The Best Films of the Zeroes: 7

7. THERE WILL BE BLOOD. (2008)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

At the beginning of the zeroes, Paul Thomas Anderson was a promising filmmaker, on the back of a superb second feature, BOOGIE NIGHTS. At the end of the decade, three movies later (of which this is the third to make this list), he had a real claim to being the most important American filmmaker of his generation. I’ve spoken briefly about MAGNOLIA already, and a little more about PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE, but it is THERE WILL BE BLOOD that is his true masterpiece, and one of the standard bearers of modern American cinema.

A stunning character portrait, THERE WILL BE BLOOD is an incredible film. It hums with a purpose from the very first shot to the last, and that purpose is to show the indefatigability and venality of man. It does so by focusing (albeit to different extents) on two men, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis) and Eli Sunday (Paul Dano). Without exemplary performances from either of the two leads, this wouldn’t be anything like the film it is. Dano is a revelation. Before this, he was best known as the support in LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE and THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, but his is the performance of a skilled veteran, never stealing the attention from Day Lewis, who is the headline act, just as his character is to everyone he meets.

It’s an incredible performance by Day Lewis, an actor whose tendency for hamminess could have derailed Anderson’s film, but who, instead, dominates it with an enormous amount of power. Plainview is a monstrous man, egotistical, psychotic and selfish. At the start of the film we see him overcome huge personal and physical obstacles in order to secure oil from a mined well, and that level of dogged assurance remains in his character throughout. The shading, added by Anderson and Day Lewis throughout, is what elevates the film, though, to a similar level as the best Hollywood classic character portraits of the 1930s and 40s. Anderson’s obvious inspiration throughout his first three movies was Robert Altman, but here, his work is closer in style to that of John Huston, or Orson Welles. Plainview is as much a cinematic icon as Welles’ Charles Foster Kane.

The film is ostensibly inspired by Upton Sinclair’s novel ‘Oil’, but aside from the central relationship between Plainview and his son, HW, and the interest in oil, there’s little here that can’t be directly attributed to Anderson. It was his decision to lose the politics from the original story, to focus on Plainview (the characters names have been changed) rather than HW and to introduce Eli, and as such religion to the story, twinning it with money as the two key ingredients to the only true currency in this world – power.

The battle for power between Eli, an evangelical preacher, reputed to have healing powers, whose family’s land Plainview buys as part of his latest prospecting, and Daniel is the film’s driving conflict. Throughout, Eli is painted as less than Plainview’s equal; he is physically bested by Plainview in front of most of his congregation, and even Plainview’s subjugation to him is a pyrrhic victory. In the end, the film comes down to the conflict generated between two men, whose egos can’t allow them to accept that they may not be all-powerful.

This is the third highest American film on this list, but Day Lewis’ turn might be the best of the decade. In anyone else’s hands it’s impossible to imagine how THERE WILL BE BLOOD could have been as successful as it is. Anderson’s work behind the camera is similarly superb. Together they have crafted a film for the ages, one as perceptive about American culture today as any on this list; a film which questions our attraction to people of power as much as it does the fact that power corrupts those who seek it above all else. It’s a staggering achievement, and as well as being the seventh best film of the past decade, it’s also one of the very best films of all time.

There are a number of striking, outstanding scenes. The scene in which Eli baptises Daniel is haunting, while the finale is blackly funny, providing one of the quotes of the decade (I drink your milkshake!). The wordless opening is a marvel, an incredible piece of direction as Anderson ratchets up the tension even before we know Plainview’s character. The true stand-out moment, though, is the oil-fire, which claims HW’s hearing, and we can later identify as the beginning of Plainview’s eventual decline. Visually beautiful, and as exciting as all hell, this, like the rest of the film is technically stupendous. Special word should go to Jonny Greenwood, of Radiohead fame, whose soundtrack is haunting.