There Will Be Blood

I just got home from watching this movie and WOW! Another great movie.
For the past few months I have seen some of the best - No Country for Old Men, Michael Clayton, American Gangster, Juno, In the Valley of Elah. Movies that are about people and ideas and really make you think and feel.

This was another. What struck me from the beginning was the soundtrack - the music was so compelling and amazing. the First 20 minutes or so had no dialogue as we watched Daniel Plainview (what a name?) digging for gold/silver, breaking his leg, not stopping and finding oil.
It was the beginning of two and a half hours with this extraordinary man who was driven to succeed at any cost.

It covered from 1898 to 1927 as Daniel came to be extremely successful as an oil man. He is also incredibly complex (not a "plainview"?) nothing about his past, - a lot of questions" His "son" - did he love him or use him? Yes to both. But at the end, profits won out over relationship. His relationship with his "brother" - he showed his vulnerability and then killed him. His relationship with the preacher was full of mutual distrust. And in the end, Daniel killed him.

I had read ahead of time that this film had a message about business and religion in America. It is a picture of the church using business for its own ends, and business using the church.
Daniel allowed himself to be baptised in the blood of the lamb in order to secure rights to some property.And the preacher was willing to deny God as a superstition and claim himself to be a phony in order to get some money. (because he had made bad investments).

This film had so much in it - that I would like to see it again and have someone (besides Chuck) to process it with. For me, the brilliance of Daniel Day Lewis as an actor was that this character, Daniel, was so fully dimensional. He was more than a driven oil man - you saw underneath the fleeting moments of humanity.

I will think about this for a long time.