Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis, Gangs of New York) is a California oilman who goes up against the likes of Standard Oil during the late 1800s to prospect for the new black gold that is changing America. Eli Sunday (Paul Dano, Little Miss Sunshine) bargains hard with Plainview regarding the sale of property where oil seeps through the ground. (Dano also portrays Eli’s brother Paul.) Eli wants a good price, not for his family but for his church.
This extraordinary tale is loosely based on Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil! The two protagonists in this film set up the terms for their lives at which both will fail miserably. Plainview, the self-made businessman, represents the extremes of secular American virtues: individualism, ambition, pride and arrogance. Eli Sunday uses homegrown American evangelism to disguise his own ambition, pride and conceit.
Both men personify cold, calculating hubris that ends in tragedy and destruction. They misunderstand whatever virtues and freedom they perceive that America promises them and turn them into vices. Their total lack of empathy and love ends in nothingness. This is a cautionary American tale that audiences may want to compare with King Vidor’s 1949 film The Fountainhead, based on an Ayn Rand novel.
The revelation in There Will Be Blood is multidimensional. The moral is clear Getting what you want by stepping on everyone will not make you happy. Paul Thomas Anderson’s (Magnolia) script and direction are darkly brilliant, as are the sound, cinematography and editing.
The film has been nominated for numerous Oscars and other awards. Daniel Day-Lewis gives the performance of his life. Paul Dano is also exceptional. Brief but intense violence.
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