Movie Review: The Third Revelation - There Will Be Blood

If you were trying to comprehend a monster, trying to boil it all down to its core, you could say that Paul Thomas Anderson’s fifth feature film is at heart about the struggle between capitalism and religion, wealth and faith. Yet here is a story of greed, of the corrupting influence of power; a film about the lengths that men will go to in order to succeed and just what that will cost them.

There Will Be Blood is a grand epic in the tradition of Erich von Stroheim’s Greed, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, John Huston’s Treasure of the Sierra Madre. You’ll find hints of George Stevens’ Giant, a dash of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, slivers of C'era una volta il West. The style of the film calls to mind the majestic ambition of 2001: A Space Odyssey, of Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven -- take all of these films into account and you may begin to understand just what you are in store for with this one.

The opening scene is a grandiose statement of ambition. Introduced into our world with a near deafening drone from Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s incredibly unique and ambitious score, we are faced with the shadowed spectre of Daniel Plainview, a pickaxe in hand, hammering away at the rockface, fiery sparks spitting away on impact. Faced with with such brooding images one cannot help but ponder the idea of a man at the gates of hell, hammering at the entrance in search of his destiny. This scene and the few that follow are punctuated by almost complete silence, hardly a word of dialogue spoken, these are men of the Earth, workers, labourers. They are men of action, not of words; watching them at action is all one need do to understand their world.

A baby baptised with a drop of the blood of the Earth in these early moments sets the tone for the new world that emerges throughout. Oil seeping from the ground brings the fortune that is sought after and as it makes its finder wealthy so speeches and monologuing come into play.

Now dressed in the fine attire his discovery affords him, Plainview makes pleas to small-town folk, urging them to accept him and his company. No longer the simple man, hammering at the Earth, now a man of words, a man of complications. A monstrously powerful entity begging to be let in with promises of hope and prosperity, and this is how the film continues on, father and son, side by side, preying on the weak, the seemingly helpless.

Article Author: Cigarette Salesman

A Film and Video Production graduate, loving music, adoring film and digging TV, since 1983. Football (either version) is good, Tennis is God, and Marlon Brando is something else all together. End.

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