‘Demonic’: Daniel

Day-Lewis as the
ruthless oil
pioneer Daniel
Plainview.

[ FILM OF THE WEEK ]

Where there’s a well…

THE MAIN EVENT > Paul Thomas Anderson’s impressive oil epic is a powerful evocation of exploitation
PHILIP
FRENCH
There Will Be Blood
(158 mins, 12A)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano,
Ciarán Hinds, Kevin J O’Connor,
Dillon Freasier
THIS FILM is Paul Thomas Anderson’s
first since the curious Adam Sandler
comedy Punch-Drunk Love five years
ago. Dedicated to his mentor, Robert
Altman, it’s inspired by a long-forgotten
novel, Oil!, written in 1927 by the muck-
raking socialist author Upton Sinclair,
now known largely for The Jungle, his
fictional account of the appalling condi-
tions in the Chicago meat-packing indus-
try that in 1906 led to crucial legislation.
The film’s resonantly Old Testament title
comes from the seventh chapter of Exo-
dus where God, via Moses, orders Aaron
to smite the waters so that ‘they may
become blood; and that there may be
blood throughout all the land of Egypt’.
In the context of the film this biblical
blood is oil, the contaminating element
dealt in by its forceful central character,
the demonic Daniel Plainview (Daniel
Day-Lewis), oil tycoon and upholder of
untrammelled capitalism.
In early 20th -century California
Plainview is set up against a young,
charismatic preacher, Eli Sunday (Paul
Dano), fanatical creator of the Church
of the Third Revelation. The ironic
name ‘Plainview’ is given to a seemingly
benevolent straight dealer who oper-
ates covertly, and the preacher’s name
inevitably evokes Billy Sunday, the most
celebrated tub-thumping American
religion are conjoined as conflicting and
symbiotic elements of our time.
This hugely impressive film begins
in the deserts of the American south-
west, and no words are spoken during
the first 20 minutes as a lone prospec-
tor digs deep down underground. He’s
like some mythical figure in his deter-
mination, endurance and suffering, and
his exertions are accompanied by an
extraordinary score by the British com-
poser Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead
that’s dissonant, occasionally lyrical, and
uses strange combinations of strings and
percussion. He draws on Bartók, Stravin-
sky, Messiaen and Arvo Pärt and right at
the end of the movie calls in Brahms.
When the prospector strikes silver and
is stretched out with a damaged leg in an
assay office, we learn his name when he
signs a form ‘Daniel Plainview’.
He uses his money to switch to oil
drilling and eventually strikes it mod-
erately rich and adopts the baby son of
an employee killed down a well. Surro-
gate fathers of a dubious nature recur
in Anderson’s work – the porn movie
producer played by Burt Reynolds in
Boogie Nights for instance, or, Philip
Baker Hall’s gambler-assassin in Hard
Eight – and Plainview is another exam-
ple. Ten years later, established in the oil
business, he uses this sweet-natured lad,
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over-reaching New Yorker planning a
desperate heist.
No Country For Old Men (15) The Coen
whose milk he once laced with whiskey, ent producer-director John Sa
as a front of warmth and respectability The film and Daniel shown interest in it. In 1927, the year Sin-
while gulling poor Californian farmers
out of their land. Day-Lewis are clair wrote Oil!, Louis B Mayer cr
the Academy of Motion Pictur
One of his targets is the dirt-poor Sun-
day family who live on oil-rich land which
magnificent in Sciences as a company union to keep
labour organisers at bay.
becomes the basis for Plainview’s fortune.
But in the process he enters into finan-
their near-operatic, Sinclair ran for Gove
on the EPIC (End Pove
cial obligations to the local population
– schools, roads, water – and promises
horrific grandeur ticket, Mayer and the other s
conspired with Hearst’
Eli Sunday backing for his fundamentalist and radio s
church. This early rural California in 1911 of the dirtiest political campaigns ev
is beautifully realised. It shows the far is a deeply pessimistic, at times puz- mounted. Sinclair lost to a time-serv-
West in the process of change– moving zling film, and it seems to lack a political ing Republican non-entity and Maye
from the horse to the automobile – and dimension central to Upton Sinclair’s famously remark
the local station and rundown township life and work. Organised labour was a know about anything? He’s just a writer.
looks like sets from Bad Day at Black Rock significant force in the American West It would be good to see him honoure
and Once Upon a Time in the West. But it in the early 20th century, often involved this year by the academy Mayer cr
isn’t an idyll. Men die as the oil gushes in violent conflict.
forth, Plainview’s adopted son is seri- This has largely been ignored by Hol- There W
ously injured during a drilling accident, lywood, and recently only the independ- now and on general release from Friday
and little trickles down to the poor.
We gradually realise that Plain-
view and Eli are in their different ways A MAN APART
deranged, and each is out to control or Read Peter Stanford’s recent interview
destroy the other. Initially the oilman with Daniel Day-Lewis at:
seems a reasonable, ambitious entrepre-
→→ observer.co.uk/review
neur, neatly dressed, always wearing a
hat and tie, smiling seductively, speaking
quietly and precisely. But the measured
cadences, the drawn-out vowels, the
sharp consonants reminded me strongly
of someone, and I suddenly realised it
was John Huston as Noah Cross, the
Sounds great
ruthless Californian plutocrat and robber
baron in Chinatown. Plainview refuses
to be intimidated by or to strike bargains
with competitors, but there is something
much more than greed or independence
in his character. ‘I don’t like to explain
myself,’ he says, ‘I hate people… I have a
compulsion to succeed… I want to earn To order this week’s
enough to get away from everyone… I see reviewed CDs or DVDs
the worst in people and things.’ just call
Is this the product of a psychosis or
is it what unbridled capitalism in its
extreme form does to its exponents?
0870 836 0712
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Are such people and their visions nec- every CD or DVD featured, but in some cases

evangelist of his day, a man in league
with capitalism. In this parable, realistic
in its depiction of every day life and sym-
bolic in its force, oil and fundamentalist
brothers, Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee
Jones are at the top of their game in a
screen version of Cormac McCarthy’s
mordant border thriller.
essary for human progress? Anderson’s
film and Day-Lewis’s performance, mag-
nificent in their horrific, near-operatic
grandeur, offer no easy answers. This
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