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The opening 20 minutes are mesmerising with no dialogue and only Jonny Greenwood’s overpowering musical score to introduce Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis). This lack of speech shows Daniel as an isolated man, fanatically and unceasingly digging in 1898 for his fortune. Plainview, who becomes a successful oil tycoon by 1913, is an “oil man”: it is his lifeblood and has consumed him. The film follows this inherently evil but intriguing man, a self proclaimed misanthrope, as he exploits (with the use of his adopted son H.W.) concepts like family, community, and social progress to buy land from farmers in order to drill the land.
This is what brings him to Little Boston. Shot in Marfa, Texas where the film proves to be visually, as well as psychologically, stunning. Lush widescreen shots of the bright and barren countryside to contrast the dimly-lit close ups of the actors’ faces. This is also where we meet Plainview’s competitor and enemy who he obsesses over defeating, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) the religious fanatic and preacher of spurious evangelism. As Plainview is only interested in the drilling of the region’s oil, Eli perfectly represents how any person may become an enemy of Plainview’s simply by interfering with his path to glory. Dano is superb, however, in making Eli a formidable opponent: cunning and unmoving in his beliefs,.
However, Plainview will not be beaten. By his own words he is estranged from the human race: “I see the worst in people and things”, and so his love is drilling and absolute. Could this be a symbol of sexual inadequacy as he drills the untouched earth? When his “son” HW is injured in accident, Plainview sends him away to be treated but returns to his drill - triumphant and literally dripping with oil (with Day-Lewis’ most chilling, excited and manic stare of the film!) He does love HW, but only as a pitiful attempt to maintain some humanity, replacing him with his half-brother, Henry.
Despite his evil, the viewers remain engulfed in his life story. From the moment he broke his leg in 1898 to the final scene, we care what he endures and are left wondering to the very last how his story ends.
Plainview represents the sinister side of American success: destroying and lying in the name of progress. Anderson, however, does not shove a political message down our throats, and there is no sugar-coated resolution. We are left working out our own experiences from the film (once we return from its trance) alone, like Plainview. The world he constructed for himself begins to fracture as his “competitors” are endless. The last scene has a lasting impact, and Day-Lewis’ performance is both ground breaking in its uniqueness and yet comparable to Charles Foster Kane. His resonant voice: pedantic, full of charm is strained as Plainview’s greed dictates his actions. I think his Oscar is assured.
For excitement and imagination, visual delight and superlative acting; for a chilling realisation that our own addiction to oil can not be maintained for much longer, this is a film not to be missed.
"There Will Be Blood" dir. by Paul Thomas Anderson is showing at City Screens.
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