Review - There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood charts the journey of an aspiring miner, Daniel Plainview, at the height of the Californian oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But Daniel Day-Lewis’s sublime performance and the struggle between Christianity and money renders Paul Thomas Anderson’s tragic and simple plot almost immaterial.

The primary conflict in this tale of the American Dream is between Plainview and Eli Sunday, the local preacher of the community whose land Plainview buys to drill. The bullish masculinity of the tycoon and his men penetrating Sunday’s sanctified yet seemingly barren land does bear fruit – oil in vast quantities.

But Plainview’s own admittance of a lack of faith coupled with denying Sunday the chance to “bless the well”, result in his son being deafened and one of his workers impaled by an iron rod – signals of impending disaster. Their tit-for-tat exchanges run throughout the narrative, with blackmail causing the only times they come into accordance.

Some references signposting the audience towards religion are a little forced. The owner of the ranch Plainview buys is called Abel Sunday, and Plainview picks up his son from a basket to baptise his head with oil. But the use of the three vital liquids, oil for money, holy water for faith, and blood for life is subtle and thought-provoking. Indeed, blood is only mentioned near the conclusion of the film.

Day-Lewis’s acting is dark and disturbing. Devoid of affection or sexuality, his only motivation is financial. He uses his young son merely as a tool to gain the trust of the people he is trying to con, “I’m a family man, I run a family business. This is my son and my partner.” And his selfishness and greed is uncompromising: “I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.”

Paul Dano’s portrayal of Plainview’s nemesis Eli Sunday is understated, measured and unsettling. His staring eyes and blank expression coupled with a hushed, monotonous tone of voice give a degree of menace to his god-fearing character, while his preaching scenes are wild.

Jonny Greenwood’s score moves from haunting string dissonances and metronomic percussion in the opening to polyphonic melodies by the end. This reflects Plainview’s successes in the flow of both oil and money, but is a poignant contrast to his mental and physical deterioration into alcoholism and the lonely abandonment of his family.