Review of There Will Be Blood: *
There Will Be Blood begins as a brilliant meditation on the harsh realities of mining and drilling in the early industrial era. Few words are spoken in this early part of the film, and I was spellbound by the montage of austerely framed images depicting men in life and death conflict with the earth.
Then we are introduced to Daniel Plainview, played as a moustache and old-timey no-nonsense voice by Daniel Day-Lewis in a role that becomes increasingly embarrassing as the film rolls on. Plainview seems like a decent man trying to raise his son by himself while forging an oil empire for himself. Despite an early and key bit of dishonesty in which Plainview (son in tow) attempts to buy up some prime oil land by pretending to be interested in quail hunting, the character remains sympathetic: a hardworking man with a vision, who builds a town and brings wealth flowing into previously barren land.
Even now some of the early poetry remains, in a stunning sequence in which oil is struck, deafening Painview's too-eagerly observant son for life, then igniting into a fiery plume which Plainview struggles to control.
At this point the film quickly degenerates into a hateful attack on capitalism. The novel the film is based on is by Upton Sinclair, so this should be no surprise. The character Plainview is intended to represent industrialists, and the early sympathy earned by Plainview is just a ploy, as we rapidly learn that he is nothing more than a vicious hateful murderer. With every business success he descends deeper and deeper into hatred until he eventually becomes a caricature of a comic book villain.
There Will Be Blood deserves one star for its early stylistic beauty. But in every other regard it is a malicious and nonsensical attack on capitalism and the industrial era.