The opening of P.T. Anderson’s latest epic scaled drama plays like a challenge by Anderson to both himself and his devotees. After years of comparisons – both favorable and not – to Robert Altman thanks to his incredibly talky and multi-pronged scripts and a stint as Altman’s eyes and ears as a de facto second director on set of Altman’s final film – acting as eyes ears and hands for the aging director who spent the bulk of A Prairie Home Companion in an easy chair to preserve his failing health – Anderson takes the exact opposite approach on There Will Be Blood.
Opening with an extremely lengthy sequence played entirely without dialogue Anderson’s oil patch drama is, in many ways, an anti-Anderson film, one based on minimalist rhythm and tone and entirely absent Anderson’s trademark stylistic flourishes and pop culture savvy. It is an interesting approach for Anderson, one entirely at odds with his entire body of work to date. And, thanks in no small part to an absolutely riveting performance from Daniel Day Lewis, his willingness to change things up has resulted in arguably Anderson’s finest film to date, the high point of an already sterling career. The length, content, minimalist approach and lack of major star power virtually guarantee that it will die an ignoble death at the box office – a fate Anderson should be well familiar with by now – but financial success or no There Will Be Blood is a prototypical, archetypal example of purely American cinema at its finest.
Lewis is Daniel Plainview, a solitary, obsessive man drawn to California at the turn of the century in the height of the gold rush. His strike is successful, he hits gold at the bottom of his hand dug shaft but a fluke accident reveals something far more valuable. Without intending to do so Plainview has become an oil man, his fortune bubbling up from the base of the shaft. His initial chance strike parlayed into larger and larger wells over the years Plainview arrives in the failing town of Little Boston ten years later, accompanied by his middling-successful crew and the adopted, orphan son of a worker felled in an accident years before, drawn by the story of oil so plentiful that it literally seeps up trough the ground. Little Boston will both make and unmake Plainview’s life.
There Will Be Blood is a striking success both as a character study - Lewis bringing Plainview to glorious, complex life – and as political commentary. Plainview is clearly America itself, a man made great by his own obsessive hard work and a little bit of luck but also ultimately destroyed by the very same characteristics that made him great. Anderson hangs enormous themes on his lead actor’s shoulders, embodying within him a story of pure capitalism, the rise of the oil economy, social manipulation via religious fervor and ‘family values’, and, finally, the sheer destructive power of pride coupled with insecurity. It’s richly complex stuff, this, subject matter that very few could handle and in Daniel Day Lewis Anderson has found the perfect match for his material.
With his earlier work Anderson came across something like that annoying guy in college. You know, the one who was smarter than you, more talented than you, better looking than you and knew it all. While you couldn’t help but admire his work – and I still consider Magnolia to be very nearly a perfect film – the accusations that Anderson seemed a little bit smug, a little bit style over substance, had the ring of truth to them. With There Will Be Blood, however, the enfant terrible has grown up. The raw talent has been refined, the promise has been realized. Anderson is no longer one of America’s bright young talents, he is no longer one of the great hopes for the future. That future has arrived and Anderson is, quite simply, one of the truly great film makers working today.