'There Will Be Blood': A Monumental American Epic About Ambition, Power and Ruthless Self-Invention

There Will Be Blood (2007) is a monumental American drama film starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview, a fiercely ambitious oil prospector who builds a empire across the California frontier at the turn of the 20th century. After making his first major oil strike, Plainview adopts the orphaned son of a dead worker and begins presenting himself as a family man of industry, even as his true devotion lies in the pursuit of wealth, land and control.

The storyline follows Plainview’s rise from lone silver miner to ruthless oil baron, charting his arrival in the town of Little Boston after receiving a tip from young Paul Sunday (Paul Dano). Plainview soon clashes with Paul’s twin brother Eli (also Dano), a charismatic preacher whose religious authority threatens Plainview’s carefully constructed enterprise. As Plainview’s fortune expands, his relationship with adopted son H.W. (Dillon Freasier) grows increasingly strained, revealing a man whose hunger for power steadily corrodes any remaining capacity for love or affinity.

Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, One Battle After Another), There Will Be Blood is a world-class depiction of American greed and spiritual decay. Day-Lewis is extraordinary in a volcanic role requiring menace, intelligence and bitter misanthropy in varying measure—his Daniel Plainview emerging as one of the most indelible characters in modern cinema. Loosely adapted from Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil!, Anderson's film serves as a devastating portrait of capitalism and shattered familial relations subsumed by the pursuit of absolute domination.

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Watch the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeSLPELpMeM