There Will Be Blood

Coming into There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson had already directed three terrific films in Boogie Nights, the great Magnolia and the underrated Punch-Drunk Love. However there was nothing in his work that could have hinted where he would go next, an epic period drama about the greed and cruelty possessed by the human race. Think of it as Citizen Kane in hell. Daniel Day-Lewis plays Daniel Plainview in the best performance of the decade. The best way to describe his character would be to quote Mike Tyson’s description of Don King in the 2009 documentary Tyson: he’s a ‘wretched, slimy, reptilian motherfucker.’ Plainview is hateful towards all. He puts on an act of a sincere family man when he needs to, using his son, H.W., as a prop to get to the oil he desires. Once his son loses his hearing in an accident, Plainview no longer has any use for him and sends him off to a boarding school. When H.W. comes back to him later in the film to reveal that he will be drilling his own oil, a competitor, Daniel chases him out of the house berating him as a “bastard from a basket” and telling him he is not his son. There is no sadness or veiled-attachment to be found in this vintage Day-Lewis explosion, just pure hatred. Was Daniel Plainview evil from the start, or is he driven to this point by a combination of greed, power and alcoholism? Read more…