There Will Be Blood

''There Will Be Blood'' is a 2007 American period drama film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, loosely based on the 1927 novel '' Oil!'' by Upton Sinclair. It stars Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview, a silver miner turned oilman on a ruthless quest for wealth during Southern California's oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Paul Dano, Kevin J. O'Connor, Ciarán Hinds, and Dillon Freasier co-star.

The film was produced by Ghoulardi Film Company and distributed by Paramount Vantage and Miramax Films. At the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival it won the Silver Bear Award for Best Director and a Special Artistic Contribution Award for Jonny Greenwood's score. It grossed $76.2 million worldwide on a $25 million budget.

''There Will Be Blood'' received acclaim for its cinematography, direction, screenplay, score, and the performances of Day-Lewis and Dano. Day-Lewis won the Academy Award, BAFTA, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, NYFCC and IFTA Best Leading Actor awards for the role. It has been widely regarded by critics as one of the greatest films of the 21st century, and it appeared on many critics' "top ten" lists for 2007, including the American Film Institute, the National Society of Film Critics, the National Board of Review, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. At the 80th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for eight Oscars (tying with another Miramax/Paramount Vantage co-production '' No Country for Old Men''). The nominations included Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for Anderson. Along with Day-Lewis' Oscar for Best Actor, Robert Elswit won the award for Best Cinematography.

Plot

In 1898, Daniel Plainview finds silver while prospecting in New Mexico but breaks his leg. Dragging himself from the pit, he takes a sample to an assay office and receives a silver and gold claim. In 1902, he discovers oil near Los Angeles and establishes a drilling company. Following the death of a worker in an accident, Daniel adopts the man's orphaned son. The boy, H.W., becomes his nominal business partner, allowing Daniel to present himself to potential investors as a family man.

In 1911, Daniel is approached by Paul Sunday, a young man who tells him of an oil deposit under his family's property in Little Boston, California. Daniel visits the Sundays' property and meets Paul's identical twin brother Eli, who is a local preacher. Daniel attempts to purchase the farm from the Sundays at a bargain price under the ruse of using it to hunt quail, but his motives are questioned by Eli who knows the land has drilling potential. In exchange for the rights to the property, Eli demands $10,000 for his church. An agreement is made and Daniel acquires all the available land in and around the Sunday property, save for one holdout, William Bandy, after he neglected to negotiate with him.

Eli asks for permission to bless the well before drilling begins; Daniel initially agrees, but then refuses to allow it when the time comes. Oil drilling begins and a series of misfortunes occur: an accident kills one worker and a gas blowout deafens H.W. and destroys the drilling infrastructure. Eli blames the disasters on the well not having been properly blessed. When Eli publicly demands the money still owed to him, Daniel beats and humiliates him. At the dinner table that night, Eli attacks and berates his father for having trusted Daniel.

A man arrives at Daniel's doorstep claiming to be his half-brother, Henry. Daniel hires him and the two grow close. A jealous H.W. sets fire to their house, intending to kill Henry. Daniel sends H.W. away to a school for the deaf in San Francisco. A representative from Standard Oil offers to buy out Daniel's local interests, but, after a perceived slight, Daniel refuses and instead strikes a deal with Union Oil to build a pipeline to the California coast. However, Bandy's ranch remains an impediment.

Reminiscing about their childhood home, Daniel becomes suspicious of Henry's story and confronts him one night at gunpoint. "Henry" confesses that he was a friend of the real Henry, who had in fact died of tuberculosis, and that he had impersonated Henry in the hope that Daniel could give him a job. In a fit of rage, Daniel murders the impostor and buries his body. Daniel then drinks heavily and weeps.

The next morning, Daniel is awakened by Bandy, who knows of Daniel's crime and wants Daniel to publicly repent in Eli's church in exchange for being given an easement for the pipeline running across his land. As part of his baptism, Eli humiliates Daniel and coerces him into confessing that he had abandoned his son. Some time later, while the pipeline is being built, H.W. is reunited with Daniel, and Eli leaves Little Boston to go do missionary work.

In 1927, H.W. marries Mary Sunday, the younger sister of Paul and Eli. Daniel, now extremely wealthy but a raging alcoholic, lives alone in a large mansion. Through a sign language interpreter, H.W. asks his father to dissolve their partnership so that he can establish his own independent drilling company in Mexico. Daniel reacts angrily and mocks H.W.'s deafness before revealing his true origins as a "bastard from a basket". H.W. tells Daniel he is glad that they are not related and walks out; Daniel continues to jeer at H.W. as he departs.

