Category: Period drama
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
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Numerous movie critics have rated There Will Be Blood as among one of the best movies of the 21st century, and I'm telling you straight up - they're right! It's a masterclass in storytelling, scene setting and character work.
Even if the only scene in this movie was Daniel Day-Lewis' emotive utterance of those immortal words, "I drink your milkshake!", that alone would be worth the price of admission - but darn it, this movie is excellent in so many ways.
Let's go through the plot outline and then I'll get into my thoughts.
The plot:
The story revolves around Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his rise, his personal struggles and his descent in to anger, loneliness and madness.
The story starts in 1898 where we see Plainview, a prospector (someone that searches for precious metals/minerals in a given area) spending his days and nights digging along a shaft and hacking away at the rock deep down, hoping to make a significant find. Plainview makes a find and (literally) drags himself into town to get his find assayed (inspected for purity and integrity). With his find certified, he begins a mining operation that employs numerous men.
The story then moves to 1902 where Plainview's mining operation discovers oil in California and a rig is built to extract the precious stuff. Unfortunately, the mechanism that lifts the buckets of oil up to the ground breaks, hitting a worker down in the well and killing him. The man had an infant son whom Plainview now takes to be his own, naming him H.W. and is used by Daniel to give the veneer of being a family man to help win over prospective investors.
The story then moves to 1911 where Plainview is doing pretty well for himself when one day, he is sitting in his office and is approached by a young man named Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) who offers to tell Plainview where he can find cheap land with oil prospects, but not without a generous serving of cash beforehand. Plainview pays Sunday, and we then see Plainview father and son walk through the area of Little Boston under the guise of hunting quail, though they are really there to scope the land. Plainview sits for dinner with the Sunday family where he makes an offer to the Sunday patriarch, Abel, to acquire the property. However, it is here that Plainview has his first encounter with the other Sunday brother, Eli (also played by Paul Dano), the preacher at The Church Of The Third Revelation. It turns out that Eli is just as cunning as Plainview himself as he pushes a bargain with Plainview to purchase the property in exchange for a large donation to his church. Plainview soon acquires control over the whole area, except for one tract of land held by the Bandy family who are willing to discuss terms on the proviso that Plainview personally meets with Mr. Bandy himself. Plainview refuses to meet with Bandy, stating that "he will come around". This causes an issue with Plainview's plan to build a pipeline as a way of reducing transportation costs.
With operations now ramping up, the town of Little Boston is becoming more developed and Plainview is ready to get his first rig fully operational when he gets a request from Eli to be allowed to say a blessing before it is officially started - even telling Plainview what words to use. At the opening, Eli is not given his big moment, and the words he gave Plainview are used in another context. Soon after operations get going, a worker is killed when a piece of metal falls down the well and strikes him in the head, and then in a subsequent accident, a release of high-pressure gas causes part of the rig to break apart with HW (Dillon Freasier) on it and he acquires an injury that causes permanent deafness.
Daniel struggles to connect with HW, since they literally can't speak with each other. Alongside this, there is antagonism between Plainview and Sunday as Plainview thinks Sunday is just performing for his congregation, while Sunday blames the accidents at the rig on the fact that he was not given the opportunity to bless it. Sunday is also upset that the promised donation from Plainview is yet to materialise. In a public confrontation, Plainview physically slaps Sunday around and drenches him in oil and dirt. At family dinner that night, Eli assaults his father and screams at him for being played by Daniel (even though it was Eli working the deal).
One day, a man claiming to be Plainview's half-brother, Henry, arrives at Plainview's operations. Daniel questions Henry (Kevin O'Connor) and ends up giving him not only a job, but a place of prominence in the operations as Henry states he has had manual labour experience from his time in jail. This puts HW offside as HW was being groomed to be the Daniel's successor, but since the accident and Henry's arrival, HW has been cast aside. HW sets fire to Henry's lodging (thankfully, no-one is hurt), but Daniel sends HW to a school for the deaf in San Francisco. In a display of how underhanded Daniel is, Daniel takes a train ride with HW, the train stops and he tells HW he has to go speak to the conductor. Daniel walks away from the train and his assistant takes charge of HW as the train starts to pull away from the station and HW realises he is being left behind.
The two Plainview brothers meet with reps from a company called Standard Oil who offer to buy out Plainview's interests. Daniel rejects this by saying "what would I do with myself?", to which the Standard Oil rep replies "you can look after your son" which greatly offends Daniel. To end the conversation, Plainview threatens to kill the Standard Oil rep in his sleep. However, Plainview did get two good suggestions from the conversation - how he can become a literal millionaire, and how to get the oil in to transportation, to which he makes a move on the Bandy property.
