There Will Be Blood (6/10)

by Tony Medley

Well, if there will be, you have to be patient. This is yet another example of a writer-director (Paul Thomas Anderson) so in love with his far too long script that he couldn’t cut a sentence or even an adverb when he donned his director’s hat. In my mind’s eye, I can see him sitting in his director’s chair, constantly saying, “what a great line!”

The film is loosely based on Upton Sinclair’s novel, Oil, published in 1927. Sinclair was a muckraker who founded the California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. As such, he was a man who didn’t let facts interfere with his point of view. As a case in point, after he published Oil, he wrote Boston in 1928, which was a spirited defense of the notorious anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, who were convicted of murder. Sinclair’s book argued vociferously for their innocence, despite the fact that Sinclair later admitted that he had been told in confidence by Fred Moore, the attorney for Sacco and Vanzetti, that they were guilty and their alibis phony.

Anderson, whose previous films have been well-nigh interminable, like Boogie Nights (1997) at 2 hours 36 minutes and Magnolia (1999) at 3 hours 8 minutes(!) shows that he still doesn’t recognize a stop sign when he sees it by making this drag on for 2 hours 38 minutes.

To set the stage for what is a long sit, the film starts out without a word being spoken for about 15 minutes. Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) is an oil man who finds and drills for oil. He is tipped by Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) to a large field owned by Paul’s family, so Daniel goes north into the hinterlands and scams the Sunday family out of their oil. Paul’s brother, Eli, (also played by Dano in an ill-advised ploy by Anderson that is pretty confusing when the viewer sees him with another name) is a preacher who is apparently only interested in getting money for his church, although he turns out to be a petty hypocrite, and immediately enters into conflict with Daniel.

Daniel’s son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier), is his constant companion. But, alas, things go wrong and Daniel doesn’t react rationally or with much compassion, if any. Throughout, Anderson makes his protagonist, Daniel, a stark-raving lunatic. Daniel admits later in the film that his life is based on hate, but it’s never explained why, which is a major shortcoming of the film. This is a character study, a film without a plot. How are we to even begin to understand the character if we don’t know what could have caused him to be such a maniac?

Day-Lewis gives a spirited performance, which is worth seeing. Whether it’s histrionic or award-quality has to be up to the viewer. He’s burdened by a strange script that doesn’t really allow the audience to know what makes this guy tick. The way he acts is without explanation or reason. When Daniel isn’t trying to charm people or being incredibly brutal to them, there are lots of shots of people getting covered in oil. That about sums up this film; Daniel being a charming salesman; Daniel being insanely brutal; people covered in oil.