While Daniel, drunk, is in the private bowling alley in his mansion, he is visited by Eli, who is now a radio preacher. Eli offers to sell Daniel the property rights to the Bandy ranch, since Bandy has recently died. Daniel agrees on condition that Eli denounces his faith and his own credibility. Eli acquiesces, after which Daniel coldly reveals that the property is now worthless because Daniel's neighboring wells have already tapped and drained the same oil reservoir. Desperate, Eli confesses to having lost money in the 1929 stock market crash and having strayed morally. Daniel taunts Eli before chasing him around the bowling alley and beating him to death with a bowling pin. When his butler appears to ask about the commotion, Daniel announces, "I'm finished."

Cast

Themes and analysis

Many have seen the film as a commentary on the nature of capitalism and greed, and its inherent national presence in America. Daniel Plainview's "I have a competition in me" speech has been looked upon as key when analyzing the film from this angle.

David Denby of ''The New Yorker'' described the film as being about "the driving force of capitalism as it both creates and destroys the future" and goes on to say that "this movie is about the vanishing American frontier. The thrown-together buildings look scraggly and unkempt, the homesteaders are modest, stubborn, and reticent, but, in their undreamed-of future, Wal-Mart is on the way."

Others have noted themes of faith, religion, and family. James Christopher of ''The Times'' viewed the film as "a biblical parable about America's failure to square religion and greed."

Production

Development

After Eric Schlosser finished writing ''Fast Food Nation'', reporters kept asking him about Upton Sinclair. Although he had read Sinclair's book '' The Jungle'', he did not know about his other works or anything about Sinclair himself. He decided to read most of Sinclair's works, and eventually read the novel '' Oil!'', which he loved. Schlosser, who found the book to be exciting and thought it would make a great film, sought out the Sinclair estate and purchased the film rights. He thought that he would try to find a director who was as passionate about the book as he was, but director Paul Thomas Anderson approached him first.

Anderson had been working on a screenplay about two fighting families. He struggled with the script and soon realized it was not working. Homesick, he purchased a copy of ''Oil!'' in London, drawn to its cover illustration of a California oilfield. As he read, Anderson became more fascinated with the novel. After contacting Schlosser, he adapted the first 150 pages to a screenplay. He began to get a real sense of where his script was going after making many trips to museums dedicated to early oilmen in Bakersfield. Anderson changed the title from ''Oil!'' to ''There Will Be Blood'' because he felt "there's not enough of the book to feel like it's a proper adaptation".

He said of writing the screenplay:

Anderson, who had said that he would like to work with Daniel Day-Lewis, wrote the screenplay with Day-Lewis in mind and approached the actor when the script was nearly complete. Anderson had heard that Day-Lewis liked his earlier film '' Punch-Drunk Love'', which gave him the confidence to hand Day-Lewis a copy of the incomplete script. According to Day-Lewis, being asked to do the film was enough to convince him. In an interview with ''The New York Observer'', he elaborated that what drew him to the project was "the understanding that ndersonhad already entered into that world, ewasn't observing it e'dentered into it and indeed e'dpopulated it with characters who efelt had lives of their own".

Anderson said that the line in the final scene, "I drink your milkshake!", was paraphrased from a quote by former Secretary of the Interior and U.S. Senator from New Mexico, Albert Fall, speaking before a Congressional investigation into the 1920s oil-related Teapot Dome scandal. Anderson said he was fascinated "to see that word ilkshakeamong all this official testimony and terminology" to explain the complicated process of oil drainage.

In 2013, an independent attempt to locate the statement in Fall's testimony proved unsuccessful—an article published in the ''Case Western Reserve Law Review'' suggested that the actual source of the paraphrased quote may instead have been remarks in 2003 by Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico during a debate over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In those remarks, Domenici stated:

According to Joanne Sellar, one of the film's producers, it was a hard film to finance because "the studios didn't think it had the scope of a major picture". It took two years to acquire financing for the film. For the role of Plainview's "son", Anderson looked at people in Los Angeles and New York City, but he realized that they needed someone from Texas who knew how to shoot shotguns and "live in that world". The filmmakers asked around at a school and the principal recommended Dillon Freasier. They did not have him read any scenes and instead talked to him, realizing that he was the perfect person for the role.

