The most ominous element in There Will Be Blood is undoubtedly its soundtrack. It haunts you from scene to scene, choosing to keep eerily silent now and then before it suddenly shouts out at you again. Music seems to be a weapon in this film – a weapon that forces you to pay close attention to what is happening on screen. It has a personality and life of its own, in some strange sense, and director Paul Anderson has used it almost as such. It came as little surprise to me that the man behind the film’s powerful music is Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood.
Based on Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil!, There Will Be Blood traces the life of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) in his journey from a small silver miner to a self-made oil baron. The film is set in the early 1900’s in the days around California’s petroleum boom, and the crisp cinematography captures the American landscape perfectly. As Plainview, the blood of an astute, almost ruthless businessman running in his veins from the minute we see him on screen, acts on a tip-off that there is a huge store of oil in a town out West, his young son H.W (newcomer Dillon Freasier in a strong performance) and he slowly go about building an empire. It isn’t as easy as it seems: their target oil well is situated right in the middle of a small, sleepy town where the entire congregation holds tightly on to the words that come out of the mouth of the church preacher, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano, whose complete departure from his role in last year’s Oscar-winner, Little Miss Sunshine, is remarkable).
There Will Be Blood is a not so much a drama as a sensory feast. The music and cinematography are truly brought out by the cast - a cast that interestingly, is devoid of any key female characters. I’d even go so far as to call it a masculine film. It is sharp, angry, dark and raw. As an essay on human psychology, for example, Plainview’s single-minded pursuit of power would make for a very interesting case study. And as a film, There Will Be Blood seems to say to the viewer that if it doesn’t cater to every palate, it couldn’t care less. It is unapologetically harsh. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Published in iProng Magazine, issue dated August 25th, 2008
