There Will Be Blood: A

There is actually very little of the titular red substance in There Will Be Blood, but that shouldn't trick you into believing that there aren't bashings, squishings, shootings, oomphings, and just a whole general host of violent actions to be found in Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film; a movie with structure and design clearly shaped by a title so foreboding and blunt. Yet if the movie lacks any spurting of substance (it is by no means an early American Sweeney Todd) it also possesses in spades everything else Anderson - that madly gifted, madly showy writer-director of Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love - needs to craft an enterprising story about an enterprising man (Daniel Day-Lewis, drowning, spectacularly, in his own ambition) every bit as enthralling and ruthless as he is.

Still, the audience begins knowing very little about Day-Lewis, here named Daniel Plainview. In fact the catch of Blood is our general realizations of his character. How, in essence, the sequence that opens the film - the one that finds Plainview dragging himself up from a dank mining hole after a hard fall - finds itself replayed throughout the movie: that same ol' recurring theme of American ingenuity...only here, it gets the P.T. Anderson treatment, complete with a bold dramatic voice and revolutionary design.

And design is key to an audience's understanding of the dark themes pulsing behind the screen. Key among such elements is Jonny Greenwood, the Radiohead member who composed an entire body of original music for the story. The music he created is much of the reason I tossed around the word "revolutionary" so early in my review: the score leaps from the screen from the first second - a sharp wail that eventually directs the audience and its hero to the hills, to oil. From there, and after we are witness to the slow descent of the newly-made baron (who, with his adopted son H.W. - the naturally grounded Dillon Freasier - goes about scooping up land like candy), the music begins to possess a twinge of melancholia; the trademark rising aural tides that portended such disaster recede: that disaster has arrived.

But oh how it is captured on film! Anderson, abandoning everything I thought he had as a visionary stylist, has discovered in himself a new layer of his prowess; he crafts a meticulous, epic character study that finds at its core the pulsating heart of Greed, and the ways it corrupts all men (it would come as no surprise then to mention now that Blood was modeled on Upton Sinclair's Oil!). Taking center stage to hold the responsibility for communicating such rich material are Day-Lewis and Paul Dano, as Plainview's archnemesis: a faith healer named Eli Sunday. The the two of them do battle over the course of two-and-a-half hours, leaving the viewer gasping after the continuous string of overwhelmingly poignant (and beautiful) scenes. This is a movie, as is quite obvious, made from the very same dirt our tycoon spends his life digging up: rough and masking unseen glimmers of brilliance.

Ultimately the praise of the film must be spread over a number of people. The cast, of which Freasier, Dano, and Lewis are standouts, does extraordinarily well by their time period and their community - creating a world from minimal dialogue. The composer, Mr. Greenwood, must be renowned for his creation of such a wall of sound that I have rarely heard: it is the perfect companion to the driving plot. Which leads to Paul Thomas Anderson, who has written and directed with a furious passion; his words leap from the actors' mouths and his camera (aided by cinematographer Robert Elswit) is a stark and breath-taking observer. Missing the turns of fancy or ostentatious shows of imagination and technical skill that can be found in his earlier work, There Will Be Blood is still a stunner of a parred-down epic: bruising, dark, and - as only the title could alude to - all about the struggles between men, God, and nature. Come prepared for a fight.