Title: There Will Be Blood
Genre: Drama
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Dillon Freasier…
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Release: (2007)
Before it inevitably sweeps for Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture at the upcoming TVGuide Channel Academy Awards Ceremony and Clip Show, I would like to offer my own personal salute to the magnificently crafted epic There Will Be Blood here, by enshrining it now as just the second ever installment in the not-very-ongoing or particularly-well named series: Movie Reviews of Movies For Grown Ups But That Are Written For Kids And That Rhyme Which Is How You Know They’re For Kids Even Though The Movies Are Inappropriate For Kids But That’s What Makes It So Ironic. And so I shall…
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Welcome back, little kiddies, and how have you been?
Goodness me, I’m excited to see you again!
I know, it’s been so long, just look how you’ve grown!
I’d have brought the big boy chairs, if only I’d known!
But for now the ones we have will just have to do,
we’ve got so much time left here, and little to do.
I mean, strike that – reverse it, like ol’ Willy would –
and put on your hear-clear ears, to listen up good.
Are you ready? Ok then, well here’s why we’re here:
there’s a new teacher’s favorite for film of the year!
(Though just what year exactly, I’m still not quite clear,
since it opened some last year but just came out here.)
But we’ll figure that later, for now just unwind,
relax, and imagine this scene in your mind …
At the dusty brown crest, of where ‘Nowhere’ meets ‘West’,
back when no laws or walls could contain you.
On a rope, in a well, lowered halfway to Hell,
is where first we meet young Daniel Plainview.
Dan’s a man of his name – see’s the world just the same,
as you might expect Plainviews to see it.
Everything’s black and white: You are wrong and he’s right.
And you’d be wise to just let that be it.
He’s an oil man whose true art, is winning the rube heart,
by playing who they want to see.
Be it father, or brother, or some silly other –
whatever they need him to be.
‘Til they all feel assured, he’s a man of his word
and sell good ‘ol Pa Plainview their land.
Then it’s “Beat it, hillbilly, I’ll drill these hills silly!
Take a hike with your hat in your hand.”
And go drill hills he did, with the help of his kid,
whom he’d groomed to keep on their proud name.
Until fate stepped in one day, disguised as Paul Sunday,
To send ol’ ‘Plan A’ up in flames.
You see….
Paul was a prodigal
son with a pot o’ gold
hidden away back at home
And he knew he could sell it
to Daniel to well it
for just enough money to roam.
So they shook on it there,
and then Paul told him where
he could find a whole ocean of crude.
Then they both parted ways,
but on both their last days,
it’s the one day they prob’ly both rued.
Why?
Because!
The problem was …
For Paul the deal sealed,
in its fate, a small field,
and the family he knew that lived off it.
Soon the house he once played in,
where siblings still laid in,
would be lost for his tiny profit.
And for Daniel it meant
thirty years to be spent
locking horns with Paul’s pesky twin brother.
Whose God song-and-dance
had the town in a trance,
that the Lord spoke through him and no other.
They were God versus Money,
like Dempsey v. Tunney:
a heavyweight battle of wills.
Fix the hole in your sole,
or the whole of your soul,
was the town’s choice between the two ills.
Hey, hey!
Don’t give it away!
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