There Will Be Blood is the best film of 2007. It is a character study focusing on Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day-Lewis in a performance that fiercely crystallizes the epic vision of the movie's director.

Paul Thomas Anderson has given us some noteworthy films already, like Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999). His films' ensemble casts inevitably led to comparisons with Robert Altman (M*A*S*H, Nashville), another director known for working with large casts. And in fact, the reason we haven't seen a film from Anderson since 2003's Punch-Drunk Love is because he was serving as back-up director for Altman's last film, A Prairie Home Companion, as Altman's health was already failing. With an eye towards one of Altman's more intimate films, Blood is distinctly influenced by other great directors.

The film opens over a vast desolate landscape, seemingly silent. But Jonny Greenwood's score rises to an almost deafening pitch in a piece inspired by the composer György Ligeti's work. Ligeti is best known for music that appears in Stanley Kubrick's films, 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining. Here we get a sense of what this film will be about, because just as this music is used to evoke a certain alienation of Kubrick's protagonist from the world he finds himself in, Blood's Plainview is also an outsider, a misanthrope. It is his ambition to build an impregnable wall around himself that drives him to seek oil in this wasteland.

As the opening sequence continues, Plainview, in a moment of weakness, takes in a boy orphaned by the death of his father, one of Plainview's oil riggers. He names him H.W., and conspiratorially makes him an accomplice in pursuit of his goal. His relationship is where we see him at his most vulnerable. They are led to Little Boston, a poor community, where they were tipped off by Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) that there is oil to be had. Plainview convinces the community to sell him their land, and in return he'll employ the lot of them in helping him fulfill his vision. These scenes are reminiscent of Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller. That film's McCabe (Warren Beatty) mysteriously comes to the old mining community of Presbyterian Church where he has dreams of getting rich opening a brothel to serve the miners. Like McCabe, Plainview must appease the community (in the person of Eli Sunday - Dano again - Paul's twin brother) by promising to build a church.