Speech is silvern but silence is golden.
Paul Thomas Anderson knows that well.
And so, the first twenty minutes of his epic 'There Will Be Blood' are nearly without a word or even so much as a wasted gesture or movement. That might remind you of the stunning, compelling prelude in Sergio Leone's 'Once Upon A Time In The West', except for the fact that there is not even an Ennio Morricone score or gunslingers waiting for a train on the screen. All we get to see is one man with a pickaxe hunting for silver rather than the unlikely gold that will make him one day a millionaire without a heart.
We see him down a mineshaft, diligently digging up rocks and discovering a shard that glitters like chrome and, just when we think that he will get his hands on it without a hiccup, the film has Daniel Plainview breaking his leg in a ghastly accident. And while we see him gasp and moan in despair, let's not forget that it might be the last time when we are rooting for him to live.
Because it does not take time for this laconic, relentlessly determined prospector to transform into a hard-hearted scavenger who now lusts for the gold that will lead him to both his rise and fall: the black, oozing liquid gold known as oil.
'There Will Be Blood' is the hypnotically extraordinary story of this man, of his ruthless ambition and all his inner demons as they spill out and paint the grand canvas with strokes of greed, treachery and the eponymous brutality. It is bloody impossible to like a man like Plainview; it is just as impossible to look away from what he does, thanks to Anderson and the man bringing him to life. But I am getting ahead of myself.
As the sands of time flow, and as oil becomes the new symbol of power and capitalism, we see Plainview playing his meticulous game. He goes from village to village in the still-evolving Californian countryside, coaxing the honest, hard-working folks of these areas to give away their land while he builds gushing derricks that can have him soaked in all that black wealth. He has a gift for words, letting them roll out with a rough-edged yet velvety accent belonging to John Huston or any of those cinematic prospectors of yore. And he has H.W, the orphaned son of his erstwhile oil digger, whom he uses as a smiling, earnest face to convince that he is no scam.
There is little that this man delights in; there are no women around, there is alcohol but only perfunctory and does he even care a bit for his ward? Oh, but he loves oil and you can see his bouncy glee when the said treasure comes up from beneath the earth surging like a tide.
But Anderson, a storyteller as obsessed yet brilliantly dynamic as the protagonist himself, does not stop there. He pitches Plainview into the brilliantly constructed stage of a clash of mind and method. The self-confessed, trenchantly entrepreneurial businessman receives a tip that there is oil in the barren region of Little Boston. Off he goes, aided with H.W and his crew to play his game but someone seems to know all his dark secrets and all hell is let loose.
That man is Eli Sunday, a budding pastor whose equally obsessively devout father willingly surrenders his ranch to Plainview's evil designs. Eli, though, is no fool and he clearly gets beneath the wily capitalist's skin of affability. It is their battle of minds and egos that the film, adapted only crucially and not wholly from Upton Sinclair's 'Oil', captures with both big, bold strokes; there is Plainview's undisguised disgust and even hideous fear of the faith and there is Eli's sly and insidious knowledge of the snake-oil salesman beneath the other man's veneer of honesty. It is also a battle etched in astounding nuance: Plainview insults Eli by dismissing his sermons as nonsensical while the latter retaliates by holding the other hostage to the dark secrets of his soul. The two clearly know the game that the other is playing.
It also paves the way for an unexpectedly symbiotic relationship that seems to be the trademark of Anderson's typically enthralling character-driven cinema. Enmity and mutual hatred aside, the two men, both of whom are liars lining up their respective pockets, cannot live or even succeed without each other. It is a morbidly fascinating equation, something that the writer-director fashioned as well in the homoerotic spark between the two central men in 'The Master' and the love-hate bond between hippie detective Doc Sportello and straight-up Renaissance cop Bigfoot Bjornsen and the results have always been spectacular, but not quite as sensational as the way he ratchets up the unease between them.
The greatest character studies need monumental craft to bolster their fierce, no-holds-barred storytelling and 'There Will Be Blood' lunges for this, going far out on a limb on a visual and aural format that feels both larger-than-life yet real, both incredible yet intimate. Anderson regular Robert Elswit shoots the film with a scorching, sunbaked and soiled intensity, lingering poetically over gallons of the black liquid drawn from murky wells and frenetically zooming on the hustle and bustle of men and mechanisms. At times, Anderson lets his frames soak in the silences and the result is a visual style that borders on being haunting when the stage is set for a big confrontation. At the same time, the film looks visually immersive in its gritty beauty.
On his part, Anderson piles up the drama and the fireworks, aided in no small measure by Jonny Greenwood's extraordinary, elegiac score. The plot is a slow, leisurely brood over a campfire, letting Plainview succumb slowly but steadily to almost sociopathic alienation, but there is an overwhelming sense of darkness enveloping each new turn or twist. Random accidents happen, a derrick catches fire and people lose their lives and the director etches all his brutal, bloody touches with the bellowing power and sweeping spectacle of a Biblical epic. The canvas feels large and oddly metaphorical with the evolution of a money-minded culture that would dominate the country and yet the perspective is utterly human and devastating.
All the actors are extraordinary, with my special mention going to three solid performers who form a perfect supporting cast. Paul Dano, as Eli Sunday (as well as his unassuming twin Paul), is a real treat, a young actor who sinks into the repulsive, even horrifying skin of his sweet-faced yet stone-hearted false prophet. His almost manic gospel propels the film to sheer devilish insanity while his quiet, seething anger adds a throbbing streak of menace.
Newcomer Dillon Freasier is splendid as a quiet and reserved H.W who cannot help but devote his life, dignity and love to a man whom he, and us in the process, cannot fully fathom. And Kevin J. O'Connor is compelling as a quite, mild-mannered unlikely ally to Plainview who may or may not be his long-lost brother.
And yet, just like there can be no 'Citizen Kane' without Orson Welles and no 'Taxi Driver' without Robert De Niro, this is, ultimately, Plainview's tale and Daniel Day-Lewis' film. The ace performer has dabbled in repulsive yet utterly believable villainy before, creating the unforgettable Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting. But as Plainview, a man with a silver-coated, slithery tongue, a mind full of ambition and bravado and a heart turning into rock, he is simply unforgettable, both as a man we would love to hate and a man whom we cannot ever forget.
It is in every way a grandly Machiavellian performance, from the way he grins in cynicism, the way his unblinking eyes flare up in anger and the way he sizes up foes and skeptics with scathing words right down to the deliberately ravenous outbursts of rage and mocking humiliation that he lashes out at everyone. But the beauty of it lies in the graceful subtlety that the actor gets so right. His delight at the glimpse of his favourite treasure is as winningly convincing as the stray moments of pure heart and warmths that Anderson hands him, including one heartbreaking moment when he reminisces of his childhood memories with a gushing sincerity. It is a miraculous, indelible performance.
'There Will Be Blood' concludes with an epic standoff between materialism and faux religion in a ferociously stunning climax where chaos reigns and the titular blood is literally spilled on the floor. It is a moment of grandstanding filmmaking, of something as subversive as Anderson has handed us before; think of the rain of frogs in 'Magnolia' or the unashamedly raunchy mirror scene of 'Boogie Nights'. However, that is of course expected from a director now fully aware of the power of his own cinematic blows and it is goddamn one hell of a show to see him and Plainview, as Mick Jagger would say, 'paint the whole world black'.
My Rating- 5 Stars Out Of 5
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