There Will Be Blood
There Will Be Blood
Starring - Daniel Day Lewis, Paul Dano, Kevin O'Conner, Dillon Freasier, Mary Elizabeth Barrett,
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Oil, Capitalism and religion, big subjects come together in a rare Daniel Day-Lewis film as he takes on the lead role of Daniel Plainview, an oil man who will stop at nothing to own the land and be the biggest tycoon of them all. When he is tipped off by a young man named Paul as to where a large new oil reserve is, he finds himself trying to convince the local community welded together by a local church headed by Paul's brother Ely (Paul Dano) who seems very sceptical of the motives of Plainview, who treats with contempt and then ditches his deaf son, has utter contempt for the local church, and gradually becomes more and more ruthless.
The movie has some of the most annoying sound effects, at key points a sound that feels like a swarm of noisy wasps at times ensures we lose the tension of the moment as you can't get away from the irritating sound. Much of the film has no acting at all, using the deafness of the son as an excuse for long periods of action but no words. When the acting did take place, Daniel Day-Lewis did a fine job, but was the only performance of note, Dano is annoying as the church leader to the point where at the points you are supposed to feel sympathy for him at the hands of the ruthless Plainview, you just don't.
All the characters have their serious flaws and the film leaves no stone unturned in exposing them. It seems to be a commentary on how money and relgion both corrupt the mind and does a fairly good job of giving a negative picture of both. The problem with that is it leaves nothing positive as a counterbalance, leaving a feeling of nothing left. The endgame game further confirms this when Plainview's apprent reconciliation with his son takes a further dark twist, and the cold-blooded finale with the church leader in a posh bowling alley, well acted though it was, exposes all the negative themes of the film, that human beings are not very nice, the religion is a farce, and that money can corrupt even the supposedly most god-fearing mind.
THE MOON OF LIBERTY VERDICT - RATING 'B' - A dark film without light, if there is any good in the world, you wouldn't know it watching this. Daniel Day-Lewis is very good though, and the final scene, while fairly depressing, is well done.
