Review: There Will Be Blood
WELL BEING
Daniel Day-Lewis scorches the screen as an oil baron in a staggeringly intense drama.
APR 18, 2008 - EVER SINCE THE PRODIGIOUSLY GIFTED PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON announced in Entertainment Weekly that he’d made a horror movie in There Will Be Blood, several reasons have been tossed about as to why The Shining must have been an obvious progenitor. Both films revolve around borderline-mad lead characters – Jack Nicholson there, Daniel Day-Lewis here – that go completely bonkers by the end, both films feature eerily discombobulating scores, the protagonists of both films have young sons that they grow increasingly distanced from, and so on. But there’s a far more obvious sign – if you care to look for it, if you care to hear it – right at the beginning, when a thousand out-of-sync violins bubble up and burst over to reveal the first visual of the film: a landscape. It appears to be just a shot of the earth and the hills beyond, but the ominousness of these strings could be hinting at the oil lying underneath – the oil that bubbles up and bursts over from stygian depths in the mine that Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) is prospecting for silver.
You could make a fairly airtight case that this oil is to There Will Be Blood what The Overlook Hotel was to The Shining – something that takes possession of the protagonist, affecting his every action, responsible for his every situation. It’s just before striking this lode of oil that Plainview slips in the mine and breaks his leg, ending up with a permanent limp. It’s this oil that results in Plainview becoming a surrogate father to an infant (called H.W., and played as a boy by the remarkable Dillon Freasier), having claimed the life of the real father when drilling equipment fell on him. It’s this oil that takes away H.W.’s hearing, when the boy comes too close to an erupting gusher. (This brilliant sequence is scored to an ear-splittingly primal percussion, and it’s a stunning contrast that H.W. has lost his hearing while it’s our hearing, primarily, that shapes our response to what unfolds.) And it’s this oil – the relentless quest for it – that claims Plainview’s mind, and finally, his soul.
So, yes, you could pull your film-studies hat firmly around your ears and point out any number of reasons for There Will Be Blood having descended from The Shining. But unlike Kubrick’s horror epic, Anderson’s film – which is loosely adapted from Upton Sinclair’s novel, Oil!, and which charts Plainview’s ascent from ordinary miner to oil baron, from 1898 through 1927 – is also a character study, and not just in the way that Plainview displays an unexpected tenderness towards children or that he can bring himself to open up only to his brother (a superbly self-effacing Kevin J. O’Connor). This is a study of two characters, really – Plainview and his faith-healer nemesis Eli Sunday (Paul Dano, who also plays Eli’s twin, Paul). What’s at stake here is Plainview and Eli, Plainview versus Eli: a loner-misanthrope versus a compassionate tender of his flock, an overpowering force of nature versus a wheedling insinuator, a capitalist versus a church-man. And yet, by the end, we see that Plainview and Eli may not be all that different. It’s just that Eli’s currency is faith; he’s just a capitalist of a different kind.
And Anderson milks this antagonism for all its worth. In one of many, many great scenes, after concluding a deal with Eli to dig for oil on his ranch, Plainview proffers a hand to seal the verbal agreement. But as Eli clasps the extended limb in a reverential gesture and bows his head and begins to pray, a visibly discomfited Plainview pulls away. This early moment sets up what will be a lifelong battle of wills, and their clashes are enormously entertaining. One of the biggest surprises of There Will Be Blood is how flat-out funny it is. Whether it’s Eli’s outrageous exorcism rituals (that leave us in no doubt that he’s just as unhinged as Plainview is), or the confrontation where Plainview buries a kicking-and-screaming Eli’s face in the mud, or the controversial final scene that delivers on the title’s promise (there is blood), Anderson orchestrates such a masterful mood of horror-comedy – maybe that’s what he was really going for – that you’re not sure if the appropriate response is to cover your eyes or clutch your sides.
And as always, Anderson lets his love for actors – for acting – shape a large portion of his film, writing for Eli and Plainview a show-stopping series of speeches. If nothing else, this is what There Will Be Blood will be remembered for: the “I do my own drilling” speech; the “I’ve built up my hatreds over the years, little by little” speech; the “I’ve abandoned my child, I’ve abandoned my boy” speech; the “bastard from a basket” speech; the “I am a false prophet” speech; and most memorably, the “If you have a milkshake” speech. Dano is extraordinary – his blank-cherub looks are almost comically at odds with his character and demeanour – but this is a Day-Lewis show all the way. As larger-than-life performances built around larger-than-life characters go, this portrayal is possibly unmatched in its scenery-chewing relish. But there’s so much intensity invested in every gesture big or little – when he licks his thumb pad before beginning to count out currency notes, when he contorts his face in rage (his features literally appear to realign themselves), when he affects a curious stiffness in his stance while wordlessly commanding his son to stop hitting him, when he stifles a sob after stumbling on a childhood photograph – that Day-Lewis doesn’t come off as a late-Pacino-style surface showboater. Like the oil his character lusts after, it all seems to come from someplace deep within.
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