There Will Be Blood is Anderson’s Citizen Kane

It is hard to overstate the case for this movie. The performances are titanic — chiefly that of Day-Lewis, who resists the temptation to engulf the scenery the way he did in Gangs of New York, instead playing Plainview close to the vest, with flashes of fatherly affection, charismatic hucksterism and soul-corroding greed. To hold the screen against that — against one of the great screen actors of his generation in probably his greatest role — is no mean feat, and yet the Janus-faced Dano (seen last year as the nihilistic son in Little Miss Sunshine and the sullen burger flipper in Fast Food Nation) makes it seem that way. His fulminating evangelical furor is enough to raise the hairs on even the back of Daniel Plainview’s neck. The period detailing, by which I mean everything from the sets to the costumes to the haunting peasant faces of the smallest background players, is subtle but exquisite. Then there is Anderson, who has set out in what are generally inhospitable times for mavericks and visionaries in American cinema, with the crazed ambition of those writers (Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Richard Yates) and filmmakers (Ford, Griffith, Welles) who endeavored not merely to do good work, but to compile every thought and feeling they’d ever had about this country into one mammoth, summary achievement. It’s a fearless drive worthy of his own protagonist. With There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson has taken a stab at making The Great American Movie — and I daresay he’s made one of them.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD | Written and directed by PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON, based on the novel Oil! by UPTON SINCLAIR | Produced by JOANNE SELLAR, ANDERSON and DANIEL LUPI | Released by Paramount Vantage | ArcLight Hollywood