Film Review - There Will Be Blood

In the first scenes of Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood a solo prospector laboriously chipping away while the score buzzes in your ears almost like the landscape might if you were there. When the prospector falls down the mine shaft breaking his leg, it’s almost a testament to his desire for fortune when he hauls himself slowly back up to the world.

Later, we see the prospector Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), a smooth talking, self proclaimed ‘oil man’, has worked his way to success, toting his young son around and canvassing himself as a family man, as he tenders for mining leases in small townships until one day, after a tip off, he sets his sites on Little Boston.

Plainview is a misanthropist: “There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking” he says, and when he meets Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), he makes no exception. Plainview wants no one to succeed, and when Sunday mirrors Plainview’s opportunistic behaviour, things escalate.

Margaret Pomerance coined this as a film about American greed, but in my opinion, There Will Be Blood is more about a struggle for power, a struggle to be above other men.
This film is up for 8 Oscar Nominations, including best actor for Day-Lewis. The character of Daniel Plainview is so wonderfully complex and well portrayed; the dynamics between director and actor are almost too good to be true.

There Will Be Blood opened 9th February and is playing at all good cinemas in Melbourne.

Related links: IMDB Entry for There Will Be Blood