The second act of There Will Be Blood begins with a wide shot of train tracks heading off into the distance. It's a classic Western image. But one that's disturbed by a slight movement and a chugging sound from along the right side of tracks. A small car carrying Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) and H.W. Plainview (Dillon Freasier) comes into view. The shot is a perfect metaphor for America's shift from steam power to the internal combustion engine, and Daniel Plainview's role in bringing that change into being. It is also indicative of the film's impeccable artistry.
There Will Be Blood is both in the mold of a classic Hollywood epic, full of big people doing big things in a big land, and a risky independent work that is undoubtedly challenging audiences hoping to get a look at one of the leading contenders for multiple Oscars. Above all, it is a true collaboration between its makers on both sides of the camera.
I just saw Daniel Day-Lewis at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and he looked so pale and gaunt. Daniel Plainview, on the other hand, is a ruddy, beefy bull of a man. It's hard to imagine that the two are built on the same frame. Day-Lewis is, perhaps, the most skilled physical actor I've ever seen. In There Will Be Blood he not only transforms his appearance so as to be barely recognizable, but has to carry a leg injury the entire film, subtly worsening its effect on his movement as Plainview grows older. In the movie's opening sequence, he has the air knocked out of him after falling into a hole. My chest immediately tightened up as I saw him gasping for breath.
The challenge of taking on the role of antagonist to Day-Lewis' Plainview fell to Paul Dano as would-be prophet Eli Sunday. Dano is, I think, equal to Day-Lewis in his commitment to his character, but both actor and part are noticeably lesser presences. On the one hand, this makes the film's final scene an anti-climactic. On the other hand, I think that this is a deliberate choice on the part of Paul Thomas Anderson. Eli is meant to be a lesser man, a charlatan grasping for a greatness he knows he doesn't have. Plainview may be willing to fill people's ears with sweet nothings to further his business, but at no point does he lie about what he can deliver when it comes to developing oil. If I had any doubts about Eli's pitiable emptiness, they were erased when he declared Daniel to be a sinner because he had ???lusted after women.??? One reason that so many seem to wonder after H.W.'s mother must be that Daniel seems positively asexual. This imbalance between protagonist and antagonist is one notable risk that Anderson takes. Another is making his antagonist a misanthrope and, eventually, a monster (something ably signified by the film's title and its gothic, old English-styled font).
If you begin to feel There Will Be Blood's length, it is likely due to the fact that it becomes increasingly difficult to sit and watch Daniel Plainview. First his son and then, briefly, ???brother??? Henry (Kevin J. O'Connor) provide Daniel with his links to the rest of humanity. As he loses or cuts away those links, his distance from others grows into full-blown hatred. Anderson and Day-Lewis take the frontiersman's typical unease with civilization, and civilization's unease with the frontiersman, and push it to a new level of mutual alienation. One of Daniel Plainview's unique qualities as a character is how he starts out as something of a classic American hero, taciturn, able to walk in society but without really trusting it, creating wealth from the sweat of his own brow, and then gets turned into a villain, full of bile, bitterness, and violence. This is redemption in reverse.
Johnny Greenwood's discordant score is another risky and challenging element of the film. Like Plainview himself, it is effective without being likable.
More subtle, but no less interesting, is Roger Elswit's photography. There Will Be Blood is shot in cool tones, an unusual choice for a movie where the characters spend hours working in the desert heat. However, it helps to punctuate Daniel's cold and calculating nature. The scene where he confesses his hatred for humanity to Henry is perfectly lit, bringing out both the fire and the ice in Daniel's soul.
Say what you will about the Oscars, in the case of There Will Be Blood, they are doing at least one thing that they should do, which is to draw attention to a worthy film that might otherwise only find a limited audience.
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Short-Circuit Signs