Product Description
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Director Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is a
masterly, unflinching examination of a consummately evil man.
Daniel Plainview (via a transcendent performance by the great
Daniel Day-Lewis) is, as he likes to remind those around him, an
oil man: he finds it, he drills for it, and he makes money from
it. Following a tip from a visitor named Paul Sunday, whose
family sits atop a veritable ocean of oil, Plainview travels to
the town of New Boston, California, with his young son. Sunday's
preacher brother Eli (both roles are played by the excellent Paul
Dano) grudgingly accepts Plainview's ambitions under the
condition that he help fund the town church. As Plainview's plans
come to fruition, a series of events begin to fracture the
insular world he has constructed for himself, pitting Plainview
against Sunday and forcing him to become even more vindictive and
ruthless. Anderson proved with Boogie Nights and Magnolia that he
was adept at handling expansive storylines and layered plots;
however, he stakes out a cl here as a new master of the
cinematic epic. The film is visually stunning, and alternates
between lush widescreen s of the desert and meticulously
composed, darkly lit close-up of his actors, presenting complex
images of the American landscape and the souls that dot it. As a
narrative, There Will Be Blood is told with a sense of economy,
yet never at the expense of the film's inherently grand .
It's difficult to determine precisely what Anderson wants his
viewers to take from the experience: the film is, in the end,
appropriately complex and ambiguous. There Will Be Blood forces
us to confront Plainville, who seems to be a larger-than-life
personification of evil; that we don't entirely understand him at
the film's conclusion is not a shortcoming, but rather a tribute
to the depths of this most vile creature and this most brilliant
film.
Note: There Will Be Blood will be packaged in
environmentally-friendly cardboard made from recycled paper.
.co.uk Review
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If there's a screen performance in 2008 that comes anywhere near
to matching Daniel Day-Lewis' O-winning turn in There Will Be
Blood, then we've come nowhere near to seeing it. A tour-de-force
of acting and a career high for Day-Lewis, it's the highlight of
an extraordinary, really quite daring piece of cinema.
That said, we've come to expect nothing less from
writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, the man who previously
brought us Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love. However,
he's really topped himself in terms of ambition with There Will
Be Blood, an adaptation of Upton Sinclair's book, Oil! It follows
Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) who, when we first meet him in the
film's silent opening is attempting to mine silver, before he
discovers oil and slowly builds up an empire off the back of it.
There Will Be Blood then follows his rise to power, given the
vast riches that his oil brings him, concurrently exploring his
relationship with his son. It proves to be a long, complex,
stunning piece of work.
There's little room in There Will Be Blood for much more than
the sheer power of Day-Lewis' performance, but credit Paul Dano
(last seen saying an awful lot less in Little Miss Sunshine) for
attempting to go toe-to-toe with the leading man. He's a foil of
sorts for Plainview, playing a man as troubled and torn as
Day-Lewis' character, and it's a career high to date for the
young actor. The film, too, is a match for anything Paul Thomas
Anderson has done to date, and that's some achievement.
With no easy resolution, and a degree of complexity in its
characters that we all-too-rarely see from modern American films,
There Will Be Blood is a challenging, at times breathtaking piece
of cinema. It won't be to all tastes, and it adamantly refuses to
give easy answers, but it's as daring as anything youll see on
screen all year. And Day-Lewis' performance ranks next to any of
the all-time greats that you'd care to mention. --Simon Brew