There Will Be Blood

Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is an oilman who, with his son H.W., has come to Little Boston in the early 20th Century to exploit its untapped oil. There he finds himself in conflict with the budding preacher Eli Sunday, and the story that unfolds becomes increasingly darker and more burlesque as the two face off.

"There Will Be Blood" --


aside from being the ad slogan for "Saw II" -- is director Paul Thomas Anderson's epic about the American experience and the forces -- capitalism, entrepreneurial ingenuity, and religion -- that have shaped it.

Much of this movie reminded me of "The New World," another American historical epic told in part by the use of iconic images. One example is in the beginning sequence, with the discordant strings, where Plainview holds up his hand, covered with oil, for others to see, reminiscent of a preacher testifying, signaling a coming conflict with religion. The film also features several parallel sequences that frame the narrative. Plainview in the beginning and the end finds himself in two very different ditches. Sunday makes Plainview speak to the congregation and say what a sinner he's been, knowing full well Plainview doesn't believe it. And later in the film, Sunday gets his comeuppance.

The main conflict in the story is between the oilman and the preacher. Plainview is self-aware. He knows exactly what he's selling and how to sell it, and he knows what he wants. And when he's telling people of all the benefits he'll bring to their community when they let him use their land, we the viewers know -- because Day-Lewis conveys it in his portrayal -- that Plainview is not making promises he plans to keep, but is merely telling the people what they want to hear.

But I get no sense that Eli Sunday's character knows what he really is. He comes across more like a nutter than a businessman who is selling religion. The dialogue was written so that the actor playing Sunday might have tried to convey this self-awareness -- I'm thinking of where he asks Plainview to introduce him at the inaugural well blessing, where he confronts his dad about how stupid the deal they made was, and where he's baptizing Plainview. But Paul Dano doesn't really convey that he knows he's a self-promoting fraud who, deep down, is not too dissimilar from Plainview. Instead, I see him as sincere, a little callow, and a weakling. To the extent this lack of self-awareness was on purpose, I think it was a mistake, as the movie would have been a lot more interesting to have that similarity between Sunday and Plainview. To the extent Anderson and Dano meant to have Sunday be self-aware, I don't think they succeeded.

I said in a previous post that I didn't see a major career for Paul Dano, and I stand by that statement. To be fair, very few people could have acted opposite Day-Lewis in this movie and succeeded. But regardless of that, to have him in conflict with Day-Lewis is no conflict; Sunday is clearly outmatched, and there's never any question that Plainview will roll right over him. That may be the point, but I would have liked it if it was more of a fair fight. But of course, then you'd have to find an actor that could go toe-to-toe with Day-Lewis, and that's an awfully short list. Possibly Gael Garcia Bernal would have worked. He's shown he can convey the fraud ("Bad Education"), the poor man with a subtle, wounded pride ("Y Tu Mama Tambien"), and the sincere believer ("The Motorcycle Diaries"). And to top it off, he's handsome with seductive eyes; it'd be more believable that people would follow him than a scrawny sapling like Dano.

The ending -- "I'm finished" -- turns the previous 2 and a half hours into a joke, the punch line of which is the name of the movie. But I dig it. Unlike the Coen brothers in "No Country for Old Men," Anderson knows how to end a movie. The last line is also as pregnant with meaning as that in "Bad Education." And the final confrontation between Plainview and Sunday is great. It's almost too outlandish and over-the-top, but it's clear that the fight's been building up the whole movie, so when all their pent-up emotions come out, it's believable because the film has earned it.