We all get competitive. Whether it's GPAs, sports or the Academy Awards, there's always a fight to be won. And no movie character embodies this toil better than Daniel Plainview. A miner-turned-oil baron in early 20th century California, Plainview competes his way through P.T. Anderson's There Will Be Blood. With some dynamite and a shovel, the prospector (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) digs his way through the earth, people and religious ideals that surround him and ultimately into movie history as an unforgettable character.
The movie follows Plainview from his origins as a lonely miner to his entrepreneurial success as an oil tycoon. Along the way, he takes an orphaned son, H.W., as his own, and fights against one of California's early evangelical preachers, Eli Sunday. Sunday, played by Paul Dano, is Plainview's counterpart - vying for his own legacy and power - and therefore his nemesis. The film sets up an epic battle between Plainview and Sunday - essentially a fight between profits and prophets. Anderson tells a dark version of the American dream, one in which economic success and social mobility don't necessarily bring happiness.
To a certain extent, this movie is a vehicle for Day-Lewis, who embodies the character of Plainview to near perfection. Famous for staying in character even when the cameras stop rolling, Day-Lewis must have been a hellish presence on the set. With a performance that makes a cantankerous, self-obsessed man into a volcano of constrained fury, the experienced actor painstakingly shows off his potential. With large hands that constantly seem to be lathered in oil and a whispering voice that literally echoes across the theater, Day-Lewis's attention to detail is overwhelming. At numerous points, the actor drags the audience into his fiery, misanthropic pit of greed, piercing his low-light environments with eyes that seem to scream for violence.
Though the movie is driven by Day-Lewis, it is a creation of writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, who previously made the critically acclaimed Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love. With TWBB, however, Anderson has fashioned a film unlike his previous efforts. The two years it took him to adapt the screenplay from Upton Sinclair's novel Oil can be felt in the film's margins. The dialogue, character development and setting are simple yet loaded; each scene seems believable and symbolic - two rare qualities in today's major-studio productions. Anderson's choice to have Jonny Greenwood, the Radiohead guitarist, compose the sound track was essential. The music creates a dry aural language of wailing violins and syncopated drumming that enhances the oil-drenched visuals. Indeed, the film tells its gloomy story exquisitely until the last line of the last scene; Anderson can safely be called a master of cinematic punctuation. With There Will Be Blood, Anderson can set his shovel down and enjoy the praise that is sure to flow his way.
