There Will Be Blood (2007)
In interviews, PT Anderson (Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love) is humble about the political nature of his fifth film. In one interview Anderson states, “It’d just be horrible to think that we were “being political.” Nonetheless, the charge carried by the subject matter - lust for oil and religious extremism - couldn’t be more politically contemporary. To Terry Gross of Fresh Air the director states, “…it says something about the men of this period that were kind of on the tail end of the wild, wild, west. They could never really shake that ambition and that drive to work - that what they enjoyed the most was the fever, the insanity, just the process.”
However, the fact that the film sets out as a serious dramatic thriller but ends up in hyperbolic overdrive of a piece with American Psycho, suggests something much deeper than a parallel with history. A provocative debate between nature and industry on the very roots of American idealism, both economic and religious, Anderson’s film also seems to draw conclusions about where this leaves us today.
Set in late 19th and early 20th centuries, the film is a loose adaptation of the first part of the 1927 novel Oil! by Pulitzer Prize winning author Upton Sinclair (a socialist and activist who ran for governor of California in 1934 under the Democratic platform) and the exploits of real-life oil tycoon Edward Doheny.
Daniel Day-Lewis (My Left Foot, The Age of Innocence, Last of the Mohicans, Gangs of New York) stars as Daniel Plainview, the caricature of a megalomaniacal oil baron. He represents the American Dream taken to obscene proportions, emanating the imperialist adage ‘Manifest Destiny!’ Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), a young preacher who brandishes with fire and brimstone, is Plainview’s arch nemesis and arguably his alter ego.
The film’s original score, at once beautiful and horrific, was composed with piano and ondes martenot by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead, those musical harbingers warning that civilization itself is on the teetering edge of imminent doom.
Jennifer Dawson
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Grading
- Story A
- Acting A
- Visuals A
- Originality/Innovation A-
- Enjoyability A
- Overall A
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