Oil; the precious liquid bubbles away, lurking underground as far as the eye can see across the desolate, turn-of-the-century California landscape, as people are quite literally baptized and buried in it, so pervasive its presence is, driving men mad with a lustful, insatiable greed, and planting fantasies in their heads of becoming impossibly rich from what is essentially a raping of this rich, virgin land. One of the men driven by this madness is Daniel Plainview, whose outward mask of benevolent capitalism and civility is revealed to mask a soul that's even darker than the black gold he lusts for, and whose greed and utter contempt for the rest of humanity is the central driving force behind Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, an absolutely epic, monolithic historical drama that towers over cinema as tall as the derricks looming over the very landscape.
Blood tells the story of Plainview, a relentlessly misanthropic prospector looking to exploit the naive, innocent locals caught in the middle of the Southern California oil boom of the early 20th century, using any number of deceiftful machinations he can, along with the friendly facade of running a family business with his besuited "son" (who's really the orphan of a worker who died on one of Plainview's worksites), all in order to ruthlessly screw people out of their own land. A tip on the location of a fertile new oilfield brings Plainview to Little Boston, a small, rural community held underneath the sway of Eli Sunday, a fanatical, scrupleless local "faith healer", who's looking to, whether in a religious manner or just an old-fashioned financial sense, profit off of Plainview's presence in his community, just the same as Plainview desires to profit off the community itself. And, as the bitter conflict between the two men and the insitutions they represent grows more and more, and the various personal turmoils he faces keep piling up, the nature of his true, murderous misanthropy is revealed more and more, and Plainview's public mask of being a polite, genial businessman begins to irrevocably slip.
It's a fantastic characterization on the whole, but not because Plainview fundamentally changes all that much as a human being, as it becomes obvious that he started off as a hateful man and just gets worse as the film unfolds, and there aren't many moments here where it seems like he could truly redeem himself. Rather, his personal journey is great to witness here because of the striking, undeniably powerful ways in which it's executed, not least of which comes from Daniel Day-Lewis's iconic, Oscar-winning portrayal, in an absolutely commanding performance, to the point where it seems less like acting, and more like Paul Thomas Anderson invented a time machine and brought Plainview straight from 1911 to present day merely for authenticity's sake. It truly is one of film's all-time greatest feats of acting, an overwhelming tour-de-force of oily, slyly manipulative tones, barely concealed hatreds, and cerebral bore stares that could pierce titanium, and, while I have to admit that Lewis does go just a bit too over-the-top with his histrionics during the film's epilogue, for the most part he's successful in 100% embodying the role here, and it should come as no surprise that, even as one of most venerated actors of his generation, his Plainview has still become one of the most beloved performances of his entire career.
Of course, the other aspects of Blood are equally important in making it a great movie, especially its overall style, which fascinates with its emphasis on subtly sweeping, slowly developing tracking shots that manage to impress while still restraining themselves from becoming overly showy, or the long, extended takes that allow Anderson's richly-written dialogue and the actors deftly sparring with it room to breathe, or the wide, expansive vistas of barren California landscapes, which sharply contrast with the facial close-ups so intense, you can practically smell the sweat coming off of the actors. And all of that isn't even mentioning the disconcerting hum of Johnny Greenwood's borderline avant-garde score, which creates an overall effect that can only be described as "hypnotic", and, to this day, it's still a great injustice in that not only did this score not win the Oscar for Best Score the following year, it wasn't even nominated, which just goes to demonstrate the sort of dull, conservative attitude toward cinema that dominated The Academy at the time (and still does, to a certain extent).
And finally, There Will Be Blood excels through the strong conflict between its central personalities of Daniel and Eli, and the institutions they represent, though Anderson often shows the two mortal enemies (and the forces driving them) to be barely distinguishable from each other, if distinguishable at all. Plainview is the consumerate American capitalist, increasingly erratic as his personal fortune grows, unabashedly greedy to the point of murder, and only concerned with his own financial success even when his own workers, friends, and even family suffer as a result, while Sunday, instead of spreading the love of the God that he claims to believe in, is only really concerned with personal glory, whether it be using the presence of oil in Little Boston to wring extra money out of Daniel to use on his church, trying to exploit the opening of the local oil well in order to promote himself, and immediately renouncing his faith when forced to beg for help by Daniel. The entire affair proves to be a compelling commentary on the two defining institutions of American life, wrapped inside of a fascinating dual-character study that spans decades, inside one of the best films of the 2000's, and, since I feel I've written more than enough about this movie by now, I suppose you could say that I'm finished? Yes, I believe I am, so... I'm finished!!!
And go watch There Will Be Blood, by the way.