To build his character, Day-Lewis started with the voice. Anderson sent him recordings from the late 19th century to 1927 and a copy of the 1948 film '' The Treasure of the Sierra Madre'', including documentaries on its director, John Huston, an important influence on Anderson's film. According to Anderson, he was inspired by the fact that ''Sierra Madre'' is "about greed and ambition and paranoia and looking at the worst parts of yourself." While writing the script, he would put the film on before he went to bed at night. To research for the role, Day-Lewis read letters from laborers and studied photographs from the time period. He also read up on oil tycoon Edward Doheny, upon whom Sinclair's book is loosely based.

Filming

Principal photography began in June 2006 on a ranch in Marfa, Texas, and took three months. Other location shooting took place in Los Angeles. The film was shot using Panavision XL 35 mm cameras outfitted primarily with Panavision C series and high-speed anamorphic lenses. Anderson tried to shoot the script in sequence with most of the sets on the ranch.

Two weeks in, Anderson replaced the actor playing Eli Sunday with Paul Dano, who had originally only been cast in the much smaller role of Paul Sunday, the brother who tipped off Plainview about the oil on the Sunday ranch. A profile of Day-Lewis in ''The New York Times Magazine'' suggested that the original actor, Kel O'Neill, had been intimidated by Day-Lewis's intensity and habit of staying in character on and off the set. Anderson, Day-Lewis, and O'Neill all denied this claim, and Day-Lewis stated, "I absolutely don't believe that it was because he was intimidated by me. I happen to believe that—and I hope I'm right." O'Neill ascribed his dismissal to a poor working relationship with Anderson and his growing disinterest in acting.

Anderson first saw Dano in '' The Ballad of Jack and Rose'' and thought that he would be perfect to play Paul Sunday, a role he originally envisioned to be a 12- or 13-year-old boy. Dano only had four days to prepare for the much larger role of Eli Sunday, but he researched the time period that the film is set in as well as evangelical preachers. The previous two weeks of scenes with Sunday and Plainview had to be re-shot with Dano instead of O'Neill.

The interior mansion scenes were filmed at the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, the former real-life home of Edward Doheny Jr., a gift from his father, Edward Doheny. Scenes filmed at Greystone involved the careful renovation of the basement's two-lane bowling alley. Anderson said it was "a particular situation, because it was so narrow that there could only be a very limited number of people at any given time, maybe five or six behind the camera and then the two boys." Day-Lewis later broke a rib in a fall during filming.

Anderson dedicated the film to Robert Altman, who died during editing.

Music

Anderson had been a fan of Radiohead's music and was impressed with Jonny Greenwood's scoring of the film '' Bodysong''. While writing the script for ''There Will Be Blood'', Anderson heard Greenwood's orchestral piece "Popcorn Superhet Receiver," which prompted him to ask Greenwood to work with him. After initially agreeing to score the film, Greenwood had doubts and thought about backing out, but Anderson's reassurance and enthusiasm for the film convinced him to stick with it. Anderson gave Greenwood a copy of the film and three weeks later he came back with two hours of music recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London. Concerning his approach to composing the soundtrack, Greenwood said to ''Entertainment Weekly'':

In December 2008, Greenwood's score was nominated for a Grammy in the category of "Best Score Soundtrack Album for Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media" for the 51st Grammy Awards. It features classical music, such as the third movement ("Vivace Non Troppo") of Johannes Brahms's Violin Concerto in D Major and Arvo Pärt's "Fratres" for cello and piano.

Greenwood's score was awarded the Silver Bear for outstanding artistic contribution (music) at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival in 2008.

Release

Critical response

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 91% based on 244 reviews, with an average rating of 8.5/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Widely touted as a masterpiece, this sparse and sprawling epic about the underhanded 'heroes' of capitalism boasts incredible performances by leads Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano, and is director Paul Thomas Anderson's best work to date."
On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 93 out of 100, based on 42 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Andrew Sarris called the film "an impressive achievement in its confident expertness in rendering the simulated realities of a bygone time and place, largely with an inspired use of regional amateur actors and extras with all the right moves and sounds." In ''Premiere'', Glenn Kenny praised Day-Lewis's performance: "Once his Plainview takes wing, the relentless focus of the performance makes the character unique." Manohla Dargis wrote, in her review for ''The New York Times'', "the film is above all a consummate work of art, one that transcends the historically fraught context of its making, and its pleasures are unapologetically aesthetic."

