Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Dillon Freasier

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson

Running time: 2 hrs 38 mins

Genre: Drama/Western


CRITIQUE:


In the beginning of THERE WILL BE BLOOD, there is a wordless silence that lingers like an elegiac atmosphere. For the first fifteen minutes, no dialogue was spoken. All we could see is the dark pit where the protagonist Daniel Plainview digs for nuggets of silver, breaking his leg, and then hauls himself up to the ground as the film’s music, an increasing snarl of horns and electric guitar, starts to slit through the quiet and barren desert landscape. Then it cuts, rather annoyingly, to another time setting, showing Plainview with a son named H. W., convincing a local town in Southern California to support his oil mining endeavour. Then throughout the film, it moves with a slow pace, almost dragging us into the hot, dry vista and into the inky and black catastrophe, and at the end of the film – bitch-slapping the audience with a climax that appears almost as lampoonery, totally at odds with everything the film has tried to build up throughout its very long running-time. In short, it had us transfixed at the very beginning and two-and-a-half hours later, it had us raising eyebrows and screaming “Draaaiiinaage!”. Yes, it’s that kind of film. If you’d think NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN had already caused your befuddlement, then you haven’t seen THERE WILL BE BLOOD’s ending yet.


Yet, strangely, days later after watching it, it grows on you, and THERE WILL BE BLOOD’s main ethos has finally sunk rock bottom. It is by no means a catastrophic film. In fact, it’s a superb character study into the deepest psyches of humanity and showing us the protagonist, Daniel Plainview, the rags-to-riches archetype, turning into the antagonist of the film itself, a catastrophic, sadly tragic character blinded by ambition, power, money and greed. He’s not the devilish type, but rather the prototype of a family man; humble, convincing and self-assured with a voice that’s spoken almost tranquilly, every word carefully enunciated, deep, seductive and commanding. But then we soon realise that he uses his son as a prop, to make the town people believe he’s that family man, yet all he wanted was their oil. The film also examines his relationship with his son, H.W., an unspoken voice of a child, who becomes deaf by an explosion of an oil rig and was abandoned by his own father. There is one haunting scene where the father reunites with his son in the middle of a desert, yet the father was met with the child’s rough punch across the face. There is also the examination of the relationship of brothers, as one man claims to be Plainview’s long lost brother, only to turn out into a bloody result.


But at the very core of the film is the battle of two titanic egos: Plainview, who represents Capitalism, and the character of Eli Sunday, who represents Catholicism. And when Capitalism and Catholicism collide, the result is disastrous, as what we’ve seen in the world already. Eli Sunday forces faith out of Plainview, and Plainview forces passivity from Sunday to the burgeoning rise of the monster that is industry. So when ambition meets faith, then “THERE WILL BE BLOOD” – as the title suggests, perhaps the most ominously titled film of 2007.


The problem with this piece of cinema is that it’s such a filmmaker’s film that it needs patience and perseverance on watching it. The masses will surely be dumbstruck out of their wits by this film’s longevity that one might probably ask another whether the film will finish in the next day or so. It’s n wonder why critics have been celebrating for this summit piece of cinema for its burning, very disturbing character study. Then again, it also takes time for the message to sink in, the transformation of a poor silver miner to an oil mogul-cum-entrepreneur, whose ambition and greed has entirely consumed his own existence. Now, not every single person in the world would have that understood as soon as the credits roll, even the metaphor of the milkshake-dialogue wouldn’t probably be completely deciphered by local movie watchers.


Nevertheless, the above grumbles don’t discourage the maverick director Paul Thomas Anderson in his visionary direction. THERE WILL BE BLOOD may be his best film he ever crafted, knowing that he rarely make films (only once in every four years); an intricate piece of story combined with sprawling Western cinematography (one favourite scene was the burning of oil rig like a wild red geyser amid the starchy desert landscape). He knows not to hurry and carefully builds his scene by scene, each shot a calculation, each move a decision.


And of course, it all leads to Daniel Day-Lewis and his masterclass performance, without a doubt, 2007’s most nuanced, precise and pitch-perfect acting calibre by an actor. If Oscars wouldn’t bestow him the honour, then Oscars is gormless about real screen performances. It is Day-Lewis gravitas that serves a magnet to this film, and his astounding presence that keeps us holding on to the otherwise slow-running time. It is Day-Lewis and his caricature of Plainview as the prophetic emblem of America, that’s as frightening as what America has turned into nowadays, the cause of havoc for an oil-based dilemma.


THE FINAL WORD:


The pace is frustrating, the plot build-up is teeth-grinding, and it’s so slow that you wonder when it will ever finish, hence minus a star for its longeur – but otherwise, a stellar, complex, brilliantly studied character film with a metaphoric significance. THERE WILL BE BLOOD may enfeeble your bum, but Anderson’s superb direction haunts and Day-Lewis’s performance stuns.


RATING: A-