There Will Be Blood

Did Daniel Day-Lewis deserve his Oscar win for TWBB? YES!! Did I love it? Sort of. Vastly hailed as a "Work of Art", which is a term I loosely throw around here on NBM as the highest of the high in terms of ratings. I do agree with the statement, but TWBB is not going to receive the coveted "Work of Cinematic Art" rating the Writers, Actors, and Director so strived from NBM,  when doing this film 3 years before I started my site. Only 58 films out of the 421 I have reviewed have received this rating, and TWBB was really close. I am going to tell you why it could have, then why I ultimately took the prestigious prize away, much like they do to coked up, sex scandal clad Miss America pageanteers. The movie begins in 1898 with Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) hunting for gold. Let's just say it's not going well, but he is determined to make something of this life, so he never gives up. Move forward a few years. Gold is out, oil is in. Now Plainview is an oil man. He is good at what he does, but more than anything, he is a salesman. He gives property owners low dollar leases to be able to drill their land. Big signing bonuses blinds the property owners to signing anything The first hour shows Daniel's mentality toward success and also his mentality toward anyone who disagrees with him. He is doin well, but not well enough. Then a young man named Paul gives him a lottery ticket. All he has to do is cash it in, and without hesitation he does. Paul sends him to a town undrilled, where oil literally lies on top of the ground. Daniel buys the whole damn town, and this will be his legacy. Daniel plays the demented really well, but he does have honest love for his son. That is the best part of him. Then the second half of film kind of trails on and on about how crazy this man is. It goes all the way into the year 1927, where HW is grown and married. It follows his downward spiral through all of his successes, but at 2 hours 30 minutes, it is drawn out. I think the story is still brilliant, but I think the director (who also wrote the script) wanted to indulge himself in his own epic. I loved the work aspect. How hard everyone strived for the same goal, but watching Daniel continue to shut himself off from everyone and everything just went too far. The main constant in TWBB is the relationship Daniel has with the local preacher Eli. Don't think because I said relationship, that these two liked each other. Daniel went out of is way to humiliate the preacher, and this quarrel was very public for 20 years, but luckily for us viewers, their story does come to a close before the credits role. Maybe the long running time is necessary to close all the gaps, fill all the holes, and leave nothing to our imagination. It's all very black and white and there is no one who would be able to come up with some sort of analogy for Daniel's actions. He is a psycho. A very wealthy psycho, nonetheless, still a psycho. That's it.

NBM rates There Will Be Blood - Phenomenal