‘There Will Be Blood’ is a near masterpiece

For the first 15 or so minutes of There Will Be Blood, the only dialogue heard is a whispered “there she is . . . there she is.” The “she” in question is a hint of silver discovered at the bottom of a dubiously constructed well; the speaker is Daniel Plainview (a truly frightening Daniel Day-Lewis), a prospector whose ruthless drive and brutal disdain for humanity eventually take him from mining the land to leasing the oil rights for vast spreads of it. “There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking,” he later hisses, and it’s this bleak outlook that fuels his competitive streak. There may be an ocean of oil underneath Southern California, but to his mind, the only one worthy of touching it is Plainview himself.

Loosely based on the Upton Sinclair novel Oil!, Paul Thomas Anderson’s masterful film charts Plainview’s rise from meager wildcatter to obscenely wealthy recluse. It’s a course littered with destroyed lives and abandoned families, all for the sake of Plainview’s unwavering competitiveness—a competitiveness that keeps him alive even as it kills his very soul. Among those cast aside along the oilman’s destructive path are his own adoptive son H. W. (Dillon Freasier) and a young preacher named Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), whose congregation has leased its barely habitable land to Plainview for the promise of a new, richer life. Eli sees Plainview as a source of funding for his arrogant needs; Plainview believes Eli to be a charlatan—both men are more similar than they’d like to admit.

Tempering his usual fireworks, Anderson has crafted a true American epic. No single shot seems inconsequential; even at 158 minutes, the film feels lean. It’s a patient, beautifully acted film—cynical on its surface, yet a tragedy at its core. And though the film flirts with disaster during its final reel, the bravura on display during the final act of terror manages to seduce even as it risks repelling you. There Will Be Blood may not be an outright masterpiece, but it’s as close as a film can get.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD DIR. PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON | RATED R | AT SELECT THEATERS

Tags: daniel day-lewis, Film, oil, there will be blood, upton sinclair