There Will Be Blood: A Movie Review by Dianne

Daniel Day-Lewis only comes out of semi-retirement for exceptional roles, such as the main character in There Will Be Blood, which not surprisingly won him Best Actor at the SAG Awards. I didn’t really care for this movie, not in the way I usually like a movie by relating to the characters or feeling either good after watching it or like I want to run out and change the world. But Daniel Day-Lewis’ portrayal of Daniel Plainview, an oil man in turn of the century California, was so much more than acting. One Daniel actually became the other Daniel. I heard that the movie had to stop filming for a year and Day-Lewis stayed in character by not reading any other scripts.

He must have been fun to be around, except the man seems like a gentle sort when he speaks in public, such as at the SAG Awards. The oil-man Daniel is the opposite, yet I was mesmerized by him, wanting to figure out what makes men like him tick and then blow up like one of their oil wells. I couldn’t help but think of our modern day oil men who seem to go to any length to find or steal oil and then get it to the consumer, of which I am one. I almost felt guilty for driving my car to the theater, realizing that so much of the world’s problems right now are due to the oil economy, which is only a little more than a century old - I don’t need to name them…   

Neither do I need to name the oil men who are in charge of our country right now and have us entangled in what they would like us to believe is a never-ending war on terror. Strange how this movie also has a religious theme in it, which I think points to a lot that is going on right now. Oil and greed is a religion in itself, and religion all too often has a lot to do with greed and power. I recommend this movie simply because it is so well done, but be prepared to not feel good at the end. The good guy, if there is a good guy, does not win the Day.