There Will Be Blood

I really had no idea what to expect when I walked into There Will Be Blood. I mean really, I never saw a trailer for it, and look at that poster. How am I supposed to know what it is about? All I heard was that it was about an oil prospector and it had been nominated for best picture in pretty much every awards show for 2007. So obviously I had to see it right? Right.

The film starts out depicting the main character, Danial Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis; Gangs of New York) striking his first plot of oil, while simultaneously breaking his leg. We then see a few years later, Daniel acquiring a "son." The first 10 minutes of this movie are completely without dialogue, or even a spoken word for that matter. It is an extremely interesting way of presenting the background for the rest of the movie to build on, and I thought it was quite effective.

The next two and a half hours of There Will Be Blood are spent following the exploits of Daniel and his business partner/son, as they build an oil industry empire. The majority of the film takes place in a town that Plainview has practically completely purchased (save a few acres) for the purpose of extracting the oil from underneath. There are some interesting conflicts between Daniel and the town's resident preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano; Girl Next Door, Little Miss Sunshine), who's sermons make the "Hallelujah! Praise the Lord" congregations look like a gathering of Buddhist Monks.

There are a few scenes that I personally thought were filmed quite exceptionally. The first is when Daniel's main oil rig finally strikes oil. The sudden burst knocks his son from the rafters and renders him deaf. The director of photography must have gone hog-wild (yes, I said it, so what?) over these beautiful shots of the oil geiser, which eventually becomes engulfed in flames. The towering inferno rages on through the night, which provides a perfect background for these bewildering images to be portrayed on screen. There is also a fantastic scene where Mr. Plainview and his alleged brother begin marking the way for the oil pipeline that will be built. The cinematography in accord with the music make for a very interesting cinematic journey for these two men. However brief, it was one of my favorite parts of the movie.

Once There Will Be Blood begins to come to a conclusion Plainview no longer spends his days in the field. Instead he lives a life of solidarity and teeters on the edge of psychosis. It is in these last scenes that Day-Lewis gets to really bust out his acting chops. It is Loaded with emotional exchanges between his now grown-up son and his old friend Eli, which all leads to the final few minutes. This is one of my favorite endings of 2007. Throughout the movie you may wonder why the title is what it is. You will find out. There will be blood.

4/5 Stars