There Will Be Blood
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
There will be blood, a proclamation of biblical proportion, opens stridently on to a distant and desolate landscape where down in the bowels of the earth a man alone, works his pick against nature's precious store. We watch this lean and sinewed man, his dirt-stained face illuminated in an occasional metal spark, as he deftly plies his talent to coax and blast treasure from the earth.
This is the narrative of a lone prospector, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis), who, while mining silver, strikes oil and proceeds to become an "oil man" but not a "speculator", who makes money without ever having scrambled in the dirt. Plainview is a plain man with a speculative past. He has a son, a motherless child, whom he calls his business partner, H.W (Dillon Freasier).
It is the turn of the 20th century and the industrial revolution is reaching out its capitalist tentacles to embrace America's western frontier. California is oozing oil and Plainview buys up land. He has an organizational theory that involves family and community. It makes for better workers. The land he is drilling belonged to the brothers of the "church of the third revelation" and their charismatic preacher, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano). Plainview does not belong to a church. When asked, he says he likes them all. He has his own creed.
It is in the portrayal of everyday human interaction that P.T. Anderson excels. He knows well the pathos and the glory of man. Plainview is a giant as he strides through this world and all that he encounters, while always, rippling just beneath the skin and in the squint of an eye, is that primal vigilance ready to kill, if he must.
Lou Crow
