There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood / There Will Be Blood. US (c) 2007. PC: Ghoulardi / Paramount Vantage / Miramax. P: Paul Thomas Anderson, JoAnne Sellar, Daniel Lupi. D+SC: Paul Thomas Anderson - based on the novel Oil! (1927) by Upton Sinclair. DP: Robert Elswit. PD: Jack Fisk. COST: Mark Bridges. M: Jonny Greenwood [Radiohead]. ED: Dylan Tichenor. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis (Daniel Plainview), Ciarán Hinds (Fletcher Hamilton). 158 min. Released in Finland by Buena Vista International Finland. Viewed at Maxim 2, Helsinki, 22 Feb 2008. Paul Thomas Anderson does not follow the multi-character concept of Boogie Nights and Magnolia, focusing instead on the rise of a single character, the manic oil prospector Daniel Plainview. The film connects with classics of American cinema such as Greed, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Giant, and Chinatown. Itself already hailed as a modern classic, perhaps I viewed There Will Be Blood with too great expectations, finding Daniel Day-Lewis's two-note performance powerfully Hustonesque but not complex. Neither do I share Anderson's quasi-Fundamentalist "sin and deluge" world-view. I enjoyed the cinematography with its strong photochemical look. I prefer Boogie Nights and Magnolia to this.