There Will Be Blood

(dir: Paul Thomas Anderson)

Dec. 27, 2007

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, people who knew knew, but it hadn't yet become the accepted wisdom that the Golden Age of American filmmaking was the 1970s. Sure, everybody recognized that a lot of superb pictures were released by the studios back then. But it wasn't until Peter Biskind's much-needed tome, “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,” was published in 1999 that the average movie-goer began to recognize that something significant was happening in the film industry during the Me Decade.

In a nutshell, the 1970s were a time when immensely talented filmmakers were allowed to raise their voices - as opposed to the voice of Coca-Cola or Time-Warner or New and Improved Fab with Borax - and say whatever they pleased about America, even if it implicated the people in the audience. Pussy-footing was kept to a bare minimum.

Films like "The Godfather," "Deliverance," "The Last Detail," "Dog Day Afternoon," "Chinatown," and "Taxi Driver," weren't just entertaining, although they're all uniquely entrancing viewing experiences. The reason these pictures, and many others from the decade, landed such a long-lasting blow is that we recognize something about the person behind the camera when we watch them. You definitely hear a voice during these movies, and you respond because the voice often sounds a lot like your own, even when it's hard to accept what it’s saying. Nowadays, people figure if a film moves like greased bat-shit and pounds on their heads for two straight hours, it must be good. The idea that you would actually bring something to the table as an audience member, and make that all-important connection with the director, is virtually moot.

Think about it. Does anyone even know who directed "I Am Legend?" Unless you’re a studio executive, does it even fucking matter?

                                                ***

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It very much matters that the feverishly nihilistic new film, "There Will Be Blood," was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. From its bravura opening to its bizarre, Kubrickian finale, every frame of this remarkable picture is informed by Anderson's burning intelligence. Watching "There Will Be Blood" is an often exhilarating experience that can't be discarded like an old newspaper the moment you leave the theater. Anderson and his half-crazed, laser-focused star, Daniel Day-Lewis, are ready to rumble, and they do it with a ferocity that’s rarely seen in modern American movies. This thing is so intense it makes you dizzy.

Loosely based on an Upton Sinclair novel called "Oil," "There Will Be Blood" is a grim epic that follows the rise of corporate viciousness in the American experiment, and it doesn't look all that different from the corporate viciousness that currently resides in our glass skylines. Anderson follows the spiritually doomed trajectory of a lonely silver miner named Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis), as he amasses land and drills down to the oil that eventually makes him a very rich, very bitter man.

Plainview has the can-do demeanor of a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, coupled with the single-minded drive of a hungry pit bull. This man will stop at nothing to build his fortune, and he has no use for anyone who isn't willing to help him do it. As Daniel himself puts it, in a rare (albeit drunken) moment of self-reflection: "I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed." Before it's all over, that sense of antagonism will even be extended to the Almighty, or, at the very least, toward those who are foolish enough to actually believe in Him.

During a dialogue-free, beautifully crafted 20-minute prologue that traces the beginnings of Daniel's back-breaking ascent, we see the character "adopt" the baby son of a worker who gets killed in an oil well accident. Even though he displays a stern tenderness toward the child, it soon becomes apparent that Daniel actually intends to use him as more of a prop than anything else. The infant stands in for the sense of humanity that Daniel doesn’t actually possess. When the boy, who is named H.W. (now played by Dillon Freasier), reaches the age of 11, Daniel takes to introducing him as his "son and business partner." Then he lets fly with velvet-toned monologues about God and family that are guaranteed to woo the rubes he’s trying to swindle.

Day-Lewis speaks in sales-pitches, of one stripe or another, throughout the movie. Virtually every word that comes out of Daniel's mouth is something that he knows the person he’s speaking to wants to hear, and he says it with such authority, most are compelled to believe him. But Daniel's not the only one playing that game in the oil-rich village of Little Boston, where he intends to bleed the land dry. And that's where Anderson ups the thematic ante.

Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) is a young, charismatic preacher who’s competing with Daniel for the hearts and minds of the townspeople. Daniel, as you might imagine, has no time for a man who claims to cure illnesses through histrionic prayer. Eli's attempted collection of $5,000 that Daniel has promised the preacher’s rickety church turns into a textbook bitch-slap from Daniel, and is one of the more gut-wrenching moments in the film. Daniel obviously sees a lot of himself in Eli – both men are selling a product that purports to make everyone rich, but really just lines their own pockets and feeds their own egos – and he despises him for it.

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Great scenes abound. One tragic sequence, during which Daniel's drill finally hits pay-dirt and a derrick goes up in flames, is orchestrated with the Biblical fury of the plague of locusts in "Days of Heaven." There's also an amazing moment when Daniel slips into the back of Eli's church and watches the preacher bring the house down with a show of overflowing hallelujah that's simultaneously hilarious and beyond creepy.

Several confrontations between Dano and Day-Lewis pulsate with sick black humor. Top honors go to a would-be baptism that unfolds like a fire-and-brimstone S&M session being overseen by Daffy Duck. It's at moments like this that Anderson is utterly on his own wave length. He has so many different currents flowing through his dialogue, the air crackles with electricity. In fact, many taut scenes contain little more than Daniel remorselessly explaining what he's going to do, and how he intends to do it. Day-Lewis, sounding for all the world like the reincarnation of John Huston, generates goose bumps simply by squinting an eye at the right time.

Anderson has always been obsessed with how people manufacture families, even when there are no blood ties to speak of. Think of Burt Reynolds and his brood of grasping, coke-head porn stars in "Boogie Nights." In "There Will Be Blood," the tussle between the church and capitalism is hung from the latticework of familial treachery. Fathers betray sons, sons betray fathers, would-be brothers turn out to be con men, and the oil just keeps on gushing. As rich as he is, the love of another person is a luxury Daniel can’t afford. But that’s just one of his tragic flaws.

Day-Lewis and Dano are remarkable – both of them are all but guaranteed Oscar nominations, and Day-Lewis seems a shoo-in to win again. As I was watching the film, I kept being reminded of the towering achievements of actors like Nicholson, De Niro, and Pacino...whose best work was formed in the blast furnace of the 1970s. Day-Lewis seems absolutely possessed by a spirit not his own. He's so quietly terrifying, you wonder how long it took him to recover from the performance. If, in fact, he ever has. It’s no wonder he doesn't work all that often.

This is a great movie, one of the true benchmarks of the current decade. Don’t miss the opportunity to see it on a big screen. Once in a while, it seems, they still make them like they used to.


There’s profanity, violence, and an overriding disdain for human beings in "There Will Be Blood," but they inform a sharply-written character who’s not trying to win a popularity contest. Take note of the dazzling score by Jonny Greenwood, the mastermind behind the much-heralded experimental rock group, Radiohead. It alternates between relatively conventional orchestrations and atonal hums that sound like electric ants scuttling over a corpse. Truly inspired work. Rate R. 158 riveting minutes.

Paul Tatara

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