In a moment of downtime where the two brothers are swimming at the beach, Henry's non-response to a reference from Daniel's past causes Daniel to realise that Henry is actually an impostor. That night, after a night on the drinks, Daniel wakes up Henry at gunpoint and forces him to reveal who he is and how he came to know all about the real Henry. Henry reveals the real Henry died of tuberculosis and the impostor had Henry's diaries to know the character more and thus approached Daniel to ride his coat-tails as he was down on his luck. Daniel shoots the impostor and buries him, then collapses and falls asleep in the field.
Wouldn’t you know his luck, Plainview is awoken by Bandy himself who wishes to come to an arrangement with Plainview on building a pipeline through his property. However, Bandy's offer plays in to Eli's hands - Plainview needs to be baptised in Eli's church. During his baptism, Eli makes it a point to have Plainview confess loudly and repeatedly that he abandoned his son and that he has sinned.
The story then moves forward to 1927 and we see that HW has married Eli's youngest sister, Mary, and also that Daniel is rich beyond his wildest dreams, though he lives alone as an eccentric. HW comes to Daniel seeking to take leave from Plainview's operations in order start his own down in Mexico, as HW wants to get away from Plainview. Plainview sees this as HW wanting to become his competitor and he humiliates HW by stating that he was never his father.
In the last scene of the movie, Plainview is woken up in his bowling alley by his butler stating he has a visitor - none other than Eli Sunday. Eli comes to Plainview suggesting Plainview buy the Bandy land in order to drill, and Plainview entertains the idea on the condition that Eli declare out loud that he is a false prophet and that God is a superstition, as a form of revenge for the humiliation Eli dealt out to him at his baptism. Eli co-operates and then confesses that he needs money as his investments have tanked and he has been living a debaucherous life. However, Plainview reveals that Bandy's lease is worthless as the oil that was under Bandy's land has drained off to the derricks that are on properties Plainview operates. In one of the weirdest lines in cinematic history, it is explained as thus:
Drainage! Drainage, Eli, you boy. Drained dry. I'm so sorry. Here, if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There it is, that's a straw, you see? Watch it. Now, my straw reaches acroooooooss the room and starts to drink your milkshake. I... drink... your... milkshake!
Eli attempts to escape being assaulted by an increasingly boisterous and physical Plainview, but is trapped at the end of the bowling alley. Plainview eventually murders Eli by bludgeoning him with a bowling pin. To end the movie, Plainview's butler walks in to see Plainview sitting by Eli's bleeding corpse, to which Plainview says "I'm finished".
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Wow! What an epic!
The movie runs for nearly 2.5 hours, and there isn’t actually any dialogue for the first ten to fifteen minutes, but rarely did the film feel like a drag - a testament to Paul Anderson's direction.
This movie has a number of themes and topics that are used to flesh out the story, and to me, the one that stands out the most is that of performative religion being used to keep the masses enthralled. The scene where Sunday is preaching and performs a very elaboreate healing reminds me of some people I admired in a previous life, and at no stage did anyone question what was happening or went "this guy is nuts". And this is actually not historically inaccurate, as in the late 1800s and early 1900s, America - and in particular the western coastal cities - were in the midst of The Third Great Awakening, a Pentecostal takeover of American ecclesia that featured such fervent revival-style preaching as demonstrated in this movie.
We also see the tussle between religion and capitalism, and while there is some truth to the phrase "you can't serve both God and money", the way I see it is that Plainview's investments (capitalism) create the material benefits that makes lives easier for the residents of Little Boston, but it's the religion that holds society together.
Another interesting theme is Plainview's underhanded ways of going about things. For example, taking his deceased employee's son to be his own to be used as a prop, lying to the Sunday family when he was passing through their property, lying to HW about briefly speaking to the conductor, and even deciding to get baptised depsite having no sense of religion or God. Day-Lewis plays the capitalist quite well!
Which leads to me the next point - Daniel Day-Lewis' acting is awesome. I would not be surprised if Day-Lewis actually went away to learn how to prospect, and then broke his leg just so he could learn how to drag himself around in order to make the opening scene work. On that aspect, Paul Dano as both Sunday brothers was spectacular as well! It turns out that the two roles were going to be split between two actors, but the other actor was let go and the other Sunday brother was made a twin, meaning Dano had to quickly get up to speed. He also did a great job!
How some of those shots were filmed, ESPECIALLY in the first half hour where we see things down oil wells. In fact, one of the things that stands out is the attention to detail - If you told me Paul Thomas Anderson time-travelled with a crew to make this movie, I would almost believe you because that's how realistic this felt.
The cinematography was all-round excellent.
I honestly can't find much to fault with this movie and it's easily deserving of it's Best In Class status! Maybe the only problem is the title - for a movie titled "There Will Be Blood", there's very little blood (except for right at the very end with Sunday's death).
STAR RATING: 5/5
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