Sound and fury

IF PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON'S cinematic excesses have been leading up to There Will Be Blood, then every Scorcese-cam long take, every Tarantino-ism woven into dialogue and every Altmanesque plot string that made him seem the poster boy for derivative filmmaking can be forgiven. Anderson's triumphant epic about the bone-breaking, death-defying, orphan-making early days of the oil industry will serve as a benchmark for all of his future films. It is unlikely his style will be easily traced to an influence again.

This is evident from the get-go, with an extended intro that details the origin of maverick petroleum tycoon Daniel Plainview. Played to the hilt by Daniel Day-Lewis, Plainview would come off as a moustache-twisting villain inspired by Sean Connery were it not for the wordless depiction of his discovery of oil while mining for silver. His resolve after discovering soil saturated with petroleum allows him to drag himself with a broken leg across miles of desolate land in order to stake his claim. The scenes are punctuated by a harrowing cacophony of sound, composed by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, heralding the dawn of an empire.

Plainview's likability increases when he informally adopts an infant after the accidental death of an early employee. He'll go on to raise H.W. (Dillon Freasier) as his own son, an heir to educate as his empire rapidly expands, and Anderson widens his scope to detail the early drilling experience and the killer instincts behind it.

That scope was captured in Oil!, Upton Sinclair's 1926 fictional expose of the industry that would drive America's economy to world domination and land its troops in the Middle East 100 years later. While Sinclair was a great non-fiction chronicler of the American experience -- there has never been a work of literature that effected more social change than Sinclair's muckraking masterwork The Jungle -- he was no John Steinbeck. Anderson was more interested in the detailed descriptions of landscapes transformed by derricks, and the clash of wills between worshippers of faith and greed, than he was in Sinclair's narrative. He used the story as more of a launching pad than a framework.

One of the crucial twists was making brothers Paul and Eli Sunday twins (played by Paul Dano, the voluntarily mute sibling in Little Miss Sunshine). Paul alerts Daniel and H.W. to the oil-rich Central California farmland owned by his family, then disappears. Brother Eli is a budding spiritual leader who stands in the way of Plainview's scheming plans to take over all of the land in the countryside on his own terms and in his own way. A battle of wills begins, which exposes the power that corrupts both men's souls and, ostensibly, the corruption that lies at the heart of both organized religion and capitalism in the early 20^th century.

The wordless world of Plainview's early prospecting is transformed into H.W.'s painful isolation after an accident at the derricks. It further emphasizes how important sound was to the design of the film, as well as Greenwood's ambitious score, in which the shrieking din that cuts through the non-verbal world of the film's first act gives way to happy strings accompanying scenes of drilling.

Dano is ripe for a best supporting actor nod due to an intense sermonizing scene that reveals as much about the motivations of a holy roller than the entire length of Elmer Gantry -- though holding his own against the awesome potency of Day-Lewis should seal the nomination. Plainview's personal force leads him to success, but his will also leads to violence and a downfall that he determinedly, inevitably marches toward. "I've seen the worst in people," says Plainview. "I've built up my hatred little by little over the years."

There Will Be Blood

Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Dillon Freasier. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.