There Will Be Blood (2007)
I don’t think I appreciated this enough when I first saw it. Tough to be released the same year as No Country For Old men because it did deserve an Oscar.
While it’s themes on capitalism is pretty straightforward, I don’t feel it is hammering any point down. On its own it is a epic tragic tale of building a successful business empire from scratch and an exploration of what that process does to a person. Daniel Plainview isn’t merely an evil capitalist, and while not exactly sympathetic, we still see how his own ambitions breaks him and how he can’t deal with the complexities of upbringing his adopted son. He is not heartless and seems to genuinely care for his son, but his own success destroys his empathy and he cannot view any sort of human relationship on other terms than a business transaction.
The conflict with religion, impersonated by Eli, is equally interesting and not so clear cut either. Eli isn’t exactly a saint either and his style of practicing religion builds on the similar deceptions of regular people. In addition, the mystery of the Paul and Eli characters is an interesting one, because it is not completely clear if they are twins or something else is going on.
It was also interesting to watch this close to Gangs of New York because Daniel Day-Lewis is clearly bringing the same sort of character work and acting style to the set, but he is allowed to use better here.
Rating: 4.5