Walking into this film I expected nothing less then perfection. I was very eager to see this film almost purely because it was my favorite writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson. Now along with my eagerness I felt a sense of fear, I mean this film is a 158 minute epic that is about an oil tycoon in 1920’s California. Well lets just say that my expectations of this film where surpassed. Well I don’t know if surpassed is the right word but what I had expected was tossed aside and a new and something different was offered to me, and I must say it is a true treat. This film is a pure character study that plays out as a biographical film. Almost like The Aviator but with a more deeper concept that grabs hold and slowly takes you over and engages you in this world that is seems all to real.
Daniel Day Lewis stars in this film and gives the singles greatest performance I have ever had the pleasure to see. In a large part Lewis performance is why this film is so amazing. He totally takes this character over and makes the watcher totally engrossed in this man. He plays Daniel Plainview an oil man and trust me that’s what he is. He is also a family man an every man but sadly this is all just an act, a persona that he dawns to earn accesses to land in order to drill on it for oil. Now he plays a soulless man who states that he only sees the worse in people and he now doesn’t see anything worth liking in people. I wonder if he realizes that that we cant see anything worth liking in him. This is where Lewis true power is conveyed although PTA gives him some help with his script. But even in the opening scene Lewis shows his characters pure drive to earn a fortune and then shows the road that this man travels to earn enough money to get away from everybody, the ruins he leaves others in and the length he goes to for what he wants.
But in the end maybe the haunting truth is where PTA gets his power from. The fact that we all have a piece of Daniel inside of us packs the strongest punch. And maybe Lewis does not simply play a soulless flawed villain, in fact he is the ultimate hero a man that embraces the evil that grips us all deep down. But the fact that this film stays with you and digs so deep in your brain is a sign that where ok. The fact that we still can differ this mans actions from good and bad. Deeper, this movie expresses the dreams we all share, and the strength we all have berried in are self. The strength to get what we truly desire with no regard for others. And why this film shows Daniel as a strong person, but maybe this is just another mask that he has another deception he has. Maybe he is truly the weak one… and there is the true power of this and most of PTA’s films; the power to look upon your own life with the longing to improve much like that of Plainview, maybe it’s a warning sign of what not to become but who truly knows that’s for you to figure out and is up to you take from it what you will. 10/10
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