There Will be Blood (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2h 38, 2008)

At the centre of There Will be Blood is a depiction of power, madness, faith, fatherhood and ambition, a man driven by his ambition onward, at the cost of everything else in his life from his adopted son to his relationship with the landowners, including the figure of Eli, the head of the local evangelical church, towards wealth and madness, a man forgoing faith for earthly gain. Through Daniel Day Lewis's towering performance as Daniel Plainview, a storming roaring performance that marches between comic, tragic, and disturbing as he goes from small-scale silver miner to millionaire oil baron, this loss of faith, this struggle between Daniel and Eli, There Will Be Blood becomes something primal, almost biblical, and unquestionably once of the single greatest films, featuring one of the single best performances of the twenty-first century so far.

And it is this performance that the film hinges on. There are, undeniably, echoes of cinema's great depictions of power, of men driven remote and power-hungry by their wealth; from Charles Foster Kane onwards. At the centre of There Will Be Blood is this character-study of a man that at times is monstrous-we see him attach Eli at one point, a violent tussle that sees the hapless preacher thrown into the oily soil and beaten, and his propensity for violence, for both verbal and physical attacks, bubbles as an undercurrent through the film, reaching a violent crescendo in the spectacular finale. We see him verbally abuse his competitors, with a reunion in a restaurant a vicious take-down of the hapless man tasked with buying him out. His command of the screen is absolute-at many points, Anderson and his cinematographer, Robert Elswit, hold upon Day-Lewis. When confronted by the possibility that his right hand man and brother may not be who he says he is, his expression changes slowly imperceptibly, as the realisation hits home, whilst, confronted by the destruction of his test derrick, and weeks of setback, his face is lit only by fire, oil against the darkness.

But it is his ability to manipulate people, even as he openly loathes them, particularly the evangelical preacher Eli, that marks him apart-with his adopted son, HW as a practical prop, an attempt to pass himself off as a family man, and his induction into Eli's church, another necessary addition to his life in order to get what he wants, and it is his shedding of these in the pursuit of ever more power and ever more control that turns Plainview slowly into a monstrous figure, driven ever on only by the pursuit of more, at the cost of anything else, including other people succeeding. There are several scenes in which this comes to the surface, and in particular how Plainview essentially cons those around into him supporting his plans. Nowhere is this more effective than in the iconic "I'm an oil-man" speech, in which Plainview essentially sells his version of the American dream to the people he is essentially about to swindle, of the riches, economic and otherwise that Little Boston can enjoy, of the family life that he himself enjoys with HW, and overall, the idea that he and his oil may be able to not only save but help the town.

Plainview is certainly, without a doubt, the single best performance of Day-Lewis's lengthy career, from the distinctive, heavily researched voice to his meticulous appearance that begins to fall apart towards the finale, a dishevelled unshaved alcoholic, to the internalised sense to the character, brought spectacularly to life by Day-Lewis's method style, an intense and often frightening performance. But it is through Plainview's relationship with those around him that the film's true power is found, and his relationships with HW and Eli essentially echoes his relationship with power and faith.
HW (played by Dillon Freasier) is not only the surrogate son of Plainview, but his apparent business partner-however; it becomes increasingly obvious that the relationship with HW is far more complex.

There is, undeniably the relationship between father and son, despite this being essentially a partnership of convenience, and the emotional bond is clear not only in the scenes where father and son share quiet moments together, but after HW loses his hearing in a gas explosion, Plainview, stained in oil, cradles his son, clearly devastated. This relationship quickly sours, so that by the time the film arrives at its denouement in the late 1920s, he has disowned him, and their confrontation in the darkness of Plainview's manor, through his son's interpreter, is harrowing, the cruelty of a man unable to deal with a competitor, attacking his son for being deaf, mocking his interpreter, and utterly and irrecoverably destroying his link with his surrogate child.

It is the mansion that essentially marks the end of his relationship with Eli as well, that essentially marks the end of the often brutal relationship between oil man and preacher. At its epicentre, at the very centre of There Will Be Blood is this relationship between unstoppable power, and immovable faith, personified in these two men. Eli is the sole voice of concern at the Sunday family table when Plainview and his son arrive; Eli is passed over when Plainview opens his derrick to bless it, which leads to the death of a worker and the deafening of HW. Far from being penitent, Plainview promptly, and brutally, attacks Eli, only for the preacher to get the upper hand following the death of Plainview's supposed brother.

It is here where Paul Dano captures what Eli represents perfectly-we have already seen him as a foil to Plainview, his sermons as essentially another con-trick to make money-there's a curious parallel in both of these men, in their towering fire-and-brimstone diction, the positively biblical cadence. It is in their confrontations against each other, bristling with violence from both men that the film is at its strongest. Eli humiliates Plainview for abandoning HW, punishes him for only caring about his oil and his ambition, and Daniel's panic, his moment of realisation, is captured perfectly in an uncomfortable close-up, as his shock and fear take control-it is one of the few times that we see Daniel bested, and the only time in the film that the mask of artifice slips, and he seems truly overcome by his emotions.

But if this is Daniel's Damascus moment, a sequence wherein he finally realises he is a sinner, then it is the film's denouement, the tense, nervy, and-unquestionably-funny culmination to this struggle. It is the culmination of every narrative thread brought together and cut perfectly, from Daniel's power to his lack of faith, lack of family, and lack of rivals. If the baptism is a humiliation then the bowling alley scene is his revenge, brutally enacted on the hapless Eli, verbally, physically and emotionally, first mocking the preacher and making him renounce his faith in return for his investment, then gleefully announcing, in the film's most famous and memetically immortal lines, that the land has been drunk dry of oil, Eli's last hope is worthless, and that, with a great finality, Daniel Plainview has won.

Yet, for all its comedic putdown of the film's antagonist, it is the moment where Daniel Plainview becomes the monster, shorn of faith, family, his power leaving him a bored and almost wretched alcoholic in the darkened hulk of the manor his money built. By the end of the film, like the earth that its protagonist has drunk dry, drained of all of its oil, Daniel Plainview is a drained man, his purpose gone, everything shorn away or sucked out of him by his ambition. The final shot, before Johnny Greenwood's score, that feels like everything from musical manifestation of the menace underneath the skin of its oil man, to jittering panic, to arguably one of the best cues of modern cinema, strikes up once more is Plainview, alone. He sits, adrift amongst the garbage of his existence, in the bowels of his mansion, the body of Eli to his left, vanquished. He turns to his servant, off camera, and almost dismissively declares "I'm finished". Cut to black. Roll titles.

There Will Be Blood is a masterpiece. It cannot be said any other way. There are few films like it in the cinematic canon of this century so far, a towering portrait of power, ruthless ambition, and those lives it destroys in the process, with an equally masterful performance by Daniel Day Lewis breathing life into one of cinema's greatest, if flawed characters, whilst those around him, those he competes against and grinds into the oil-soaked soil, are equally compellingly brought to life. There Will Be Blood, in its tale of fire and oil and California earth and wealth and power and faith, is the story of the life of Daniel Plainview, his relationships, his goals and his adversities, wrought with biblical, primal overtones, and a singular bloody-mindedness.

Rating: Must See (Personal Recommendation)