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There Will Be Blood belongs to two people: director Paul Thomas Anderson and star Daniel Day-Lewis. Anderson - not to be confused with Wes Anderson, or, heaven forbid, Paul W.S. Anderson - has, with only a handful of highly individual films, made a sizeable impact. In particular the sprawling ensemble drama Magnolia, in which we saw an entirely new side of Tom Cruise ("Respect the cock!"), made waves on its release in 1999. His last film was the frankly odd Punch Drunk Love, an offbeat Adam Sandler vehicle. The serious subject matter of There Will Be Blood has inevitably led to critics saying that he has "matured" as a filmmaker, whatever that means, and while certainly this is a more realistic and gritty film than Anderson has made before, it's still very much the work of a unique directorial voice. Take the first fifteen minutes, for example - barely a word of dialogue is spoken as we see Day-Lewis' Daniel Plainview, a silver prospector, inadvertently strike oil. Just in this extended montage several years pass, and it's captivating in its originality.
This sequence gives us the first glimpse of Day-Lewis' powerhouse performance, but it's not until we finally hear him speak that the leading man really starts to assert himself. At first, mainly due to the actor's commanding presence, Plainview comes across as surprisingly endearing despite his cutthroat business tactics. He is accompanied by his adopted son H.W. (played with consummate skill by the young Dillon Freasier), with whom he has a relationship that serves to soften the character's hard edges. The first half of this 158-minute opus is gripping, as Plainview tightens his grip on the small desert community near to where he finds the oil deposits. Most of the locals are happy with Plainview's industry as he brings jobs and money to the area, but one man remains sceptical, the evangelical priest Eli Sunday, the son of the man from whom Plainview bought the land in the first place. Sunday, played by the unlikely but excellent Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine's mute teen), basically serves as the antagonist for the film, acting as a counterpoint to Plainview's slowly worsening moral compass. Yet nothing is simple in There Will Be Blood, and Sunday's motivations soon seem less than noble themselves.
There Will Be Blood's avoidance of convention is both a selling point and something of a hindrance. There's nothing resembling a typical three-act structure which makes it refreshingly unpredictable, but it also means that the second half of the picture gradually starts to feel increasingly aimless. The story (based on Upton Sinclair's novel Oil!) does not seem to lend itself to cinema, and despite numerous extraordinary individual moments, the measured pace eventually starts to drag. Everything reaches a head in an volatile final scene that has proven to be contentious, but the main problem is that by the end of the film, both of the major characters are so utterly unlikeable that the ultimate outcome fails to stir any emotions at all other than apathy. The Citizen Kane comparisons that reviews have made are unsurprising, as both films focus on the rise and fall of a ruthless business tycoon, and both are similarly difficult to endure. There Will Be Blood is a directing and acting showcase, but it's emotionally as barren as the desert landscape.
The summary
Verging on brilliant at times, There Will Be Blood is nevertheless a cold and unfulfilling saga.
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