There Will Be Blood (2007)

It’s an over 2 ½ hour of movie that makes the simple point that “people suck!” Sure, you have Daniel Day-Lewis, or as my friend Bryan calls him, Day-Lewis. Day-Lewis is great. He should get another Oscar for his performance. It was rare treat. He is totally engrossed in the character, and it is like nothing you have seen before. Another Oscar should go for cinematography. It was beautiful. The look of the film was authentic too. My grandfather grew up in rural California during the same time of the film, and the buildings and scenery looked like pictures of Fontana, California from those days, which was cool for me because, I was like “Cool! Now I’ve seen it” – at least in a movie, albeit a long one.

The movie takes you through rise of evil Oilman Daniel Plainview, from the time he is prospector in solitude till he is sociopathic old man living a mansion in Beverly Hills, California. The crux of the story takes place in rural California when Plainview buys up the land. Evangelical fundamentalist preacher and false prophet Eli Sunday, played by Paul Dano, becomes a thorn in Plainview’s side, because both try to have control of the town. The rest of the movie unfolds, in a very long way, it goes through the life of Plainview’s relationships to his son, Eli, and the oil expansion. There really isn’t a plot here. It is more like an exploration into the dark side of human nature, although in Plainview’s case he is a highly functional psychopath, drunk on greed, and power. It is really ugly, and the same time realistic.

The movie is always engrossing but soooooooooooooooo long! The music by Johnny Greenfield from Radiohead is boring. He uses a motif of hard dissonance, which might sound like Radiohead from the Kid A days, but it mostly sounds like the THX movie when they introduce the product.

There Will Be Blood, and there is plenty of it, is loosely based on a Upton Sinclair novel Oil. You might remember him from The Jungle.

It is an interesting movie to see in this era of the Oil Wars and the petrol-economy, because there has been so much blood; just look at Iraq. The obvious comparison in film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; just as gold made men crazy, homicidal, and evil, so does Oil.

I can’t say this is a date movie. For film aficionados, this is a must see. It is certainly one of the best movies this year. That being said, it is like an emotional journey that leaves you feelings sick at the end.