There Will Be Blood (2007), directed by N/A, is one of the defining works of its era. The film stands as a landmark for its unflinching vision.
Daniel Day-Lewis' 'I drink your milkshake' closing aria is the genre's most-performed party piece. The monologue is the bowling-alley confession.
Plainview, drunk in a private bowling alley, beats the preacher to death with a bowling pin and declares "I’m finished." Anderson cuts. The film ends with the man who once said he hated everyone now alone with a corpse. He kept every promise.
No dialogue for the first 14 minutes. A man falls down a hole, breaks his leg, climbs out and drags himself across a desert to file a mining claim. Anderson tells you the entire moral biography of Daniel Plainview before anyone speaks.
Daniel Plainview wins everything: oil, sons, sermons, gravity. The film asks what the wages of that performance are, and the bowling alley answers in private.
Daniel Plainview tells you in the opening minutes that he hates people and wants to be alone with his oil. He delivers on the promise. The only "good man" in the film is a fraud preacher Plainview eventually batters with a bowling pin. The film offers no innocent alternative to him.
PTA's masterpiece, oil and faith clawing at each other through Daniel Plainview — a monument to American greed carved out of Day-Lewis's voice.
Daniel Plainview is wrong about people but right about nearly everything he says about capitalism, religion, and the lies families tell themselves. The film never lets you root for him—only nod.
