there will be blood

As the ominous title suggests, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is an instant American masterpiece, offering a tangled vision of violence, greed, religion and oil.

Starring Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York), as the shrewd and ruthless oilman Daniel Plainview, the film, loosely based on Upton Sinclair's muckraking novel Oil!, is a decades-long epic that traces Plainview's ignoble rise from struggling silver miner to a self-made oil tycoon with unimaginable wealth.

From the very beginning, the powerful score from Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood makes itself known as the camera explores the lonely Texas desert. Consisting of high-pitched dissonant strings, it makes the film as grating to the ear as it is on the eye. It is thoroughly disturbing and prefaces the ensuing pain and blood.

Divided in into four dated subsets, the film begins in 1898. The first 30 minutes are without dialogue and feature a grimy Plainview digging in his mine shaft for silver. In a freak accident, Plainview discovers not silver but oil, setting the film's events in motion. With success, Anderson boldly relies on the bleak landscape and the score to carry the film's first segment.

The years pass and Plainview becomes a successful oilman determined to find the big strike that will bring untold riches. On a tip from a quiet but steely young man, Paul Sunday (Paul Dano, Little Miss Sunshine), Plainview and his cherubic son H.W. (newcomer Dillon Freasier) journey to southern California and participate in the oil boom of the early 20th century.

As he tries to secure the vast ocean of oil he discovers in California, Plainview finds himself locked in a psychological, spiritual and even physical struggle with Eli Sunday (also played by Dano), Paul's twin and leader of the cult-like Church of the Third Revelation. As Plainview's wealth grows, so does his greed and the chasm between him and humanity--threatening even his bond with his beloved son. The struggle displays Anderson's ability to draw out the best in two talented actors.

This film traces the progress of modern America through Plainview. Though it takes place a century ago, it is a timeless story of transformation, the humble worker forever tainted by insatiable greed.