FilmEdge.net reviews THERE WILL BE BLOOD 2-Disc Collector's Edition DVD

A riveting big-screen performance still drives Paul Thomas Anderson’s THERE WILL BE BLOOD in its DVD release, yet the brutal bombast of actor Daniel Day-Lewis supplies the core satisfaction that this arid and epic tale cannot fully deliver in spite of its bold ambitions. While the DVD transfer retains all the brilliance of its sparse and painfully authentic period cinematography and art direction on the small screen, the scale of BLOOD’s dramatic conflict between a soulless oil profiteer and a spiritually sycophantic preacher falls just short of its promised emotional impact, opting for a visceral gut-punch ending over the adrenaline rush of a truly dramatic climax. Still, anyone who appreciates fine (if heightened) character acting should own THERE WILL BE BLOOD for Daniel Day-Lewis’s award-winning performance alone.  As with Bill the Butcher from GANGS OF NEW YORK and a litany of unforgettable dramatis personae in his career, Day-Lewis’s fevered and intimidating work here is a marvel to behold, even if you squirm in your seat while remaining glued to the screen. This 2-Disc Collector’s Edition DVD for THERE WILL BE BLOOD adds a somewhat shallow pool of bonus features compared to many similar releases, but add enlightening and educational extras to broaden the film’s home entertainment experience.

H.W. (Dillon Freasier) and Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis)	Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) offers salvation to the wicked

THE FILM

This engrossing yet erratic tale of silver prospector-turned-oil plunderer opens with Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) hacking away at stone in the bottom of a well mine, sparks and his fury flying with every strike of his pick.  His labor to tear specs of silver from the bosom of the earth and ascend with treasured ore ends when a ladder rung breaks, sending him plummeting to the bottom of what should be his grave.  Yet Plainview will neither succumb nor tolerate his own human frailty, and hoists himself — broken leg and all — back to the surface to claim his find.  He soon resorts to blasting the silver out of this pit to speed up his wanton greed’s pursuits, ripping apart the mine in a wound oozing with oil, ostensibly the life’s blood of the earth. 

Thus begins the story’s antagonistic battle between Plainview and the very foundation of his world, nearly a vampiric struggle between two opposing forces intent of robbing the other of their innermost values.  When Plainview finally utters the first dialogue fifteen minutes into the film in a stunning soliloquy, he proclaims to those he wishes to swindle that he is an oil man.  But more accurately, Plainview confesses that he is the prime consumer — a devourer of earthly resources, a slaughterer of business-naïve sheep and a harvester of fortunes hidden beneath their feet.  Daniel professes his rapacious nature time and again in the film — literally in plain view of anyone wise enough to recognize his thirst for ever more from every victim who stands in the way — but his words are wrapped in a nearly hypnotic staccato of seduction, promising riches and prosperity to the unwary rubes for a price.

Enter yet another two-faced trickster into the fray: Paul Dano plays Paul Sunday, a stranger who entices Plainview to pay him $500 for the location of a rich oil deposit literally bubbling up from the ground to be exploited.  The duplicity increases as Plainview arrives in Little Boston only to find Paul’s twin, Eli Sunday, the fire and brimstone preacher tending the flock of sheep targeted by Plainview’s insatiable appetite.  Are the Sunday brothers opposite sides of the spiritual coin, or merely the same scheming soul intending to profit from Plainview’s greed?  The question remains unresolved as Eli makes the proverbial deal with the Devil by convincing his father Abel (David Willis) to sell Plainview their land for oil drilling, but only if Daniel will contribute some of the oil profits to rebuild Eli’s ramshackle Church of the Third Revelation.   Indeed, revelations of plots and motives beat at the heart of this twisted story in which deluding others devolves into self-betrayal.

If THERE WILL BE BLOOD fails, its weakness is exposed when the story shifts away from this antagonistic battle between Plainview and Sunday, and adopts a plot strategy akin to CITIZEN KANE of the crude oil set.  Turning the predatory user Plainview into a emotionally and physically crippled tycoon with petrol coursing his veins rather than newsprint ink disables the character’s modus operandi.  Plainview becomes pathetic but not pitiable, and the undoing of those around him an empty note of personal vindication for his consumptive ways.

Perhaps the finale is intended to shock us with its sudden brutality, but by this point in the film Plainview’s endgame seems overdue and obvious in its execution.  Eli Sunday’s true nature (a debatable point to be sure) merits little emotional reaction, answering our darkest suspicions or confirming our keen perceptions with a resigned nod rather than an epic gesture.  The final line of dialogue is a literal truncation of a dramatically abrupt denouement, fitting for the character yet disappointingly added nothing new what we already learned and felt about him.

I give credit to writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson for creating two-thirds of an ambitiously bold and starkly unique film, and salute Daniel Day-Lewis for once again consuming a dramatic part whole and then letting Plainview’s corrupt consumerism ooze from every pore.  Robert Elswit won a much-deserved Oscar for his cinematography which sets environment and tone with both audacity and subtlety.  In contrast, there is nothing subtle about Jonny Greenwood’s equally startling and spartan score, which at times strikes as the same fear as the film’s lead performance, but too often wanders away from the screen action to explore its own merits (considerably as they may be).

