There Will Be Blood

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There Will Be Blood

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This widely acclaimed masterpiece and must see American epic features the Academy Award winning performance of Daniel Day-Lewis (Best Actor, 2007).
Daniel Plainview and son are independent oil men, looking for prospects in California at the turn of the 20th century. They are challenged by a young preacher, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), whose own ambition is matched by Plainview's. Their battle forms the centre of a scary, darkly-comic historical journey into an abyss of madness.










Loosely adapted from the Upton Sinclair novel Oil!, this operatic drama rivets us to the seat from the wordless opening reel and never lets us go. This is robust, fierce filmmaking with a staggeringly detailed central character.
Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) is a miner at the turn of the 20th century who turns his skills to oil drilling and soon becomes an expert. Then he hears about a patch of untouched oil-rich land in central California, so he and his son HW (Freasier) head west to trick the settlers to sell their property to him. He quickly moves in on the Sunday family, with trusting Abel (Willis) and daughter Mary (Foy), who's about HW's age. But son Eli (Dano), the local minister, starts preaching about the evils of the oil trade.

Nothing Anderson has done (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) prepares us for the full-bodied style of this film--so confident and deranged that it takes our breath away. The heart-stoppingly physical imagery is lubricated with mud, blood and oil, and Day-Lewis plays Daniel with the energy of Orson Welles in Citizen Kane: an American icon who is, frankly, unstoppable (although this story is more Howard Hughes than William Hearst). He's tough and unbending, but also a dangerously smooth talker, a charming devil. As the story continues over three decades, Day-Lewis' performance deepens and tightens into a terrifying portrait of gut-level greed.

When he's on screen, the other actors barely catch our eye. Although Dano is superb as Daniel's nemesis, an irritating thorn in his side. Eli is part hero and part villain, and only becomes simplistic at the very end. Meanwhile, Anderson makes sure the period details become mere background, so it feels utterly authentic without ever becoming fussy. A couple of big effects sequences are impressive for their sheer realism, most notably the climactic oil gusher.

Essentially this is an examination of the Christian proverb: What good is it if you gain the whole world but lose your soul? And indeed, the film feels like a biblical epic, from the acting and direction to Johnny Greenwood's smartly dissonant score and Robert Elswit's rich, dense photography. And as a parable about American ambition and excess, it's seriously haunting.




















Daniel Day-Lewis ...  Daniel Plainview
Martin Stringer ...  Silver Assay Worker
Matthew Braden Stringer ...  Silver Assay Worker
Jacob Stringer ...  Silver Assay Worker
Joseph Mussey ...  Silver Assay Worker
Barry Del Sherman ...  H.B. Ailman
Harrison Taylor ...  Baby H.W. Plainview
Stockton Taylor ...  Baby H.W. Plainview
Paul F. Tompkins ...  Prescott
Dillon Freasier ...  Young H.W. Plainview
Kevin Breznahan ...  Signal Hill Man
Jim Meskimen ...  Signal Hill Married Man
Erica Sullivan ...  Signal Hill Woman
Randall Carver ...  Mr. Bankside
Coco Leigh ...  Mrs. Bankside







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