The first time I saw this beautiful beast of a movie from director-writer Paul Thomas Anderson, I felt gut-punched. As the film bores through the first three decades of the twentieth century, Plainview becomes a California oil tycoon of unparalleled ruthlessness. His enemies are man and God. And in the film's final section, a rush of scorching brutality, Plainview takes his revenge on both. Visually and dramatically, it is a jaw-dropper. His last words burst forth with biblical exultation: "I'm finished."
Day-Lewis, no ifs, ands or buts, gives one of the great elemental performances in modern cinema. Yet what kind of sympathy could we find for the devil he’s playing? Seeing There Will Be Blood is like going ten rounds with a raging bull. You feel so pummeled it's hard to get your head clear.
Anderson hasn't so much adapted Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil as cherry-picked it for a structure. He's out to show how violence of the flesh and the spirit is hard-wired into the American character.
Day-Lewis' resonant voice is a potent magnet. His triumph is in making us see ourselves in Plainview, no matter how much we want to turn away. Daniel is a man who will stop at nothing to achieve the unnatural state of becoming an island onto himself, and Day-Lewis makes him his own.
The ensuing battle between the ignorant armies of greed and bogus evangelism powers the film. Still, for getting under Daniel's skin, no one beats Eli.
On a craft and technical level, the film is of the highest quality, not least in the sound department, where the mix is exceedingly complex and expressive.
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