There Will Be Blood

Review by Anthony Morris

Whatever you thought writer / director Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Punchdrunk Love) was going to do next, there's a pretty good chance it wasn't this.

An epic character study worthy of comparison to Citizen Kane, this sparse, bleak, and totally enthralling film has seemingly come out of nowhere (at least, Anderson's never made anything like it) to be an early front-runner for film of the year. Not that it'd have half it's power without an riveting performance from Daniel Day-Lewis as the film's central - in many ways, only - character.

Daniel Plainview (who we meet in a fifteen minute, near-wordless sequence) single-handedly works a silver mine in the scrub of the turn-of-the-century American south west. A chance oil strike makes his fortune, the accidental death of a co-worker gives him an adoptive son, and word of a farm where oil bubbles out of the ground leads him to the Californian town of New Boston.

His operation brings prosperity to the town even as it hands over its destiny to him - a prosperity that local evangelical preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) figures his church deserves a slice of. Battling Eli, nature, fate, and his own bitter nature, Plainview is a monster and all-too-human, given ferocious life by Day-Lewis in every scene of this towering achievement. 

An amazing, almost horror-movie soundtrack (from Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood) only adds to this film's ominous, driving tone. 

While There Will Be Blood certainly has its flaws (the focus on Plainview tends to shut out the supporting cast, while the final scene is both completely appropriate and a step too far), what truly classic work - and this easily qualifies - doesn't?

4.5 out of 5

There Will Be Blood
Australian release: 9th February, 2008
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Kevin J. O'Connor, Ciarán Hinds
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
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