Review of There Will Be Blood

Anderson's epic, no less than his career, is both fearfully grandiose and wonderfully eccentric. A strange and enthralling evocation of frontier capitalism and manifest destiny set at the dawn of the 20th century, There Will Be Blood recounts the tale of a ferociously successful wildcat oil driller with the allegorical handle Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis). The telling is leisurely and full of process: From the deliberately dark and fragmented prologue to the wildly excessive denouement, this movie continually defamiliarizes what might sound like a Giant-style potboiler... This is truly a work of symphonic aspirations and masterful execution.
Daniel Plainview is surely one of the most magnetic characters in any recent story. The film mirrors him, building up his hatred piece by piece. It's fascinating how he constructs a narrative about himself as an oil man and a family man, violently rejecting anything that gets in the way of that image. This surface hides a pathological need for complete control-his true hatred is reserved for those he can't control, or who try to manipulate or control him. Fittingly, in his ultimate act of revenge on Eli, which finally settles a long-standing score between them, he loses control of himself. This scene is set to celebratory music that is transformed into a cruel, delirious irony. It's also interesting that both of the dominant characters-Plainview and Eli-are entirely unlikeable. What primarily sets them apart is, again, that Plainview is magnetic.