THERE WILL BE BLOOD inevitably soars so high so quickly that it cannot maintain its epic altitude, and the plot’s wings eventually melt too soon to conclude on its anticipated stratospheric note.  I recommend this film since Daniel Day-Lewis sinks his teeth into the role and story down to its life’s-blood core — few actors can dazzle and intimidate audiences simultaneously, riveting your eyes to the screen as he knots your stomach.  With a more satisfying final act, THERE WILL BE BLOOD could easily have undermined NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and sucked away its Best Picture win at the Oscars.  Both films delivered truncated codas to their sprawling stories, but THERE WILL BE BLOOD, like Daniel Plainview, eventually promises more than it chooses to deliver.

THE 2-DISC COLLECTOR’S EDITION DVD FEATURES

Disc One features the widescreen presentation of THERE WILL BE BLOOD, enhanced for 16:9 television viewing.   The transfer looked sharp and still filmic as viewed via an upconverting Panasonic Blu-Ray player on a 32” HDTV.  The many dark shadows which Daniel Plainview inhabits through the film stayed well balanced, neither washing out nor disappearing to dead, crude oil-blackness.  The carefully chosen naturalistic lighting and arid color palettes of Elswit’s cinematography are thoughtfully preserved in this DVD presentation.

Audio options include a Dolby Digital English 5.1 Surround Sound track, along with French and Spanish 5.1 choices.   Jonny Greenwood’s creepy and sometimes jarring score is impactful without being overbearing, though on occasion its stark clarity seems more befitting of Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY than this film.  The clarity of the center dialogue channel is crucial as half of Daniel Day-Lewis’ effectiveness as Plainview results from his voice work in the role, and the sound mix supports his efforts handsomely.  The surround channels portray this dusty frontier environment well, though it’s not the type of film to wow an audience’s ears with aural pyrotechnics.   All in all, a faithful and enjoyable DVD experience.

As noted earlier, Disc Two offers the rather shallow but intriguing pool of DVD Extras (only 31 minutes total running time) which include:

15 MINUTES: as advertised, a slideshow plays a multimedia collection of historic photos of late 1800s/early 1900s figures — oil prospectors, silver miners, frontier homesteaders, corporate tycoons — along with maps of the California oil fields tapped in this period.  These stills are intercut with soundless clips from the film, which sublimely demonstrate the pains taken by cinematographer Robert Elswit and production designer Jack Fisk to reproduce the people, places and life conditions during the oil boom.  If you’re interested in history at all, and this turn-of-the-century span in California doesn’t get much recognition, then you might well find this segment quite appealing, at least through one viewing.

The TEASER and TRAILERS segments offer just that in all their brief glory.  Being a fan of the film trailer artform, I found it interesting to view the film in its entirety then watch the trailers to see how well they conveyed the sense of carnivorous menace about Daniel Plainview without spilling too much of the film’s plot.  An interesting exercise perhaps, but still the most basic of DVD bonus feature fare.

FISHING delivers a cut sequence from the film worth viewing — and if you don’t believe my description of Plainview as a prime consumer, watch him eat in the opening frames of this clip.  This sequence is a prime example of why DVD extras exist, allowing the viewer to enjoy this deleted scene while evaluating how and why it was cut from the final edit.  Despite the misleading title, FISHING delves deeper into the technology and risk of early-century oil drilling, while juxtaposing the thematic conflict between Plainview’s earthly extractions with Eli Sunday’s church construction.  The final “showdown” between Plainview and Abel Sunday isn’t much of a contest, by design, and consequently was excised from the final cut as a somewhat redundant lull, I suspect.  Still, it’s worth enjoying as another delectable slice of Plainview’s raw inhumanity, served charmingly cold.

DAILIES GONE WILD: This last extra is an extended take of the restaurant dinner scene between Daniel, H.W. and the Standard Oil men at the next table.  The clip shows Day-Lewis at work, exploring and unfurling his character before the camera and his fellow actors.  His intensity and environmental awareness are impressive, constantly engaging every other actor before him though all but young Dillon Freasier are off-camera.  Day-Lewis commands the room and the scene in this unedited look at his self-contained fusion reactor of dramatic energy.   More extras like this would have been a welcome addition to help round out this supplemental disc.

THE STORY OF PETROLEUM: This silent documentary, dated circa 1923, tells a dated but nonetheless informative history lesson about the California oil boom from within its decadent heights.  Chock full of vintage photos from the late 1800s onward, replete with ornate title cards and animated how-to maps for drilling down to crude deposits, The Story of Petroleum is a rare and valuable artifact from this oil-happy era of pioneering discovery, corporate exploitation and public consumption.   Watch and you’re guaranteed to learn about America’s history of insatiable thirst for oil, and how it could make and break men like Daniel Plainview.