“There Will Be Blood” tells a common tale a different way
“There Will Be Blood” is not a conventional movie by any stretch of the imagination. I knew I was watching a very different movie when the first 10 minutes of the film were completely dialogue-less. Daniel Day-Lewis (“Gangs of New York”) plays Daniel Plainview. Referring back to the start, we see how determined of a man Daniel is. He’s doing his own mining when he falls down a deep hole and breaks his leg. But still all he can think about is work. He crawls out of the pit, broken leg and all, still thinking about the oil he’s going to find down there.
He soon becomes a foster father of sorts, when one of his oil well workers is killed, leaving behind a son. Daniel takes the boy under his wing, but like many things, he does it more for himself than the kid.
Daniel is the most confident man a person could ever meet. He travels the country, slickly talking people into leasing him their land so he can drill it. Day-Lewis plays Daniel with such conviction that it’s hard to even tell it’s Day-Lewis. Daniel’s voice is entrancing – I couldn’t help but think if oil made a sound it would sound like his voice.
One day Daniel is approached by a young man named Paul. Paul offers to tell Daniel about his hometown, where “oil bubbles out of the ground.” After Daniel visits the town, New Boston, he soon finds out Paul was right and begins to buy up all the land. He also finds himself battling the power in the town, which belongs to Paul’s brother Eli, the town’s preacher. Paul and Eli are played by the same person (Paul Dano, “Little Miss Sunshine”), but we never see them on screen together, which was very confusing to me (one of the things that kept this movie from greatness).
After Daniel snubs Eli for the blessing of the new oil well, they become lifelong enemies. Daniel builds a fortune, but nothing can help him because he is a broken and lost man. All he cares about is beating his competition. He is completely driven by his ego, not money. He slowly walks the road of madness. He builds a giant mansion, much like Charles Foster Kane in “Citizen Kane,” and does nothing with it. He uses his indoor bowling alleys to sleep on.
The music in “There Will Be Blood” is very odd. At some times it really helps build suspense in the movie, especially in the first 10 speechless minutes. But there are other times where it almost provides false information of sorts, making you think something intense is going to happen, and then it doesn’t.
Overall, “There Will Be Blood” is worth seeing. Day-Lewis is a shoe-in for the Best Actor Oscar, of that I’m sure. He’s amazing in this. And although the story of a callous man gaining and losing his fortune has already been told many times (“American Gangster,” “Citizen Kane” and “Scarface,” to name a few), “There Will Be Blood” still finds a different way to tell the old tale.
Grade: A-
aaron.peck@aggiemail.usu.edu