Stars:
****
Rating: R for extreme violence and language
Run
Time: 2 hours, 38 minutes
Paul Thomas
Anderson plays true to form in this raw, original work loosely based on Upton
Sinclair’s sprawling 1927 novel “Oil!”
Plumbing
cinematic riches is nothing new to Anderson, who has helmed such memorable and
resonant fare as “Boogie Nights”, “Magnolia” and “Punch-Drunk Love”.
Daniel
Day-Lewis, and only Day-Lewis, possesses the essential gravitas to pull off
what is sure to be an award-winning turn as Daniel Plainview, a wily,
sociopathic wildcatter in turn of the century west. As a crude oil hustler
Plainview travels town to town plundering the land for the rich black pitch
that will ultimately make him a millionaire.
Plainview
pins big hopes on Sunday Ranch, a parcel of parched land that can be had for $6
an acre by virtue of a cunning snow job on the Sundays themselves, not to
mention an entire community of skeptics and Sunday’s Christian sermonizing son Eli
(Paul Dano).
The
townsfolk ultimately rally round the plan, hoping for a giant strike that will
see them rolling in dough. But raping the land reaps its own kind of hell.
With Day-Lewis
as his muse Anderson wanders uncharted territory – from a brutal job-site
accident that leaves Plainview’s young son permanently impaired to a vicious
tête-á-tête between heretic madman and zealous pulpit preacher.
Industry
clashes with religion with impudent greed, jockeying for the figurative top
rung. Ignoring the obvious abundance of narrative fertile ground Anderson lays
on a moody, discordant score (by hipster musician Jonny Greenwood) that’s so
perversely mismatched it fits.
Despite a
brilliant track record Day-Lewis’ performance is still a revelation –
contemptuous, seething and fraught with the low-level hum of excruciating
tension. Endeavoring to shed a dark past he meticulously destroys those who carelessly
get close. Dano mans up to the daunting task of portraying a nemesis both frail
and fierce, one of those characteristics triumphing in a shamefully cruel climax.
Visceral, volatile
and epic.