Snippitts of Illusions

A Look at Paul Thomas Andersons' There Will Be Blood.

Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is methodical and menacing, from the opening scene in which Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) breaks his leg while mining silver to the final brutal scene. It's visually compelling, with a spot-on soundtrack to help punctuate the drama.

The film opens with Daniel Plainview mining for silver, then jumps ahead a few years to see him and a team of men mining for oil. Digging the hole out by hand. Using a weighted drill bit attached to a makeshift wooden derrick to punch through the muddy earth and then excavating the oil out of the hole with wooden buckets. During this scene, the father of a young baby is killed by collapsing equipment when the derrick breaks. Daniel takes the baby, adopting it. The film jumps ahead about 9 years, and Daniel and his adopted son H.W. giving a speech in front of the large congregation of a town. He's trying to sell the townsfolk on the idea of letting him put oil wells on their land, and after a short period of questions and answers, he and his partner Fletcher (Ciaran Hinds) decide to move on due to the savviness of the locals. Here they are approached by Paul Sunday (Paul Dano), who offers to sell them the info of a region that has not been tapped yet: his family farm and the surrounding area of Little Boston.

Taking the guise of a  hunter, Daniel and H.W go to the Sunday farm that Paul told them about. Their guise fools the family initially, and after some hunting and scouting for potential spots for oil, Daniel goes to Abel Sunday and offers to buy the farm, pretending to only want to settle down on the land. The ruse is seen through by Eli Sunday, Paul Sunday's twin brother. Eli forces Daniel to up his price and promises to donate $5000 for Eli's church.

After buying up leases to all the properties in the area but one, owned by Bandy (Hans Howes) and promising the townsfolk many things, Daniel builds his first derrick and prepares to drill the first well. He's approached by Eli, who asks him to allow him to bless the site at the ribbon the next day. During the ceremony, Daniel gives a basic, informal and insincere blessing, slighting Eli.

Paul Dano's Eli Sunday has an air of smugness that is befitting the character.  Eli doesn't appear in many scenes, as Daniel Plainview is the film's focus, which is partly a shame. Though Paul Thomas Anderson doesn't waste those scenes in which Eli appears. However, each one progresses towards the final outcome.

Then the accidents begin: first, some workers cannot secure the bit correctly, fumbling with it and dropping it down the well on the worker below, killing him. Then there's a gas blowout that ignites the rig on fire, burning it to the ground, while the initial gas explosion makes H.W. deaf. This moment in the film showcases the cinematography better than any scene: from the gas blowout to the derrick burning down at night, it illustrates why Paul Thomas Anderson's films are visually compelling. Eli goes to Daniel, telling him that none of this would have happened if Daniel had let him bless the rig. He then demands the $5000 he had asked for initially. Daniel beats Eli, dragging him through the mud, humiliating him. 

A man claiming to be Daniel's half-brother Henry Plainview (Kevin J O'Conner) arrives, asking for work. H.W. tries to burn down the house after Henry's arrival, so Daniel decides to send him off to a private school. Daniel takes Henry on, and together they survey a route for a pipeline to the ocean. During the survey, they attempt to secure Bandy's permission to take the pipeline across his property and fail. Once they reach the end of the route, Daniel begins to suspect that Henry may be an imposter. Finally, holding him at gunpoint, Daniel gets a confession out of him. In his rage, Daniel kills him. The next morning he's confronted by Bandy, who tells him that he'll let him take the pipeline across his property, but only after he confesses he's a sinner and is baptized in the church.

Daniel agrees and goes to the church to be baptized. During the baptism, Eli humiliates him getting him to confess that he's a bad father for the accident that left H.W. deaf and then sending him away. Daniel accepts this fate but shortly after sends away for H.W. to come back to him. This scene, like so many in this film, is amazing. It builds slowly over a short period of time to an intense crescendo. There's glee in Paul Dano's face as Eli gets Daniel to confess over and over again that he's a bad father. And Lewis's portrayal of Daniel is one of rage. Rage waiting to be unleashed.

Daniel Day-Lewis is an actor that embraces his characters fully. He becomes them. I have yet to be disappointed with Lewis's performance, and in this case, I'm more than impressed. Lewis' Daniel Plainview is ambition, greed, and madness rolled into one explosive envelope. Each scene progresses the descent into evil, and the final capitulation is both brutal and satisfying.

The film jumps forward 15 years, an adult H.W. marries his sweetheart Mary Sunday, younger sister to Paul and Eli. After the wedding, he goes to his father and asks his father to dissolve the partnership as he wants to move to Mexico and start his own oil company. In a fit of anger, Daniel tells him the truth about him being an orphan and tells him never to return. Shortly after this, he's visited by a down on his luck Eli and the ultimate scene plays out to a brutal conclusion.

If the film has a weakness, it's the other characters. This is a world that only exists to tell the story of Daniel Plainview. Eli and H.W. factor into the story as important elements but the other characters are a little better than background material. The film is so focused that they hardly seem to matter other than to help populate scenes. But that also serves as a strength as there's not a lengthy cast of characters to keep track of, and those that do move into Daniel's life maintain their importance only for the few scenes they're in. This isn't to imply that the actors don't do well. There are no poor performances, just that each is overshadowed by the two phenomenal performances.

Paul Thomas Anderson has managed to make a captivating film. The visuals are as engaging as the acting and script are and every moment of this film feels important to the narrative. There simply isn't a wasted moment. It's one of the few movies I actually wanted to watch again right away, and that's saying something. Of his movies that I have viewed, this is far and away from Mr. Anderson's strongest work, and that's amazing because even his weakest film is worth watching.

posted by F.G. Shaw @ 7:40 PM