There Will Be Blood has received positive attention for a number of reasons - Daniel Day Lewis' performance, the outstanding score, and Paul Thomas Anderson's outstanding vision. This movie deserves all the praise it's been receiving and more. He offers up a mesmerizing look at a turn of the century oil man that won't soon be forgotten.
PT Anderson is an amazing film maker. Every movie that he's made has been well written, well acted, and exceedingly detail oriented. He's definitely one of the most talented writer/directors working in Hollywood today. The other great thing about PT Anderson is his range - he's gone from a gritty casino-set drama in Hard Eight (aka Sydney) to the world of seventies porn in Boogie Nights and to a modern day ensemble piece that's too complicated for summation in Magnolia. He now expands his impressive repertoire with There Will Be Blood - an achingly deliberate, beautiful film.
The movie follows the life of Daniel Plainview who starts the movie as a humble prospector and ends up a ruthless but wealthy oil tycoon. It is of course, more complicated, but that's really the concept of the story which is based on the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair. The film spans over 20 years of Plainview's life and follows him through the good - striking oil, growing wealthy- and the bad - pretty much everything else in the movie.
Anderson has a reputation as an actor's director - someone whom actors want to work with and who can elicit the most amazing performances from his cast. This movie is no different. The acting is superb all around. Any review of this movie without speaking of Daniel Day Lewis. He gives an amazing performance as Daniel Plainview - so staggeringly amazing that one forgets that he's even acting. He has the ability to inhabit his characters which has been obvious throughout his career (see My Left Foot, Last of the Mohicans, and Gangs of New York if you doubt his abilities) but this performance takes the cake. If he doesn't win the Oscar this year, then there is just no integrity to the selection process anymore.
The rest of the cast is really a means of telling his story and figure into the plot rather superficially. The only other characters who impact the movie significantly are Plainview's son H.W. (who is struck deaf at the age of 10 in a mining explosion) and an over the top, young preacher named Eli Sunday (played by Paul Dano). The latter figures heavily into several key plot points but it's how he influences Plainview that is the topic of the film.
The movie has a really unique tone, vascillating between moments of extreme tension and deliberate slowness. This is due, in large part, to the score - an eerie collection of ethereal tones composed by Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood. Never before has a score so influenced my emotional involvement in a film. PT Andersons' use of visuals also contributes to the tone and pacing. He opts for long takes which are frequently wide angle, allowing for a full appraisal of the action. This approach is extremely successful in conveying the despair and isolation essential to the story.
