Loyola Greyhound

Issue date: 1/22/08 Section: Arts & Society

Media Credit: www.rottentomatoes.com Daniel Day-Lewis steals the show in, "There Will be Blood." The film is mostly devoid of dialouge, but this does not take away from Lewis's talent.

If you are going to name your film, "There Will be Blood," there certainly better be some kind of literal or metaphorical blood involved. In this case, there is a big heaping vat of it.

Paul Thomas Anderson's vision of an Oil prospector at the beginning of the 20th century takes a bizarre turn as it delves into topics of greed, religion, and the darkest corners of human nature.

The storyline is fairly linear. A cunning oilman strikes it rich in the Texas wilderness and in the process loses his sanity. Sounds simple, right? Well, not really. The first 15 minutes of this epic two-and-a-half hour film (note I call it a film because film suggests that it is somehow a piece of art) lacks dialogue. In fact there is surprisingly little dialogue, therefore the movie's score accompanies the actors like an invisible sixth man. Compellingly, the music juxtaposes the images on the screen in a way that they flow cohesively.

For a director to cast Daniel Day-Lewis is like inviting a person into your home to rob you blind. He simply steals the film. In recent years Day-Lewis has been in acting limbo; he does not find himself in a Not Another Spoof of an Insert Genre Here Movie, but he also does not pass up a sure thing either. Ironically, partly what makes "There Will be Blood" a "sure thing" is Daniel Day-Lewis. He plays the role of Daniel Plainview similarly to that of Bill the Butcher in Scorsese's, "Gangs of New York." Grizzled and set in their ways, these characters make the world in which they live in work for them and make no apologizes for it. Plainview is a character of devolution. As the movie progresses Plainview regresses, becoming more sinister. The only other piece of acting worth even commenting on is Paul Dano who plays Eli Sunday. A far cry from his role in "Little Miss Sunshine," Dano's penchant for the awkward radiates from the screen as he play an almost cult figure who screams Bible verses and cures little old ladies of arthritis by wrestling with invisible demons. Eli proves to be a formidable force in Plainview's path to lunacy, but then again Eli is nothing that a bowling pin cannot take care of.

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