There Will Be Blood

Storyline

Written, directed, and co-produced by American auteur Paul Thomas Anderson and loosely inspired by Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil!, There Will Be Blood (2007) is widely heralded by international film critics, historians, and scholars as the single greatest cinematic achievement of the twenty-first century, winning two Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Cinematography. The film charts the ruthless, monstrous rise of Daniel Plainview (Sir Daniel Day-Lewis in an astounding, Oscar-winning tour de force of terrifying gravitas and unhinged physical immersion), a solitary silver prospector who transforms himself into an all-powerful, predatory oil tycoon in the barren frontier scrubland of turn-of-the-century California. Posing as a wholesome family businessman alongside his adopted orphaned son H.W., Plainview travels to the impoverished town of Little Boston to swindle devout ranchers out of drilling rights over immense subterranean petroleum reserves. Plainview's obsessive, misanthropic thirst for wealth and absolute autonomy—famously declaring: 'I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people'—brings him into apocalyptic ideological warfare with charismatic young evangelical preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano in an equally brilliant performance of narcissistic religious zeal). As roaring wooden oil derricks burst into fiery geysers and Plainview's soul curdles into paranoid isolation, their conflict escalates to a horrific, bowling-alley confrontation: 'I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!' Lensed with stark epic majesty by Robert Elswit and propelled by Jonny Greenwood's dissonant, percussive orchestral score, There Will Be Blood is an unyielding American tragedy dissecting capitalism, faith, and greed.