There Will Be Blood

Daniel Day-Lewis is undoubtedly one of the finest actors alive today. In Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood,” he plays Daniel Plainview, a turn of the century oilman in frontier California. He is a misanthropic, Citizen Kane type, able to get rich by oil but unable to find anyone with whom to share his wealth. The whole world fails him, most notably his adopted son, who fails him by going deaf when an oil derrick explodes in his face. He hates just about everyone he meets, yet desperately looks for someone

It’s not easy to match the intensity and craft of an actor like Day-Lewis, but Paul Dano rises to the challenge as a preacher of the Church of the Third Revelation. It’s the kind of church where, if no one is miraculously healed and no demon speaks from the pits of hell, you might take your money back out of the offering plate. In Hollywood, 9 out of 10 preachers are sociopaths or sex addicts, but Dano manages to bring something fresh and interesting to the cliched role. As Eli Sunday, he handles the congregation like a magician handles a crowd; he knows that if the audience loves you, the trick doesn’t matter that much. Plainview, the oilman, totes his homely son around to convince communities he’s a family man, interesting in turning Oil Town into Our Town. He admires the preacher’s skills, and that admiration turns to envy, which turns to hatred. While Day-Lewis makes his character nearly opaque – who knows what madness lies behind those dark eyes? Paul Dano brings great nuance and transparency to the preacher. The best scenes in the movie are when the preacher and the oilman spar; Plainview wants the land, and the preacher wants his soul, not to save it so much as to toy with it and call it his own.

[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY3hP5KsNDM]

Aside from intense, on the money acting, I find little to recommend in “There Will Be Blood.” P.T. Anderson can be a great director, but here he seems more interested in auteur tricks than in effective filmmaking. The movie is quite often slow, filmed in long takes and with lots of silence. This is bearable when there is tension and anticipation, but there is a long stretch just after the first hour when it was difficult to keep caring. It relies heavily on its score, sometimes too heavily. Often the music is excellent, but sometimes it is overdramatic; a shame, as it is doing just what these actors are avoiding– going for unearned emotion. And the story is pretty standard, obsessive/excessive greed can’t buy me love stuff; it was better told in Citizen Kane.

But good acting continues to be my favorite reason to watch a movie. Dano and Day-Lewis make “There Will Be Blood” memorable, moving, and deeply entertaining. It is fun to watch a relative newcomer like Paul Dano cross swords with perhaps our best working actor. Daniel Day-Lewis as a way of raising the level of all actors around him, and “There Will Be Blood” is no exception.

Recommended

if you feel you really must see every Daniel Day-Lewis film.
if you’re a big fan of “Citizen Kane.”
if you feel you really must see every P.T. Anderson film. This one is unlike any other.

Not Recommended