Day-Lewis reigns in Blood

February 11, 2008 —

A couple of months ago, I described Javier Bardem's role as Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men as one of the most chilling since Hannibal Lecter. While I still hold to that, Daniel Plainview (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) in There Will Be Blood gives Chigurh a run for his money, as he is, in a more subtle way, even more frightening.

There Will Be Blood is based on Upton Sinclair's Oil! and takes place in the early 1900s when the oil industry was just taking off. Plainview is a small-time prospector at the beginning of the film, who soon finds success in New Mexico, where a young man comes to tell him of a prospect in Little Boston, California. The majority of the film takes place there, with Plainview leasing much of the local community's land, setting up multiple oil derricks and finding himself at odds with the twin (Eli Sunday, played by Paul Dano) of the young man that told him of Little Boston.

What remains one of the most shocking things about the film, for me, was the fact that it was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, whose previous work includes Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love, and Boogie Nights. Blood is nothing like any of these films, as it is a character study and period piece with political undertones. It shows a magnificent break in form for Anderson.

I know I've said this of a few films as of late, but I think that the sheer variety of sound that Anderson utilizes in Blood makes it the most interesting film score I've heard in years. During the opening sequences, the only sounds either come from the action of the film or a high-pitched rising siren sound. Later he utilizes loud, almost jarring, orchestral numbers and slow-building tribal music.

Blood utilizes its title as a double meaning. The first is its parallel of blood and oil - the price of one seeming to be interchangeable with the other. This idea is attached to the religious aspects of the film, as Eli is the striving founder of the Church of the Third Revelation. This theme has much to do with family ties, those forced and created. The second meaning is more direct, as there are a few vivid death sequences, mostly in the way of oil rig accidents.

Still, at the core of the film is Day-Lewis. He gives everything to Plainview, who starts out as someone you could almost empathize with - a man trying to make a name for himself - and slowly unravels on the screen into pure evil. What makes him so frightening is his heartlessness, when he does the unexpected. The realism behind his words and how, in all of this, he represents a man who achieves the "great" American dream.

And yet, I left the film unsure of how I felt about it. It may have been my inability to sympathize with any character except Plainview's son, who I could only pity, or perhaps it was because the film shows just how evil a human being can be. I'm not sure. Whatever the case, Blood, for me, only felt like a good film, not an excellent one.