Paul Thomas Anderson’s new opus belongs to a traditional genre: the tragic epic of greed and egotism. But there is a fervor, an excitement, to its unfolding, that can only be called original.
The narrative, inspired by Upton Sinclair’s “Oil!,” follows the rise and moral deterioration of Daniel Plainview, an oil prospector who follows an expensive tip to Southern California, where he finds vast amounts of oil underneath the earth.
Before Plainview can dig for the oil, however, he has to buy the land from a devout Sunday family, which he does, though not without furtively cheating them out of potential earnings. Young Eli Sunday, an evangelist of growing repute, realizes this, and so begins a festering antagonism between himself and Plainview.
Both of these men are grandiloquent showmen, each in their separate professions. They hope to rise to social and economic prominence by convincing those around them that their respective objectives are just and desirable. They rely more on charisma than logic, more on allure than sound theological reasoning. If they are rivals, their competition is not intellectual, but purely physical.
Daniel Day-Lewis, portraying Plainview, is at once calm and electric, controlled and maniacal. Paul Dano, as Eli, is just as stupendous, bashful one moment and grandiose the next. The interplay between these two actors escalates throughout the film, culminating in an ecstatic final sequence that will leave some giddy and others rather confused.
The film’s morose mood is handsomely provided, in part, by Jonny Greenwood’s enigmatic score. Subtle, almost subterranean, electronic distortions permeate each moment. It’s almost like a grumbling, as if the sick soul of the protagonist were gnashing its teeth in anger and frustration.
This unnerving musical structure accompanies the images, which flow in an unforced manner. The camera is simultaneously lightweight and bulky. It glides calmly through the landscapes, following the characters, observing them. And yet everything is paused, almost solemn. There is a weight ““ a heftiness ““ to the visuals, which demands that we linger and consider what we are watching.
“There Will Be Blood” has a meditative feel ““ it is like a thought process in cinematic form. The film deals with the mystery that Plainview singularly represents, as well as his relationship to his own historical context. Yet no real conclusions are provided for the audience. We must find those ourselves.
-Guido Pellegrini