When Daniel Plainview - a ruthless oil prospector - learns of oil-rich land in California that can be bought cheaply, he moves his operation there and begins manipulating and exploiting the local l...
WHAT I LIKED: Paul Thomas Anderson's 'There Will Be Blood,' is one of the greatest illustrations of the effects of capitalism and the American Dream ever put to film.
Set in early America when the system of buying and selling commodities was stripped back to the bone, it follows the life of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis); an entrepreneur who began as an oil driller only to quickly start buying out land to get others to drill for him. This makes him wealthy, and he ends up using his fortune to buy hectares of potentially oil-rich land from some villagers in New Mexico.
Seeing himself as a kind, generous man, this purchase begins with the promise of improvements to infrastructure and education for the evangelical vicar (Paul Dano) and his locals. But as the drilling begins, a great point about the distribution of wealth is made, as no one feels they're getting enough when they see their investor getting richer and the drilling expanding when all they get is a new church and school, and a few roads. The ethical toll of his drilling is also brought to life brilliantly though, as locals are killed and injured in sickening explosions and spills which turn the beautiful desert the darkest shades of black and orange, leading NAME's preaching (and his demands of Plainview) to become increasingly desperate and agitated.
Beyond its toll on the locals though, the film is also about how this constant quest for development never satisfies the man doing the ripping off either. Plainview is constantly on the hunt for bigger oil deposits and more money, but instead of making him happy, his successes make him increasingly bitter towards those who stand in his way, and less and less caring towards his own son. There's a brilliant scene during the big explosion in which his son is injured, and though he initially runs to save him, he quickly leaves him in the hands of his colleagues to run and admire the hell he's unleashed as a sign of a great, hidden pool of oil to extract. When he reminisces about his childhood dream house, he admits that the smallness of it would "probably make [him] sick now," and by the very end of the film, we see him as a disgusting, twisted old man rattling away in a colossal mansion with nothing but his expanding oil reserves on a map to keep him company.
That makes a fascinating, sickening point about the horrors of Capitalism and the American Dream, and the fact it's brought to life so well by Daniel Day-Lewis - as well as the brilliant visuals and Jonny Greenwood's uncomfortable score - gives it a truly lasting impact.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: The camera lingers on certain landscapes, or people walking or thinking, for rather absurd amounts of time, and that results in a good few chunks of watch checking and eyebrow raising, and that detracts from the film's brilliant theme and character work.
VERDICT: 'There Will be Blood,' is an overlong but masterful portrayal of the horrors of Capitalism and the American Dream for both the exploited and the exploiters.
