There Will Be Blood (2007): Paul Thomas Anderson's Epic Saga of Greed, Betrayal and Obsession

A Potpourri of Vestiges Review

By Murtaza Ali

Featured in IMDb Critic Reviews  

There Will Be Blood (2007) - By Paul Thomas Anderson

Our Rating: 9.5

IMDb Ratings: 8.1

Genre: Drama

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Ciarán Hinds

Country: USA

Language: English

Runtime: 158 min

Color: Color

There Will Be Blood is a 2007 Oscar-winning movie directed by American filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson. There Will Be Blood is Paul Thomas Anderson's tribute to John Huston's epic masterpiece, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), which according to Anderson is a repository of all of life's questions and answers. During the shooting of There Will Be Blood, every night before going to bed Anderson used to put on The Treasure of the Sierra Madre to derive inspiration for his movie. Cinema has been a witness to a plethora of phenomenal performers who over the years have entranced billions of viewers worldwide with their guile, grandeur, subtlety, eloquence and poise, but I dare say very few of those performers could match Daniel Day-Lewis' tour de force in There Will Be Blood, whether in terms of ruthlessness, panache, eloquence, or cheek. Being the chameleon that he is, Lewis musters up all his prodigious talent to conjure up his misanthropic alter ego, Daniel Plainview whose perpetually smirked face, bolstered by his malice filled eyes, makes him one of the strongest and the most fascinating characters ever caricatured on the celluloid. Daniel Day-Lewis is at the top of his game and virtually unstoppable as Daniel Plainview, a portrayal that not only resuscitated him as an actor, but also established him as one of the greatest actors of our time. In There Will Be Blood, Lewis doesn't leave a single stone unturned in order to bring his character to life, and perhaps that's what helps him bag his second Best Actor Oscar.

Paul Dano in There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood also features a memorable performance from Paul Dano who is absolutely brilliant as Eli Sunday. Paul Dano compliments Daniel Day-Lewis in every sense of the word in spite of the fact that he barely had a week to prepare for his part contrary to Daniel Day-Lewis who had a whole year to prepare for his. Eli Sunday is ambitious, enigmatic, placid, pesky and pusillanimous, and despite being highly contrasting to Daniel Plainview he incredibly has many similarities to him, especially the uncanny demeanor that helps them both to inveigle others. It is the awe-inspiring chemistry and the ever growing tension between them that makes the There Will Be Blood truly haunting and spectacular. 

Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview

There Will Be Blood is a morbid tale of greed, betrayal and obsession adorned by some great performances, visually stunning cinematography, and masterful direction with great attention to detail. Plainview owns a mine with potential silver deposits and his assiduity finally pays off when he discovers a silver ore. He sells it to acquire a crew to help him with the subsequent diggings in the mine. After the mine runs out of silver, oil is discovered in it and hence begins Plainview's journey of insatiable greed and morbid obsession. Plainview, in order to build a facade of a family-oriented man in order to easily gain people's trust, adopts an infant following the death of his father—a subordinate at the rig—during a drilling accident. 

A Still from There Will Be Blood

Some years later, a young man named Paul Sunday (also played by Paul Dano) visits Plainview's camp and offers to sell information about his family's ranch, which he claims to have an ocean of oil underneath it. Plainview and H.W. travel to the Sunday Ranch pretending to be on quail hunting while hiding their ulterior motive of verifying Paul's claim. Being as perspicacious as he is, it doesn't take him long to find the vestiges of oil in the cracks formed due to the recent earthquake. He tries to convince the Sunday patriarch to sell him the land at a moderate price (which he calls quail price and not oil price), but is stymied by owner's ambitious son, Eli Sunday, who asks him to pay an additional ten thousand dollars towards the building of the Church of Third Revelation. Plainview reluctantly pays him five thousand dollars as advance and promises to pay the remaining amount once the drilling starts. 

A Still from There Will Be Blood

Plainview assembles his crew at the Sunday Ranch and builds the first derrick. He also buys almost all of the land surrounding the Sunday Ranch so he will have not only those drilling rights but also the right to build a pipeline to the ocean to circumvent the railroads and their shipping costs. Eli wants to bless the derrick before drilling begins but Plainview rebuffs him. Using the money given by Plainview, Eli builds his church projecting himself as a preacher, faith healer and prophet. Soon the church has many followers, most of whom are Plainview's workers. Eli's increasing influence on the people and his display of false divinity starts pestering Plainview, who is further flummoxed by congregation's frequent gatherings (the daily prayers prevented the workers from taking desired rest, thereby decreasing their efficiency). Plainview beseeches Eli to make them less frequent, but Eli dismisses him with disdain. Plainview's ruthless ego is jolted by Eli's stubbornness, and he brutally assaults the latter. Eli soon gets his revenge when a person named Bandy coaxes Plainview to get baptized at the Church of the Third Revelation. While baptizing him, Eli humiliates him by repeatedly slapping him and calling him a sinner. This incident further intensifies the hatred in Plainview and sets the tone for a deeply haunting finale when they would meet again many years later. 

A Still from There Will Be Blood 

With There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson—whose previous projects includes Magnolia, Boogie Nights and Punch-Drunk Love—yet again proves his mettle as a director and more importantly as a passionate lover of cinema. He manages to pack a punch with this poignant and a deeply disturbing masterpiece. There Will Be Blood incredibly succeeds on every level and entertains immensely, while still delivering a strong message. It was undoubtedly the best picture of 2007 and one of the best of the decade. Sadly, the Academy once again lived up to its long earned notoriety by preferring a relatively lesser, No Country for Old Men (2007) over this truly haunting masterpiece for the topmost honor: Best Motion Picture of the Year.

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There Will Be Blood Trailer

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