Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of “Oil !,” Upton
Sinclair’s 1927 novel, “There Will be Blood” has received many acclamation from
the critics and won best film and best actor honors in 2007 from the Los
Angeles Film Critics Association.
Daniel-Day Lewis, known from movies like “The Last of the
Mohicans” and “Gangs of New York,” won the title for best actor and Anderson
the title for the best director.
The movie was shot over three months in 2006 from May to
August, in New Mexico and Marfa,
Texas.
Lewis portrays Daniel Plainview, an oil prospector who is
setting dynamite in silver mine in 1898. This venture leaves him wounded, but
he manages to reach to the claim office, bruised as he is. Plainview
turns out to be a greedy character, a man of very few words, who wants to take
every piece of land from the Californians.
Soon Plainview
starts an oil drilling business and, after an accident suffered by one of his
partners in which he loses his life, he becomes the adoptive father of
boy.
Anderson was
inspired by Sinclair’s novel and used his book as the base for the screenplay.
He first adapted the first 150 pages of the book and visited museums dedicated
to oilmen in Bakersfield. From here
the plot for “There will be Blood” picked up.
When he wrote the screenplay he had in mind Daniel-Day Lewis
as the main character and he approached him with the script. Lewis accepted the
role and he recently said in an interview that the reason why he took this part
was “"the understanding that he (Anderson) had already entered into that
world. He wasn't observing it - he'd entered into it - and indeed he'd
populated it with characters who I felt had a life of their own,” the New York
Observer said.
Even though it took Anderson
two years to raise the money for this movie, it finally reached the theatres in
the country.
The story is a very loose adaptation of the novel and it
bears stories about fathers and sons, ambitions, greed, and the dependence and
crave for oil at the turn of the century.
After we see how Daniel-Day’s character takes the baby boy
under his wing the movie jumps 10 years ahead and we see the boy, now named
H.W. Plainview (Dillon Freasier), who is learning the business of oil from his
adoptive father.
We can see how Plainview, even tough he is a misanthrope and
hates people and says that he would make money only to get away from all the
people, he hides his way of being behind joviality when it comes to convincing
somebody to sign his land to him.
His opponent is a young Pentecostal preacher named Eli
Sunday (Paul Dano from “Little Miss Sunshine”). His poor family owns land with
oil and wants submission from Plainview.
There is a rumor that the original actor playing Eli was replaced with Dano due
to the fact that the first one apparently was intimidated by Daniel-Day Lewis.
Dano proves to stand up to Lewis’s character.
Although with a tight budget, Anderson
succeeded in gathering a top team like production designer Jack Fisk (“Days of
Heaven”) and cinematographer Robert Elswit (“Syriana”).
The soundtrack is signed by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead.
“There Will be Blood” received positive reviews. Manohla
Dargis said in her review in the New York Times that "the film is above
all a consummate work of art, one that transcends the historically fraught
context of its making, and its pleasures are unapologetically aesthetic."
It was named the no.6 film in 2007 by the Associated Press film critic
Christy Lemire.
The movie is nominated at the Golden Globe Awards for “Best
Motion Picture” and “Best Performance by an Actor In A Motion Picture-Drama”-
Daniel-Day Lewis. It has also been praised by critics associations of New
York and Los Angeles.
Even though Anderson
is known from his previous works like “Boogie Nights” and “Punch Drunk Love”,
with “There Will be Blood” he succeeds in breaking out of the mold and turning
to another path for him as a filmmaker.
Directed by: Paul
Thomas Anderson
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Ciaran Hinds, and Kevin J.
O'Connor
Release date: Theatrical:
December 26, 2007
Rated: R
