There Will Be Blood

The emergence of an American dependency and an American auteur

Adam McCort

Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood makes perfectly clear that Anderson is a far more self-assured director than he was when he made his previous films (Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love), which are certainly noteworthy in their own right. There Will Be Blood is a more coherent, distinct, visceral, and even a more stylized film than anything Anderson has crafted thus far. He has arrived as an auteur comparable to the likes of Stanley Kubrick, Terrence Malick and Martin Scorsese.

The film opens with a masterful shot of a desolate area of California at the turn of the 20th century, accompanied by Jonny Greenwood’s eerie, menacing, and searing score. The story follows Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, who once again so embodies his role that any trace of the actor is hardly visible. At the beginning of the film, we see Daniel using primitive and extremely dangerous mining methods to extract gold and/or other precious minerals. This scene, along with Greenwood’s haunting score, sets the unnerving tone of the film, which fits very well with Anderson’s trademark use of seemingly random occurrences, specifically in the form of fatal accidents. Daniel is successful in his endeavours, which he then uses to move on to search for oil. Four years after his gold findings, Daniel has become a modest businessman and father with an outfit of workers, equipment and a baby son.

By the time Daniel’s oil endeavours take him to the town of Little Boston, nine years later, his business is moving full steam ahead, just as he is towards a collision course with a fate that only he can prevent. Daniel wishes to crush his competitors and doesn’t want anyone else to succeed and, for the most part, he’s successful on his own terms — until he meets Eli Sunday, played by Paul Dano in a mesmerizing performance, who certainly holds his own alongside Day-Lewis. Eli is a young fundamentalist preacher in Little Boston at the Church of the Third Revelation who clearly has his own agenda. Eli demands Daniel donate $5,000 to his church as part of the arrangement made between Daniel and Eli’s father, Abel Sunday (David Willis), for the family’s plot of land. What Eli either fails to understand, or disregards in his own self-interested schemes, is that Daniel is a man consumed by greed and hate, and that he cannot be reasoned with beyond what he wants.

There Will Be Blood
Directed by:
Paul Thomas Anderson
Now playing
♥♥♥♥ out of 5

As the film progresses, we watch Daniel withdraw more and more into himself and become increasingly confrontational with nearly everyone he crosses paths with. It’s a truly fascinating experience, especially Daniel’s decisions and actions in relation to Eli and his son H.W. Plainview (Dillon Freasier). Eli is an irritant to Daniel, and their incompatible goals are a major source of conflict between the two men, whereas H.W. is a stabilizing force in Daniel’s life.

Of course, the other characters in the film are also vividly represented in terms of their appearances and behaviours, but I think we should’ve seen more of them. The small townsfolk in the film are reminiscent of those in Terrance Malick’s film Days of Heaven, also a fragile community where lives will never be the same, for better or worse, because of mass industry descending upon them. Daniel assures the community of Little Boston that they will benefit from his company’s oil drilling, in terms of employment and the building of schools, but it is also clear (to the viewer) that work-related deaths will rise and the ultimate control over their town is in the hands of Daniel’s oil company. Another “character” in the film, which in a sense has a life of its own — much like the hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining — is the harsh and foreboding environment, in terms of how it reacts to those that are exploiting it for its resources.

Although, in a larger sense, the film is about the emergence of the cultural and economic dependency on oil in the United States — the core of the story is the inflation of both Daniel’s avarice and ego, as well as his gradual descent into personal isolation, hatred, and paranoia — reminiscent of Robert De Niro’s portrayal of Jake La Motta in Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull. I won’t say anything more, other than this: seeing such an engrossing film on the big screen is a rare treat.

Adam McCort is a third-year English and film studies student.