From there, interestingly, Eli and Daniel seem to be building towards a battle of egos. In the middle, are the god-fearing people of Little Boston. The tug of war, displays both men as too proud, you anticipate their ideals to be shaken and, like the title notes, blood to be spilled. Instead, you get these things after a less interesting trek through several subplots involving family. After being absent from each other's prescence for so long, the characters start behaving erratically. And when Daniel and Eli do intersect again, they feel tardy, as if their conflict had left them behind.
The ironically, this error in judgment juxtaposes Eli and Daniel’s problem. Director Paul Thomas Anderson seems a little too cocksure. Because of this, the film seems driven by what he wants instead of what the film needs.
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