'There Will Be Blood': A Review

By Katey Rich

I saw There Will Be Blood last Thursday and have spent the entire weekend trying to figure out what to make of it. I'm still not quite sure I have, but I'm dying to start the discussion.

The movie is...something. It is a force to be reckoned with, an application of masterful filmmaking to a story that is chilling, relentless, and ultimately inscrutable. Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson is back with the same kind of symbolism that made frogs rain all over L.A. in Magnolia, this time cribbing from the Bible and offering a commentary on the oil lust that has brought us to war today. Not that he's really making a political drama here. Anderson seems most interested in dissecting a fascinating, deeply evil character, a man who rivals Charles Foster Kane in representing the darkest sides of American ambition.

The man in question is Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), a turn-of-the-century frontierman who goes from scrabbling for silver underneath the desert to constructing enormous oil derricks in the first, largely silent 30 minutes of the film. Bearing an enormous mustache and a weathered, snakelike face, Plainview at first appears to be the classic American entrepreneur, striking out into the next big business and using every trick at his disposal to make it work. When he arrives in the desert town of Little Boston, on a tip from a young man named Paul, he offers what appear to be fair prices for the land that promises an ocean of oil beneath the surface. Accompanied by his young son H.W. (Dillon Freasier), Plainview speaks calmly and simply, promising fortune for the people of Little Boston while making every attempt to fit in with the tiny, God-fearing town.

Immediately suspicious, though, is Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), a young preacher with a meteoric pull on his congregation who distrusts Plainview's motives and seems to be jealous of the new leader in town. Plainview and Sunday subtly undermine each other until their tension comes to a head, when Sunday asks Plainview for the money owed for the church's land and Plainview responds by literally dragging Sunday through the mud.

Though Sunday is Plainview's only real enemy-- he steamrolls anyone else who gets in his way-- he is by no means an equal character. Instead of making the film a grudge match between the two men, Anderson focuses exclusively on Plainview, letting the plot meander and introducing new characters all by way of getting to the root of this man. Later in the film Plainview confides in the man claiming to be his half-brother, "I want to earn enough money so I can get away from everyone." That becomes the driving force of the rest of his film, as Plainview distances himself from his beloved son and, in a coda 15 years later, finds himself in a place not unlike Xanadu, drinking heavily and shouting at the help. It's at this point we finally get the confrontation between Sunday and Plainview we have waited for, but Plainview is so far gone that it's barely a fair fight. Instead of dramatic catharsis, we are given terror and dread, a feeling in the pit of the stomach that doesn't fade until long after the credits have rolled.

There WIll Be Blood makes good on its titillating title, but not in the way you would think. The film has been compared to the Coens' No Country for Old Men, mostly because they are both dark, set in the West, and coming out this fall. But Anderson's relationship to bloodshed here is nothing like the Coens' in that film, where they excite the audience with ultraviolence and then chastise them for enjoying it in the first place. Anderson is finding no joy in violence: People bleed and die, and it is not glamorous or fun or satisfying in any way. Death comes in mining holes, in towers of flame, in a gun to the head; it is the ruthless American West without Sam Peckinpah's Technicolor blood or John Wayne's words of wisdom.

More so than blood, though, there is oil, and a little bit of water; the three elements get intertwined and have so much weight put upon them that the Biblical symbolism can't be far behind. Early in the film baby H.W.'s forehead is marked with a thumbprint of oil, the way Christian babies are baptized. Later, when oil explodes out of the derrick and turns to flames, poor H.W. gets a literal baptism by fire that renders him deaf. And near the end of the film, in a last-ditch effort to win the trust of the town and in a power grab by Sunday, Daniel submits to a baptism at the Church of the Third Revelation. What does it all mean, the endlessly flowing oil and water and blood? Damned if I could figure it out, and same goes for my friend who actually attends Mass. The effect is powerful, though, a constant reminder that this is not a story about one man or about one place, but a parable that has been true for centuries, and says far more about us than we would like to admit.

I'm still not certain I like There Will Be Blood, but I know I was blown away by it. Daniel Day-Lewis, as is a given by now, is terrifying and masterful in a lead role that would have crushed any other actor. Dano handles himself well, though at times he seems both too inexperienced and too young in the part .(This is where I must add that Dano and I are exactly the same age, but in this film he barely looks old enough for a driver's license.) Most of all, though, Anderson has taken complete control over this film; the story may not always be clear, but Anderson's mastery is never in doubt. Working with Jonny Greenwood's haunting, occasionally florid score and Robert Elswit's stark cinematography, Anderson has created an apocalyptic vision--the Bible's third revelation�that is gripping, disturbing and brilliantly executed, without a trace of hipster irony. I winced, I gasped, I covered my eyes�and I can't wait to see it again.