I finally saw Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood last week. I was impressed, but the twelve others in the audience didn't seem to digest it as well. Several left during the less exciting last hour of the film. Others derisively asked "whose idea was it to see this movie?" as they were leaving. It is a divisive movie to be sure, not unlike No Country For Old Men, but it is one with such a beautiful cinematic power that I couldn't help but think the others had sadly missed the point. Here are some notes on the "point" of the film, as I see it.
The film's incredible opening sequence simply and brilliantly sets up the long story to come, and it burns with cinematic genius. The sense of danger in the oil wells is palpable and overpowering. The still landscape shots are reminiscent of Antonioni, and like his environments they carry a menacing weight that reflects the characters that inhabit them. There are shocking scenes of violence (not superfluous or overly grotesque), that set up the psychic landscape of the film — a place where the worst can happen instantly and where men wait nervously for it to happen. The stunning soundtrack swells with atonal screeches of orchestral strings and textures. Imagine Penderecki's "Threnody For The Victims Of Hiroshima" played against the ominous presence of a Sergio Leone desert. Johnny Greenwood (Radiohead's guitarist) creates a sound world that embodies and accentuates the dread and the sense of potential in what Willa Cather called “the raw materials out of which a country is made.” PT Anderson's visionary and seemingly effortless direction is enough to carry the film alone, but he also has an enthralling script and at least two magnificent performances to work with.
At dualistic odds are self-made oil baron Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) and a young preacher (Paul Dano). Each of them is drunk with power and self-gratitude. Each of them worships his own self-destructive god. The towering presence of Plainview's oil derricks even mirror that of a crucifix, and they attain a sort of overbearing presence of control as all life and activity centers around them. Part of this is thanks to the set and costume designers who create an ascetic, yet richly evocative landscape. One scene, in which an oil derrick explodes with both tragic and promising consequences, is a marvel of cinematic design and direction. The camera moves swiftly, in what feels like a single tracking shot but actually isn't. It captures so many events, right before your eyes and with so many implications — both physically and psychically transformative — that we are left breathless.
The film's thematic scope is as narrow-mindedly focused as its main character (speaking almost exclusively to the nature of power) and yet its breadth seems so epic that it exacts a mesmeric reverence out of the land, the oil, the men, the business, and the pursuit of power. Unfortunately, the idea that Anderson could have done something with a deeper political metaphor is present. But Blood is a film about a very specific man with a single-minded and self-destructive desire for power, not the nature of the oil business, capitalism, or even Christianity. The parallel between the two men and the two power structures they represent is understated — which may be good, because any greater social or political theme would have detracted from the incredibly magnetic performances of Day-Lewis and Dano.
As the film ends, we see the natural, logical conclusion that attends a psychopath like Plainview. He emerges out of his alcoholic slumber for one last opportunity to one-up his rival, Sunday. Afterward, we are left to imagine him crawling back into the alcoholic death that is his huge, empty mansion. It's hard for me to imagine viewers getting upset with this ending, although there are sure to be many. It is a pitch-perfect transformation of the film's main subject into the cinematic embodiment of his character. Cold, ruthless, abrupt and deceptive, Blood is a dogged parable that achieves an awesome power. If the film isn't perfect (which it isn't), it doesn't matter because it is awe-inspiringly successful in its execution.