There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood opens with several minutes of near-silence as a man works alone in a hole in the ground, chipping away at rock. No dialogue, no score to soften the mood, just the sound of labor. It’s a fitting introduction to a film that has no interest in making things easy for its audience. Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 epic follows Daniel Plainview, an oil prospector in early 1900s California, as he builds a fortune through equal parts cunning, ruthlessness, and sheer force of will. Loosely adapted from the first portion of Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel “Oil!”, the film transforms a story about the American oil boom into something far more personal and far more disturbing.

Community sentiment has only grown stronger since the film’s release. What was already critically acclaimed in 2007 has since become a fixture on best-of-the-century lists, with multiple major publications and filmmaker polls placing it among the finest movies made in the last 25 years. The praise centers overwhelmingly on Daniel Day-Lewis’s lead performance, but it extends to virtually every technical element of the production. A small but persistent minority finds the film too slow, too cold, or too relentlessly bleak. Those complaints aren’t wrong exactly. They just describe the same qualities that make the film work for most of the people who love it.

The Performances That Makes There Will Be Blood Work

Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance as Plainview dominates every conversation about this movie, and for good reason. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor, and the consensus among audiences and critics runs close to unanimous: this is one of the greatest performances ever captured on film. Plainview is charming, terrifying, manipulative, and occasionally funny, often within the same scene. Day-Lewis commits to the character with a physicality and vocal precision that makes every frame feel dangerous. The performance never lets up across nearly three hours, but it also never feels like showing off. There’s a controlled intelligence behind every choice that keeps Plainview human even as he becomes increasingly monstrous.

Robert Elswit’s cinematography earned its own Academy Award, and it’s easy to see why. The film captures early 20th century California with a scope that feels both grand and lived-in. Wide shots of dusty landscapes give way to close, cramped interiors lit by firelight, and the visual contrast reinforces the story’s themes of ambition meeting physical reality. Every frame looks deliberate without looking fussy, which is harder to pull off than it sounds.

Jonny Greenwood’s score deserves its own conversation. The Radiohead guitarist composed music that sounds nothing like a conventional film score, leaning into dissonance, tension, and an unsettling energy that mirrors Plainview’s psychological state. The score won the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution at the Berlin Film Festival, and audiences regularly cite it as one of the most distinctive elements of the film. It doesn’t guide you toward emotions the way most movie music does. It creates an atmosphere of dread and lets you sit in it.

Anderson’s direction ties everything together with a confidence that borders on audacity. The decision to open the film with that long, wordless mining sequence signals his intentions clearly: this movie will move at its own pace and trust you to keep up. Anderson structures the story as a slow accumulation of power and poison, building tension through character rather than plot mechanics. The central conflict between Plainview and Eli Sunday, a young preacher played by Paul Dano, gives the film its thematic backbone. Capitalism and religion crash into each other repeatedly, and Anderson refuses to let either side off the hook.

The Length Issues in There Will Be Blood

At 158 minutes, the runtime is the most common sticking point. Some viewers, particularly on a first watch, find the pacing punishing. The film is deliberately slow, and for people who want narrative momentum or a traditional dramatic arc, the experience can feel more like endurance than entertainment. Anderson is clearly unconcerned with holding anyone’s hand, and that approach doesn’t land for everyone.

Emotional distance is a related complaint. The film operates more on an intellectual level than a visceral one, and Plainview is not a character designed to generate sympathy or warmth. Some audiences walk away feeling they’ve watched something technically impressive but emotionally hollow. The movie keeps you at arm’s length on purpose, but that purpose doesn’t always translate into a satisfying experience for every viewer.

Paul Dano’s performance as Eli Sunday splits opinion more than any other element of the film. His portrayal of the young preacher runs big and theatrical, particularly during the revival scenes. Some people see this as overacting that can’t match Day-Lewis’s controlled intensity. Others see it as a deliberate choice that perfectly captures the character’s desperation and self-delusion. Dano was reportedly given very little preparation time for the role after replacing another actor during production, which makes the performance more impressive regardless of where you fall on it. The debate hasn’t settled in nearly two decades, and it probably won’t.

There are virtually no female characters and no glimpse of ordinary life or community outside Plainview’s orbit. This is a conscious decision that serves the film’s focus on masculine ambition and isolation, but it narrows the world considerably. For some, that narrowness makes the story feel incomplete.

The Real Tension

The thing that makes There Will Be Blood stick with people isn’t really the oil or the money or even the conflict with Eli Sunday. It’s the question of whether Daniel Plainview was always what he became, or whether his success made him that way. Anderson never gives you a clean answer. Plainview’s misanthropy surfaces early and only deepens, but there are moments, particularly with his adopted son, where something resembling genuine feeling flickers before getting snuffed out. The film asks whether American ambition inherently destroys the people who pursue it most aggressively, and it has the discipline to leave that question open rather than delivering a neat conclusion.

Should You Watch There Will Be Blood?

This is a film for people who value performance, craft, and thematic ambition over accessibility. If you respond to slow-burn character studies that prioritize atmosphere and psychological depth, There Will Be Blood is likely to become one of your favorites. It rewards repeat viewings in ways that few films do, revealing new details in the performances and visual storytelling each time.

Skip it if you need likable characters, forward momentum in your plotting, or any kind of emotional warmth. This movie has no interest in providing those things, and fighting it on those terms will only lead to frustration.

The Verdict on There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood is a towering piece of American filmmaking built almost entirely on the strength of one lead performance and the director who knew exactly how to frame it. Daniel Day-Lewis disappears so completely into Daniel Plainview that the character feels less like a creation and more like an excavation of something ugly and real at the heart of American ambition. The pacing demands patience, the tone offers no comfort, and the ending will either floor you or lose you. None of that changes the fact that this is one of the most accomplished films of the 21st century, a movie that keeps revealing new layers every time you return to it.