Did Paul Thomas Anderson knock out the official Berlinale 2008 competition from day one? Who can compete with this monster of fury and excess coming from the arid plains of the American South?
In the United States, he has already won over American critics, and the actor Daniel Day-Lewis is in the running for the Oscar for best actor in his role as a pioneer in the petroleum industry.
"There will be blood" has the darkness of a Scorsese mafia movie and the spaces of a Sergio Leone western. All served by a breathtaking photograph (signed Robert Elswit), which brings light into the darkest of worlds. The western is dark, but the director does not forget the fantasy and handles the art of rebound to perfection.
The ease with which he stages makes each shot a story in its own right. The music of Jonny Greenwood (guitarist of Radiohead) takes this long harsh and powerful song a little further.
Picks, sweating, settling of scores
We are at the beginning of the century. Where America fell with pickaxes, sweat, rifle scores and gold diggers. And then there was black gold, to the south, where the wheat couldn't even grow. Without anyone's help, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) worked hard on a pile of stones, found some gold and silver. He dug more, pumped up oil with buckets and pulleys under a blazing sun, saw men die stuck in the thick liquid. In ten years, he has become one of the pioneers of the pioneers, of those who will make the history of the oil industry in the South of the United States.
A masterful opening
So much for the presentations and a masterful opening scene of almost twenty minutes without a word being exchanged, simply carried by a soundtrack as haunting as the light of the sun.
"There will be blood" is a three hour long film, inspired by Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil", where the tension never goes down. At its center, Daniel Day-Lewis. A devious character, who does not hide his ambition and draws his philanthropy to better serve his interests. A pioneer in oil drilling, he takes pleasure in going to grab the land of the poorest to build an empire, promising them education, roads, work, enrichment of the community.
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