There Will Be Blood, Oh Yes, There Will Be. There Will Be...

His milkshake brings all the boys to the oil yard

Today for our wedding anniversary my wife and I went to a romantic movie. Just kidding! We went to see There Will Be Blood, the spellbinding tragic saga of a fictional oil man from the late 1800s-early 1900s. I went in expecting a dark intense drama and instead saw one of the best movies released in years. Blood is the type of movie that hasn't been seen since the early 80's-an epic film that exists more to tell a good story than anything else. Anchored by a masterful performance by Daniel Day Lewis as frontier prospector turned savvy oil man Dan Plainview, the film tells his story from his humble one man Silver mining operation to his expansion to oil tycoon.

The story follows Plainview as his growing Silver mining strikes Oil. They skip forward to Plainview becoming a self made oil tycoon with his son in tow as his protege'. A tip leads to mining in a small California town where Plainview finds himself in a struggle for power against a local minister looking to parlay Plainview's money into financing his career ambitions.

There Will Be Blood has many parts that seem familiar: Power struggles between the wealthy and the Church, a ruthless rich man who has estranged himself from people and covering a character's life over the course of decades. But I can honestly say, after a lifetime of seeing movies, I've never seen a movie quite like this. Blood shows a full portrait of Dan Plainview, his selfish greedy drive and insecurity balanced against his love for his son. Meanwhile, the ambitious minister played by Paul Dano gives a fantastic performance as the seemingly devout holy man whose theatrical intensity masks his true intentions.

Paul Thomas Anderson, who directed one of my all time favorite films Boogie Nights, gives a clinic on expert direction 101. Not a single shot is wasted, every moment evokes both a sense of place and visual clues to the emotion of the story. The dirty claustophobia of the mines, the hellish hazards of oil derricks, the rugged open countryside of late 19th century California all come to life. Anderson shoots Blood as if you are there, not documentary style but with clever use of point-of-view shots to have the audience observe behavior rather than be told or explained on what it is. Oil and blood occasionally splatter right on the camera as if it was in our face. A great score adds tension throughout the movie as even what should be happy times for the characters have horror movie music.

Ultimately this is a tale of greed on every level-leveraging superior financial power, control of the community and emotional manipulation. Greed has it's cost and through this detailed character study you see its effects. And yet it's not preachy. Instead, its one of the most realistic depictions of a fictional human being I've ever seen. This is not a feel good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it is one of the best movies to come out in this decade.