Review of There Will Be Blood (2007) by Brooks C — 17 Feb 2013

Human behavior and characteristics is a very fascinating field. Many classic movies tend to use such topics to explore the many pit-holes that human beings can commonly fall into because we are a flawed species. Many things tempt man. Whether one resists or succumbs proves one's claim. There Will Be Blood is one of those films that try to follow the classic movie formula of exploring such vices with a bit of a modern touch. The result is a lackluster, incoherent, indecisive movie whose message is so chaotically delivered and distraught; I couldn't help but wonder what it was trying to teach and what it was trying to accomplish.

Set in California around the turn of the century, a broke miner named Daniel Plainview accidentally breaks his leg upon striking an oil reserve buried within his mining shaft. After starting his own business, one of the workers dies in an accident and Daniel takes in the worker's son. As Daniel and the young H.W. work to expand their refining business, a man named Paul Sunday informs them about a massive storage of oil underneath their property. The two begin to use this opportunity to their advantage by purchasing the land from the Sunday family, but are met with opposition by the young twin brother of Paul-the young priest named Eli Sunday who requires that Daniel pays $5,000 of his earnings to his church so he can achieve his equally ambitious motive. From there a rivalry ensues.

Being loosely based on a book entitled "Oil!" by Upton Sinclair and reportedly inspired by "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", "There Will Be Blood" is Paul Thomas Anderson's look at his characters through the issues of greed, business, power, oil, money, and religion. What follows is a bloated, ambiguous movie with unlikable, hollow characters and a confusing narrative. There have been many classics that have capitalized on the aspects of human behavior through the aforementioned concepts, but the main problem with this movie is that there is very little substance.

Before I elaborate on what I just said, I will first talk about this movie's positives. I will not argue about how well acted and shot this movie is. Daniel Day-Lewis has rightfully deserved his Best Actor award for his performance as Daniel Plainview. Paul Dano also delivers a great dual performance as twin brothers: Paul and Eli Sunday. Many of the massive backgrounds are wonderfully shot on a large scale and this movie does deliver some memorable moments. Some examples are the disaster at the oilrig that costs H.W. his hearing and the "I drink your milkshake" line.

Although, I say that this movie lacks substance due to how dull and badly interwoven the plot is. For a movie that tries to tackle such aspects of human thinking and behavior there's very little that this movie can offer in terms of reasoning. One of the problems is that this movie seems so caught up in its own style to the point to where it very vaguely, or totally forgets to fully analyze and deliver its message entirely.

I perfectly understand that these characters aren't supposed to be likable and are meant to be corrupt because of their ambitions within their areas of operation. Don't get me wrong. Such use of these types of characters can and have worked in such classic movies like "Elmer Gantry", "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", "Citizen Kane", "Gangs of New York", etc. What separates these movies from this one is that there was a charm of learning and understanding why these characters are operating within this world, what makes them what they become, and the prices they pay as a result of their methods.

For a movie that tries to dive deep into the emotions of greed and its correlation to business and religion, "There Will Be Blood" doesn't do a very good job at engulfing the viewer into the world nor its characters. If one wants to get involved, one has to explore both the processes of the operations and the consequences of the actions. This movie has very little exploration within the consequential realm. The fast behavioral and event transitions make the world that this movie tries to create very bland. Hence making each interaction feel forced. This fact doesn't develop the movie enough for this structuring to work.

When the rivalry between Eli and Daniel ended, I felt as if nothing was accomplished and that the point that this movie was trying to make was fundamentally flawed. Kurosawa once said that even if one has wonderful production value for a movie, but a bad script, the result would always be a bad movie. I know many people who like this movie and I have no problem with that. This is one of those style-over-substance movies, but due to its material I'd have expected something much deeper. "There Will Be Blood" is only the bare surface of what makes a great movie. If anyone reading this got into it, that's fine. But due to its many problems in the essential realms, it did nothing for me.