The first fourteen minutes of There Will Be Blood have
almost no dialogue whatsoever. It may start to remind you - looking at
the rough western terrains - of Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
(1966), with a similar quiet beginning. But it had cowboys, gunshots, people
getting scared of strangers with guns, old cowboy bars - all such intriguing
prospects. Here, there’s a lonely man who’s relentlessly struggling to strike
something in a pit at the turn of 19th century. There is Daniel
Day-Lewis in one of the greatest performances in the history of films. There is
an innocent child who’s being fed milk in a bottle nipple soaked in liquor.
There is oil. There is a constantly moving camera that characterizes Paul
Thomas Anderson’s cinema. There’s a somewhat distressing background
score. And there is blood.
One holds his breath, unlike a thriller, for
something better than that, for the giant of a film that follows. Paul Thomas
Anderson has reached the pinnacle of his film-making career with There Will Be
Blood, a modern classic, an epic film of greed, betrayal, violence & lies.
It’s work that can be compared to the greats of Griffith, Welles, Kurosawa,
Coppola etc. A film that invents so much in its manner of story-telling &
style, it knocks the clichés hard in the face. It’s cinema reinventing itself
through a channel that’s a combination of Paul Thomas Anderson & Daniel
Day-Lewis.
Based on Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel ‘Oil’, There
Will Be Blood tells us of a Daniel Plainview - played & made immortal by
Day-Lewis - a roughneck at the turn of 19th century in search of
oil. He finds it with all his hard work and soon becomes a wealthy oilman with
a resonant voice, fine suits and a commanding presence; on his way to become a
ruthless tycoon. His only partner in his business is his adopted young son, a
boy named H.W. (Dillon Freasier). He’s alone otherwise, even if we think a
close associate Hamilton (Ciarán Hinds) will be someone he’ll confide in. Along
comes a babyish-faced Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) telling him of a Sunday Ranch
that will have oil, in the vast infertile lands of California. It’s a lesson of
American history to know that the now prosperous Californian lands once did not
grow corn. The people there were thus devoid of bread which, “in the
magnificent country” of theirs, was a luxury to them.
The art direction is absolutely brilliant in
depicting the underprivileged grandeur of the early 20th century. It
helps the lonely devil of a man named Daniel Plainview establish his unfeeling
ways on to the people around him, especially at the Sunday Ranch, where the poor
owner Abel thinks Daniel landed there just to hunt quail. It’s only in Paul’s
twin brother Eli (played again by Paul Dano) the preacher that we see an adversary
to Daniel who’ll oppose him on the moral grounds along the lines of religion
although he’s offended when Daniel deceits him about his demand of the oil well
to be blessed by him.
Plainview is one of those rugged characters of
American history, who‘s greed & selfish ways make him an enemy of God and
man, both alike. H.W is just a tool for him to get jobs when he offers his
prospective clients “the bond of a family”, something that’s rare in the oil
rigging business. Perhaps he’s true, but a competitor who comes out to
California searching for oil is very true either when he says to Daniel, “It must be easy when you have
such a cute face to carry around with you.” And rightfully so, H.W. becomes a liability
when he is deafened when an oil well blows violently; its gigantic violence
between flames & smoke captured in a magnificent way by Robert Elswit, who
has filmed all of Anderson’s pictures.
The battle is between the ill-bred greed of the
oilman & the phony spiritualism of the preacher. There in the light of
rising flames that we see Eli’s face, with his prophetic calmness that heals
people magically but his mind is stirred that prompts him to - reasonably
although with greed - demand his bonus share when Daniel bought up the land.
It’s in the charismatic performance of Day-Lewis, in that potent & austere
mannerism, in that intensity of the character that we still connect to as a
protagonist even when he slaps & hits Eli and puts mud on his face. That,
Daniel does out of sheer frustration of H.W.’s illness is one matter & that,
the fake spiritualist in Eli will not be able to heal it, is another. But the
brutality of the act first brings out Daniel’s suppressed hatred for Eli, in the
violence of flesh.
It’s not as if this powerful tycoon is flanked by
secretaries in an office with splendor of a Godfather’s study with wallpaper
finish & a plush chair. This man is lonely, as he wants to be and he’s out
on the field amongst his workers. It’s interesting to note the small gap
between the laborer & the employer at that time. But Daniel’s hatred is not
just for Eli. When a Henry (Kevin J. O’Connor) comes along claiming to be his half-brother,
he lets his conversational guard down while drinking and we first start to
realize the inner rigidity with which this man is built. “I look at people
& I see nothing worth liking.” His hatred for people is built little by
little over the years and all these years he has been driven by the competition
that’s inside him. This fierce violence of spirit is rooted deep in the
American character.
When over the years, the ‘blood’ in the film title
has been synonymous with oil, it’s rarely been noticed that Anderson also
referred to the other blood. There is blood throughout the film, not in the way
the first time viewer will anticipate. There’s blood in those dark fourteen
minutes when H.W’s real father is slain in the rig accident, there’s blood of
Joe Gundha who dies in a similar fashion, there’s blood of Henry who confesses
his lie before Daniel takes his hatred out on him through a revolver. There’s
also the ‘blood of Christ’ that this sin has to be washed with, when the
preacher ‘slaps the devil out of’ Daniel who agrees to the ritual to gain some
land. The title of the film is a metaphorical portent in itself.