''Esquire'' praised Day-Lewis' performance: "what's most fun, albeit in a frightening way, is watching this greedmeister become more and more unhinged as he locks horns with Eli Sunday … both Anderson and Day-Lewis go for broke. But it's a pleasure to be reminded, if only once every four years, that subtlety can be overrated." Richard Schickel in ''Time'' praised ''There Will Be Blood'' as "one of the most wholly original American movies ever made." Critic Tom Charity, writing about CNN's ten-best films list, calls the film the only "flat-out masterpiece" of 2007.

Schickel also named the film one of the Top 10 Movies of 2007, ranking it at #9, calling Daniel Day-Lewis' performance "astonishing", and calling the film "a mesmerizing meditation on the American spirit in all its maddening ambiguities: mean and noble, angry and secretive, hypocritical and more than a little insane in its aspirations." James Christopher, chief film critic for ''The Times'', published a list in April 2008 of his top 100 films, placing ''There Will Be Blood'' in second place, behind only ''Casablanca''.

Some critics were positive toward the work but less laudatory, often criticizing its ending. Mick LaSalle of the ''San Francisco Chronicle'', challenged the film's high praise by saying "there should be no need to pretend ''There Will Be Blood'' is a masterpiece just because Anderson sincerely tried to make it one" and noting that "the scenes between Day-Lewis and Dano ultimately degenerate into a ridiculous burlesque".

Roger Ebert assigned the film three and a half out of four stars and wrote, "''There Will Be Blood'' is the kind of film that is easily called great. I am not sure of its greatness. It was filmed in the same area of Texas used by '' No Country for Old Men'', and that is a great film, and a perfect one. But ''There Will Be Blood'' is not perfect, and in its imperfections (its unbending characters, its lack of women or any reflection of ordinary society, its ending, its relentlessness) we may see its reach exceeding its grasp."

Carla Meyer of the '' Sacramento Bee'', who gave the film the same star rating as Ebert, opined that the final confrontation between Daniel and Eli marked when the work "stops being a masterpiece and becomes a really good movie. What was grand becomes petty, then overwrought." In 2014, Peter Walker of ''The Guardian'' likewise argued that the scene "might not be the very worst scene in the history of recent Oscar-garlanded cinema ... but it's perhaps the one most inflated with its own delusional self-importance."

Several months after LaSalle's initial review of the film, he reiterated that while he still did not consider ''There Will Be Blood'' to be a masterpiece, he wondered if its "style, an approach, an attitude... might become important in the future." Since 2008, the film has been included in the book ''1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die'' and every revised edition released afterwards. '' Total Film'' placed it at number three in their list of the 50 best movies of ''Total Film'' lifetime. In ''The Guardian'', journalist Steve Rose ranked it the 17th best arthouse film of all time, and in a separate 2019 ranking a panel of four ''Guardian'' journalists ranked it the best film of the 21st century.

Top ten lists

The film was on the American Film Institute's 10 Movies of the Year; AFI's jury said:

''There Will Be Blood'' is bravura film-making by one of American film's modern masters. Paul Thomas Anderson's epic poem of savagery, optimism and obsession is a true meditation on America. The film drills down into the dark heart of capitalism, where domination, not gain, is the ultimate goal. In a career defined by transcendent performances, Daniel Day-Lewis creates a character so rich and so towering, that "Daniel Plainview" will haunt the history of film for generations to come.

The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2007.

* 1st – Ethar Alter, '' Giant''
* 1st – Marjorie Baumgarten, ''The Austin Chronicle''
* 1st – Tom Charity, '' CNN''
* 1st – Manohla Dargis, ''The New York Times''
* 1st – David Fear, '' Time Out New York''
* 1st – Scott Foundas, ''LA Weekly''
* 1st – Stephen Holden, ''The New York Times''
* 1st – Tod Hill, ''Staten Island Advance''
* 1st – Glenn Kenny, ''Premiere''
* 1st – Craig Outhier, ''Orange County Register''
* 1st – Keith Phipps, '' The A.V. Club''
* 1st – Ray Pride, '' Salon.com''
* 1st – Mike Russell, ''The Oregonian''
* 1st – Hank Sartin, ''Chicago Reader''
* 1st – Marc Savlov, ''The Austin Chronicle''
* 1st – Mark Slutsky, '' Montreal Mirror''
* 1st – Nick Schager, ''Slant Magazine''
* 1st – Lisa Schwarzbaum, ''Entertainment Weekly''
* 1st – Jan Stuart, ''Newsday''

* 1st – Ella Taylor, ''LA Weekly''
* 2nd – David Ansen, ''Newsweek''
* 2nd – Nathan Rabin, '' The A.V. Club''
* 2nd – Rene Rodriguez, ''The Miami Herald

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