There Will Be Blood

It may seem churlish to depreciate an ambitious, uneven film with many excellent attributes, lionized by critics, but all I can do is offer my honest and considered response. Paul Thomas Anderson’s film about the progress of an oil tycoon from solitary chthonic endeavor to world-bestriding megalomania is vivid and true in large measure, but succumbs repeatedly to operatic implausibility. Time, place, and technology are rendered with striking verisimilitude, but characterizations and plot points are elided or fumbled. Daniel Day-Lewis’s acclaimed performance is impressively detailed and forceful, but also wildly over the top. As his evangelical antagonist, Paul Dano is simultaneously obvious and enigmatic, as he confusingly plays two brothers on whose parched California land oil is found. A nonprofessional child actor performs admirably as Daniel’s beloved (?!?) son, but his origins and motivations are left shrouded in ambiguity. The discovery and exploitation of oil is brilliantly depicted, epic enough to make the film worth seeing, but character and story are simultaneously larger and smaller than life. And the music, while frequently effective, is way too insistent, contributing to the film’s hectoring quality. This is a film whose aspirations to greatness keep it from being as good as it might be. (2007, dvd, n.) *7* (MC-92.)