There will be film analysis (and some blood)

What’s the better film from 2007: There Will Be Blood, or No Country For Old Men? For many, not only is the former superior, but it’s ranked in their minds as perhaps the best movie of the 2000s or – for that matter – the 21st century thus far.

Released in late December of that year and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood is a historical drama set during the Southern California oil boom that follows the ruthless and misanthropic oil tycoon Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) as he ruthlessly builds his fortune, clashing fiercely with the charismatic local preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano). Along his path of capitalistic greed and psychological decay, Plainview navigates relationships with his adopted son and business partner H.W. Plainview (played as a child by Dillon Freasier and as an adult by Russell Harvard), a man claiming to be his long-lost half-brother Henry Brands (Kevin J. O'Connor), and business associate Fletcher Hamilton (Ciarán Hinds).

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of There Will Be Blood, conducted last week, click here.

The sheer strength of Day-Lewis’ performance as Daniel Plainview elevates this from a good to a great film in immeasurable ways. As Robert De Niro did in Raging Bull – masterfully portraying a thoroughly detestable character – Day-Lewis inhabits this personality so completely and makes him so unique with distinctive touches and fascinating traits that everything else, including the plot, takes secondary priority to the viewer.

“Day-Lewis mesmerizingly embodies the character with a gruff hardness that can be gleaned in his calculating eyes, his contemptuously deliberate comportment, and his semi-condescending tone with all those he speaks to. His oil baron is at once upfront about who he is and yet willing, when the situation suits him, to bend the truth in service of attaining what he wants, a bastard alternately honest and devious whose bullheaded determination is amplified by Day-Lewis’s rigorously controlled—and yet somehow still wildly unpredictable—modulation of expression and action,” wrote Slant Magazine reviewer Nick Schager.

The actor seems to invoke the voice and cadence of the late director/actor John Huston, particularly Huston’s performance as Noah Cross in Chinatown; Huston was also the director of Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which Anderson studied extensively while making this film, citing it as a major influence.

The score by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood pulses with dread and throbs with an undulating tension that orchestrates Plainview’s success-at-all-costs ruthlessness. It’s a decidedly nontraditional, avant-garde soundtrack that plays during moments both expected and unexpected.

The cinematography is exquisite – With most scenes shot outdoors on a massive ranch in Marfa, West Texas, by Robert Elswit, who won the Oscar that year for Best Cinematography.

Pay close attention, and you’ll realize that there is virtually nothing spoken for the first 20 minutes of the movie; yet this introductory section – in which we see Plainview shift from struggling silver prospector to fledgling wildcatter – is as riveting as it is efficient in showcasing exactly what kind of a man he is.

So, what’s it all about? Essentially, Blood is concerned with the exploitative power of two major pillars of America: capitalism and religion. There Will Be Blood depicts how oil men and robber barons like Plainview, as well as false prophets like Sunday, driven by ruthless determination and greedy ambition, fleeced people to increase their wealth and power. Daniel uses his adopted son as a prop to convey a more family-friendly image, and demonstrates little empathy when his workers are killed. The film repeatedly compares and contrasts these two forces, embodied in Plainview and Sunday, and demonstrates how their manipulative tactics, duplicity, arrogance, and quest for control overlap. (Recall symbolic imagery like the oil smeared on the infant’s forehead as if the baby was religiously anointed.) Yet Daniel continually dominates Eli, suggesting that capitalism was and remains the more potent force in shaping America.

We’re also reminded how absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is a cautionary narrative about the price you pay for success and valuing money and power over human beings. The more wealth and influence Plainview commands, the more corrosive, competitive, and dehumanized he becomes, to the point where he devolves into an outspoken figure who spews hatred, burns bridges with loved ones, and commits murder with no remorse. And a worsening alcoholism and purposeful alienation from the outside world fuel his loathsome actions.

Deceit and duplicity abound in PTA’s magnum opus. Daniel, Eli, and Henry present themselves as people they are not, projecting a façade of likeability and altruism to the gullible around them and profiting from their charade. There’s even a possibility that Paul and Eli—presumably twin brothers—are actually the same person.

Reflect, too, on how the film explores the drawbacks of the Nietzschean ideal. Daniel personifies Nietzschean philosophy, weaponizing his will to shatter moral boundaries and fuel an unconstrained ambition fueled solely by capitalism, completely bypassing the moral boundaries of religion. Per Deep Focus Review essayist Brian Eggert: “Plainview despises morals as signs of weakness. And though his ambition leaves him misanthropic and achingly lonely, his overarching desire for a pointedly American symbol of success, namely oil and the isolationist comforts it affords, circumvents all else.”

The film exposes the fatal flaw in this worldview by stripping Daniel of all genuine human connection, leaving him isolated, bitter, and spiritually hollow inside a massive, lifeless estate. His violent, unhinged breakdown at the climax proves that sacrificing empathy and morality in pursuit of absolute conquest ultimately yields total self-destruction rather than true victory.

Similar works

• Oil!, a novel by Upton Sinclair
• Citizen Kane (1941)
• Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
• Giant (1956)
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Other films by Paul Thomas Anderson

• Boogie Nights (1997)
• Magnolia (1999)
• Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
• The Master (2012)
• Phantom Thread (2017)
• Licorice Pizza (2021)
• One Battle After Another (2025)