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There
Will Be Blood
Genre: Drama
Rated: R
Directed
by: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Daniel
Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Dillon Freasier, Ciarán
Hinds,
Kevin J. O’Connor
Released by: Paramount Vantage Pictures
In
Short: A tour-de-force performance by Daniel
Day-Lewis and some fascinating visuals still
cannot make this tale of a turn-of-the-last-century
oilman’s descent into madness more than
a long slog through the muck. |
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Chewing
the Scenery
Obsession, Religion, and Evil Collide in California
by Jenny Peters
"There
Will Be Blood" is director Paul
Thomas Anderson's ("Boogie Nights,""Magnolia")
first attempt at an epic, as he brings Upton Sinclair's
1927 novel, Oil!, to the big screen. A very
loose adaptation of that story of an oilman and his
young son, Anderson's film shifts the setting
from 1920s California to the earlier 1900s, removes
the socialist themes that are central to the novel
and focuses on Daniel Plainview, the father, whose
obsession with grasping wealth and power overwhelms
his reason and humanity.
As
played by consummate actor Daniel Day-Lewis, Plainview
is a relentless prospector, first looking for silver,
then oil. He's a man who will stop at nothing to
make the deals he needs to gain access to the sere
California hills where plentiful oil is hidden, a
loner whose only companion is his obedient young
son H. W. (Dillon Freasier). When
Plainview and his crews descend on a small goat farm
and discover abundant oil there, his effect on the
surrounding community of Little Boston is almost cataclysmic,
especially when it comes to a Holy Roller preacher
(Paul Dano), who insists that the oilman recognize
that God is key to his successes.
Their inevitable
religious clashes are at the center of this overlong film that allows both men
to chew the scenery, especially Day-Lewis. His squinty performance as a hatred-filled
man who slowly, steadily descends into drunken madness is certainly a sight to
behold. And Dano (you know him as the silent son in "Little
Miss Sunshine")
gives as good as he gets, with a weirdly impassioned take on a young man obsessed
with religion and power.
The film's
soundtrack, by Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead fame, and cinematography (Robert
Elswit) are both impressive, but as this film goes on and on and on, with its
inevitable ending telegraphed long before it actually comes to pass, it becomes
extremely hard to care any longer. The lead character is so oppressively nasty,
the landscape so relentlessly bleak and the endless digging, drilling and gushing
so repetitive, that by the time the almost three-hour epic finally cuts to
black, the overwhelming feeling is one of relief that the thing is finally over. 
PNJ010908 |
(Updated
01/11/08 NJ) |
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