2-08-08, 9:35 am

There Will Be Blood Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

I was willing to be wowed by Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil! which has been hailed as a masterpiece by the US media.

After all, it also promised that Daniel Day-Lewis would add to his collection of Oscars for a masterclass in playing a capitalist megalomaniac.

I was disappointed on both counts. Apart from not illustrating Sinclair's socialist narrative, it all plays second fiddle to Day-Lewis's mania for mannered method acting.

That might have been alright had it had half an hour lopped off its 158 minutes. As it is, it feels like 15 rounds with psycho-pugilist Mike Tyson.

I don't normally have anything against epic cinema, but length should allow for subtlety not simply reducing you to feeling punch-drunk.

Anderson obviously thinks that subtlety means providing long, slow tracking shots and then posing and photographing his actors within the tableaux.

It begins slowly enough, with an extraordinarily long dialogue-free sequence to establish the origins of Daniel Plainview in 1898.

He's a lowly silver miner who, after a mining accident that gives him a permanent limp, goes on to discover black gold and set up as an oil man in 1902.

On the way, he adopts a child (Dillon Freasier) because he connivingly considers that having a family man image will be good for business.

His first words are: 'I am an oil man.' It is a mantra repeated throughout and with increasing ferocity as he seeks to prove that he has the will to triumph.

So, like every other tyrant, he deals, double-deals and resorts to murder most foul before bashing in the head of his chief nemesis with a bowling ball.

Thus, it's about the personal rather than the political, with everything being overshadowed by Plainview's psychotic persona.

Prowling the screen like a man possessed, Day-Lewis seems to have consciously assumed the voice of the legendary John Huston.

Anderson clearly seeks to evoke Huston's The Treasure of Sierra Madre as well as the same Texan landscape employed by George Stevens in Giant.

The latter featured James Dean as an increasingly demented oil man railing against the power and prestige of the last of the cattle barons played by Rock Hudson.

But, unlike Giant, which featured Elizabeth Taylor to complete the love triangle, Anderson's film has no women. It's purely and simply an elemental battle of macho men.

For those who haven't read Upton Sinclair's novel, he based his rags-to-riches story on the life of oil magnate Edward Doheny and the Signal Hill oil strike outside Long Beach.

Alas - and this is my main point - it doesn't develop Lewis's notion of the son having an empathy for the working class or for socialism.

Rather, it concentrates on the conflict of interests represented by the capitalist entrepreneur and a creepy Christian faith healer called Eli Sunday (Paul Dano).

Naturally, the idea of socialism proved too controversial, while the religious angle would satisfy current fears about religious nutters.

You'd have to be a believer not to appreciate Sunday being forced to scream to the heavens: 'I am a false prophet! God is a superstition!'

Still, you might imagine that, despite the extremes of capitalist exploitation, it's alright getting a vicarious pleasure from such a bloody denouement.

Sinclair wasn't averse to being dramatic and didactic. Hell no, he actually stood as a candidate for the Socialist Party of America.

Anderson's film is powerful and promising. He simply needs to cut it back to the bones of what Sinclair intended.

Otherwise, it might be seen to be an endorsement of capitalism employing extreme solutions to its problems. And that usually implies fascism.

As the curtain closes, we are left to contemplate Plainview's terrible final solution.

Meanwhile, enjoy Day-Lewis as a madman. Apparently, he drove his family insane by insisting on staying in character.

Jeez, I know that it made me feel bloody-minded.

From Morning Star