“There Will Be Blood,”

EVIL POWER

“There Will Be Blood,” a film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson,stars Daniel Day Lewis, Paul Dano, and Ciaran Hinds. It is very loosely based on Pulitzer Prize winner Upton Sinclair’s 1925 novel, “Oil!”. However, perhaps to create a more engaging film, Anderson focuses on the character of Daniel Plainview (J. Arnold Ross, in the novel) and his trajectory from silver prospector in 1898 to oil tycoon in Southern California by 1911. Anderson fabricated Plainview’s relationship to his son, who, in the novel, is the tycoon‘s biological son, J. A. Ross, Jr., aka Bunny. Also, Anderson chose to ignore a huge portion of Sinclair’s novel that deals with the oil workers’ and railroad workers’ strike and the US entrance into the First World War. Neither major event was even alluded to in Anderson’s film, though, of course, the oil worker‘s strike in the novel affected J. A. Ross deeply.

Daniel Plainview, as played by Daniel Day Lewis in an extraordinary performance, is both charismatic and ruthless. “There Will Be Blood“ illustrates the conflict of wills between one man’s religious fundamentalism and another’s atheism and rampant greed, whereas the conflict in Sinclair‘s “Oil!” pits controlled material progress, pacifism, equality, and workers‘ rights, against unbridled, capitalistic greed.
A significant character in the novel, Paul Watkins, served as Ross’s son, Bunny’s, conscience. In the film, he is Paul Sunday, who disappears after a brief meeting with Plainview. Again, to heighten conflict, and to make a more interesting film, director Anderson magnifies the character of Paul’s fundamentalist Christian brother, Eli. Eli (played beautifully by Paul Dano, the non-communicative son in “Little Miss Sunshine"), believes himself to be a prophet and healer. He ends up as Plainview’s greatest nemesis.

“There Will Be Blood” is an epic film, beautifully shot in Texas's rocky, almost barren landscape by cinematographer Robert Elswit. Director Anderson does excellent work depicting early California’s entrepreneurial prospectors risking their lives mining for precious metals buried deep in the unforgiving earth. The film opens in the year of 1898. For the initial ten or so minutes, to a soundtrack by musical director Jonny Greenwood eerily reminiscent of the haunting score for Kubrick’s
“2001" there is no dialogue, just sweeping vistas of shrubs scattered on parched rolling hills against a white-hot, cloudless sky. The camera closes in on Plainview and his partner mining silver in a deep shaft down into the earth. The partner, who has brought his infant son to the site, suffers a fatal accident, so Plainview assumes parentage of the child whom he soothes with a baby-bottle of whiskey-laced water. From 1898 to 1911, Plainview takes the child he names HW with him everywhere, traveling from town to town, giving persuasive talks at town meetings to sympathetic landowners and officials, who see him as a doting father. He wants their land. One of the beauties of this film is its lack of exposition; we don’t need it.

Daniel Plainview epitomizes the rugged individual risk-taker who brought progress to the West though development (read: exploitation) of its natural resources. Progress which led to the establishment of towns, enabling people to move here and set down roots. Plainview cuts an imposing figure. He is opinionated, irreligious, and strong, as well as tall and handsome. His greatest asset, and he knows it, is his baby-face son, who takes in every nuance of his “father‘s“ spiel and manner. HW grows up absorbing everything about starting a successful oil business. Though Plainview is making a lot of money with small-yield derricks scattered around, he does not yet own his own land, capable of producing an endless supply of oil. One telling moment occurs in a later scene when Plainview admits that he has a strong competitive streak and doesn’t want anyone else to succeed. He sees the worst in people, a trait which is illustrated in the film‘s brutal final scene.


Enter Paul Sunday. He shows up in Plainview’s office with a map of his impoverished parent’s land on which oil sometimes puddles. Not an unusual occurrence. Plainview waves him off, but does an about face when Paul says that a big oil company has started drilling only a few miles away. Paul‘s fundamentalist Christian family’s meager income from goats’ milk goes to Christian charity. Estranged from his family for questioning his father’s beliefs, Paul asks that his meeting with Plainview be kept secret. We never see him again. Abel Sunday (David Willis), the old white haired father, grants Plainview access to the land; he goes exploring with HW, now about eleven (played by Dillon Freasier); the boy slips and falls; the sole of his shoe is black. Oil! Plainview offers Abel lucrative terms for his land, skirting the real reason for wanting it. Plainview then ensures his stake by buying up all the land for miles around, except for one holdout, who later uses religion to blackmail Plainview. Plainview is now ready to set his oil exploration plans in motion.

The discovery of oil in California is almost tantamount to the Gold Rush. Men begin moving into the area from all over, their families following later. Speculators promise the town money for public and civil services. The animosity between Eli Sunday and Daniel Plainview grows palpable as the film progresses. When the oil roars mightily from Plainview’s new derrick like some supernatural, monstrous beast, HW is injured permanently. (HW’s accident and Plainview subsequent reaction is writer, director Anderson’s total invention. More interesting than having HW {Bunny} go off to college.) Plainview, though ruthless and unforgiving, demonstrates his love for HW. Yet, though he can swing deals, work around any obstacle, he is flummoxed by the boy’s infirmity.

Up to now, the film had moved along rather predictably except for the glee of watching Plainview‘s manipulation and intriguing machinations. The pace heats up with HW’s accident, then literally and figuratively catches fire when the gusher explodes into flame. Silhouetted against the orange and red conflagration leaping wildly into the night sky from the blazing derrick, men racing away in all directions, and Plainview shouting orders and the derrick crashing to the ground, is one of the most dramatic, riveting, natural, non-CGI, scenes since the burning of Atlanta in “Gone With the Wind.”

Ciaran Hinds, with a perfect American accent, has the thankless role of Plainview’s right hand man, Fletcher Hamilton. He‘s ordered to spirit away HW to a special school. HW returns at age 21 (now played by Russell Howard) in a telling scene that shows that he is a bigger rival to Plainview than Eli Sunday, or the Big Oil corporations. HW has mastered his oil tycoon apprenticeship all to well. Fletcher Hamilton’s position is usurped by a character claiming to be volatile Plainview’s long-lost, pacifist, polar-opposite, brother. Hamilton comes off as only mildly perturbed and basically disappears from the film. Except for supplying some back-story during a tense scene between the alleged brothers, there’s no reason to introduce this character, unless, however, to point up Plainview’s growing murderous ruthlessness towards liars and cheats - - emphasis on “murderous.”


Vastly rich and living in uber-capitalistic ostentation, Plainview’s final scenes take place initially in his office with his son, then in his own private bowling alley in the basement of his mansion when a financially ruined Eli, in black, high-preacher garb, accessorized with a large silver cross pendant shows up. Plainview viciously reduces Eli to a sniveling blasphemer, a blubbering, bloody mess.


Critics and film organizations tout “There Will Be Blood” as the best film of 2007. Having already been nominated or won other awards, both the film and star have been nominated for 8 Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director and more.