“There Will Be Blood,” the latest from Hollywood’s youngest auteur, Paul Thomas Anderson, presents the costly rise of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) among the bloody grounds of America’s turn of the century oil boom. Set in Southern California (shot outside Marfa, Texas), we meet Daniel as a mediocre but determined silver miner. Upon a profitable discovery, he sets himself towards his millions via a new path: oil. Claiming a killed worker’s son as his own, Daniel finds success in the familial image and soon sets his sights upon the desolate settlement of Little Boston. Confronting awed town members, an unknown half-brother, and a fire-and-brimstone healer, Daniel climbs ever upward on the geyser of his own greed at the cost of many lives.
A sprawled portrait seeping with hurt, drive and beauty, “Blood” rolls over an audience like an epic tidal wave. The stunning photography of cinematographer Robert Elswit tells the story in frighteningly compelling frames. Using authentic lenses from the 1900s retrofitted for today’s cameras, Anderson and Elswit were able to render a beautiful turn of the century tale using as little digital technology as possible, offering the audience a naturally unsaturated experience. Even the burning of Little Boston’s first well, the film’s longest sequence, used only a few frames of computer graphics, as the well initially catches ablaze. The film’s score, by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, comes at the audience like a dark fog, brooding about the theater in an upsetting and ghastly current. The film shines with the brilliance of a number of the world’s most talented artists at their very best.
Day-Lewis’s representation of the blood-thirsty monomaniac is the best performance in a decade. His loathing for mankind isn’t just some lines committed to memory, it’s in his blood on the screen. His performance of an exorcism and his cringes as he receives a beating are both the stuff of film-performance gold. Every moment of this film is truthful yet stylized, approaching an on-screen perfection not often seen.
This film is absolutely one to see, preferably upon the big screen. Fans of “Magnolia,” “Boogie Nights” and “Punch Drunk Love” should step up because Anderson does not fail to deliver. This is why film exists: to strive to tell stories as expertly as this.
None other than Barack Obama approved heartily of the film.
“’There Will be Blood’ is probably some of the best cinema I’ve seen in a long time,” he said. “I really think that such tales of power, redemption and loss are such touching, tragic examples of hubris in man. He, Anderson, really used the form itself to turn the Promethean myth into something distinctly American. Truly great filmmaking, I’d say.” And there you have it: this film is a great one.
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