“There Will Be Blood”




 

 



Directed by: Paul Thomas
Anderson
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis,
Dillon Freasier, Paul Dano,
Ciarán Hinds
MPAA rating: R (for adult lan
guage, bloodshed)
Running time: 157 minutes
Best suited for: drama, period
piece fans, Daniel Day-Lewis
fans
Least suited for: story and plot
lovers

Loosely based on Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel “Oil!”- the tale of an opportunistic oil tycoon and his altruistic son- Paul Thomas Anderson’s bleak, heavyhearted drama eliminates Sinclair’s young, socialistic protagonist completely, concentrating on the elder oilman’s soulless greed and lust for success.

By mostly ignoring family friction, director Paul Thomas Anderson cuts much of the potential tension from “There Will Be Blood,” a nonetheless ambitious and visually stunning film.

Daniel Day-Lewis plays Daniel Plainview, a man whose singular obsession in life is searching for oil. Indeed, Plainview is unmoved by loyalty or friendship or women or even by family ties. Plainview’s “son”- in reality the son of a friend killed in a mining accident- becomes something of a ruse, used as a sweetfaced inducement for potential investors, mostly local, working-class families. Plainview plays his “family man” persona to relax the townsfolk before bleeding a place dry and then moving on.

It’s not wealth that motivates Plainview, it’s the mere suggestion of wealth- the journey, not the reward. Yet the journey strikes me as a particularly lonely, almost unpleasant one.

When Plainfield’s son is injured in a mining accident, he sends the boy away with barely a second thought. We sense that Plainfield loves the boy but that he’s not certain how to express that particular emotion- or any other except an admitted loathing of humanity.

And it’s Plainfield’s empathetic void that, for me, is “Blood’s” major failing. Daniel Plainfield is a greedy S.O.B., yet how he came to be such a nasty soul and why he continues to push away those around him is never developed.

When the film opens, Plainfield is angry and bitter and we don’t know why. When the curtain closes, he is angry and bitter and we don’t know why. One almost feels the film’s title is an inducement to stick around as something’s bound to happen.

What little friction does percolate is largely the result of a feud between Plainfield and Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), a young, aspiring small-town preacher who seems as emotionally vacant as Plainfield. Watching these two verbally spar is oddly satisfying, but even Sunday’s relationship with Plainfield is strangely lacking in depth.

It’s not that an unhealthy obsession with God or money doesn’t translate well to the screen. Sure, one might dig for symbolic meaning in their adversarial encounters, but there’s nothing heartfelt in those battles: They seem to collide now and then, bouncing off and heading their separate ways.

Unfortunately, Anderson’s ambiguity in filling out his characters mirrors Daniel Plainview’s own contempt of humanity by leaving us mostly in the dark, rarely allowing us to glimpse the torment brooding deep inside.

What the film does provide, instead, is an intense look at the rough-hewn, dirty and potentially deadly world of these early oilmen. When one compares “Blood” with other cinematic renderings of oilriggers (“Boom Town,” “Thunder Bay,” “Giant” and “Hellfighters” come to mind), this one appears utterly realistic, without the pretense of romance or glory or noble ambition. For lovers of the period piece, the illusion seems nearly flawless.

Watching Daniel Day-Lewis in “There Will Be Blood,” I’m reminded of Brad Pitt’s fine performance in the recent “The Assassination of Jesse James.” Both actors are given little to do but grow surly and eventually kill people who perhaps didn’t deserve to die. In both films, a peek behind the facade might have added the necessary ingredients to know these men, to understand and perhaps empathize.

In “Blood” we’re not sure why we dislike Daniel Plainview (or perhaps why we don’t), and we leave the theater with a regretful notion of perhaps having only ventured skin deep.

 

 

 

 

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