Not strictly a review, and I'm aware I'm late to jump on the bandwagon with this, but I feel I need to share my thoughts on There Will Be Blood and hopefully persuade one or two people who haven't already seen it to go and see it now this instant.
Now, I met someone recently who told me that Paul Thomas Anderson was her favourite director of all time. "What do you think of him?" she asked me and, in a rare moment of sincerity, I told her that I had issues with Anderson (or PTA as I believe he sometimes goes by). I mean, favourite director of all time? Surely he's no match for a Kubrick or a Hitchcock or, dare I say it, a Lucas? And my issues with PTA run deeper even than that; I once took a girl on a date to the cinema to see Punch Drunk Love. It was our last, and I choose to attribute that dissatisfactory outcome directly to the quality of the film, rather than my own numerous personal failings pertaining to intimate relationships. Furthermore, I have, despite several attempts, not yet succeeded in seeing Magnolia all the way to the end (but I do enjoy the Tom Cruise scenes).
So with that in mind, I decided to see There Will Be Blood not for the much-touted experimental nature of the film, but for the Oscar-winning performance by Day Lewis as Daniel Plainview, the oilman consumed by ambition, self-destructive tendencies and ten-pin bowling.
And I was blown away. Not only by Day Lewis, for whom no adequate superlative has yet been invented, but by everything. There is nothing wrong with this film. It is flawless. It is a meisterwerk of the highest calibre. Kubrick, now somewhere in the Italian quarter of Heaven (you know, over by St. Peter's Pizzaria), is at this moment strumming bitterly on his harp and asking himself why he never made this movie while he was alive. Go and see it now.
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