There Will Be Blood

What happens when you pair the genius of Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love) and the genius of Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York, My Left Foot)? You get an epically beautiful movie-going experience.

Day-Lewis plays Daniel Plainview, a Texas oil man who starts his business around the turn of the century. After working hard for years and gaining a reputation as a great entrepreneur, Plainview receives a strange visitor, Paul Sunday. Sunday tells him of his father's ranch, and how there is oil coming up from the ground. Plainview is interested, but keeps his cards close to his chest. He visits, with his business partner/son H.W. and takes a look. Eventually Plainview ends up with the ranch and turns the small town of Little Boston into an oil money-maker. Now in this town there is a young, ambitious preacher named Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), brother of the man who led Plainview to the town in the first place. Eli has plans for his town as well, which include "saving" everyone who has come to Little Boston because of the oil, especially Plainview.

The film is very similar to two other American classics which tell of the rise and fall of great men, Citizen Kane and The Godfather. I know, that is a bold statement, but this film may very well deserve to be in that company. We start out liking Plainview. He is hard-working, which is seen by the first 15 minutes of the film (Plainview working by himself with no dialogue, beautiful). He is a master businessman, epitomizing the perfect capitalist. He makes himself rich instead of inheriting it all. There are parallels here with such great American business men as Rockefeller and Carnegie. Plainview is a good father; he is raising his son on his own and doing a pretty good job of it. I found myself caring deeply for this stoic, straightforward man. Yet by the end of the film I found myself hating him. How did we get there? We slowly find out who Plainview is and what his motivations are. There is a conversation near the middle of the film that reveals everything about Plainview. He says that he hates most people because he has a competition in him that makes him want everyone else around him to fail (even the ones he loves). He doesn't like to explain himself either; Plainview wants to be completely self-sufficient. This is a deeply flawed man. His flaws are not obvious, like so many villains in film history. This is a man whose motivations are his downfall. There is a great deal going on inside his head all the time, and we are privy to it only when he lets us in. A great character contains many layers, and Daniel Plainview is about as deep a character as it is possible to meet in two and a half hours.

Plainview's nemesis in many ways is Eli Sunday. Sunday's life parallels Plainview's. He wants to be great, to be rich, to be powerful as well. But instead of using oil, Sunday uses God. Sunday connives to get money for his church, manipulates to get the main road in the town to lead directly to the church, and works very hard to get Plainview to confess his sins in front of everyone and to repent and seek forgiveness from God. This last scene especially stuck out to me because it is a great example of using God for your own purposes, as a power play. It was very clear to me that Sunday did not care about Plainview's soul, he just wanted power over Plainview. The spiritual realm was the only arena in which Sunday had one hand up on him. I won't spoil the ending, but there is one scene in which Sunday comes face to face with who he is and what his motivations have been as well. Has he truly been a man of God, or was he just using religion for his own selfish purposes? At one point Sunday says that he would reach for God's hand in this hard time, but he cannot see it. How do we reach for an invisible God? For an exploration of this question, check out Philip Yancey's book Reaching for the Invisible God.

Religion and the American Dream are constantly in conflict in There Will Be Blood, yet many times they are running parallel courses. A child is marked with oil on the forehead, much like a baptism, and this is a powerful image. The central scene of the film takes place during an accident at an oil derrick. Plainview's son H.W. is knocked to the ground by the spewing oil and struck deaf. Plainview is panic-stricken and does everything he can for the boy. But while this is happening the derrick catches on fire. Plainview leaves his son to go take care of his business. Everyone around is frustrated and dejected, but Plainview is excited. They have struck it rich. He is torn between his son and his riches, but clearly chooses the latter in the end. His pursuit of his riches is merely the face of his greatest desire, power. And this desire for power is in the preacher as well. It seems on the surface that religion should stand at odds to this ruggedly individualist capitalism, but Anderson shows that sometimes they are one in the same. Yet we must realize that true religion is not a selfish power grab, but in fact the opposite.

A great filmmaker does not tell you, he shows you. This is what Paul Thomas Anderson does in There Will Be Blood. The film is based off of the Upton Sinclair novel Oil!, but Anderson adapted it for the screen and took the title from Exodus (which makes sense considering the strange events of Anderson's masterpiece Magnolia). As with American Gangster, this film examines the America Dream in great detail. It also delves into the heart and motivations of two men who are eerily similar. The cinematography is breathtaking. The use of music in the film is pitch-perfect and eery. The story builds to a stunning crescendo. The film was an absolute pleasure to behold. Day-Lewis has crafted an absolutely perfect performance that should win him an Oscar. Anderson has made an epic American film which is truly worth of being called a masterpiece. This is the film I have been waiting for all year. There Will Be Blood was one of those special movie-going experiences that I will not soon forget.