During that long opening, we meet Daniel Plainview, played by the incomparable Daniel Day-Lewis, a miner turned oilman after years of mishaps in the mines. After an oilrig gone wrong, Plainview is left with an infant to adopt that he will later use to his advantage.
Fast forward about 11 years later, Plainview is now a wealthy, money-hungry businessman of the oil industry who cons local landowners into selling him their land for next to nothing. Having his adopted son H.W. by his side, he projects the image of a trustworthy family-man, which makes it easy for Plainview to trick these locals into thinking that he actually cares about the well-being of their towns. However, it is not until local preacher Eli Sunday, brilliantly played by Paul Dano, enters their lives and suspects Plainview’s intentions, which starts a dangerous, slow-burning feud between the two.
The portrayal of the gritty aspects of human nature is incredibly well-executed in this film. With the impeccable direction of modern master Paul Thomas Anderson and the dedicated performances of both Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano, it is near impossible not to get swept up in this captivating story of greed, religion, and the human experience.
Daniel Plainview puts on the façade of being a hardworking, honest family-man. He certainly is hardworking, but in the sense that he will do anything and everything to get what he wants. He puts on this façade, but we watch as the layers of this act are peeled back throughout the movie to reveal that he only cares about two things: being extremely wealthy and staying far away from people.
Plainview only has a relationship with two people, and even those relationships are not fully-developed. His relationship with his son revolves around the oil business and earning the trust of the locals he wants to buy land from. When H.W. becomes an inconvenience to him, he ships him off to a boarding school. The only other relationship he has is his heated rivalry with Eli Sunday. He sees right through Sunday and recognizes a bit of himself in the small-town preacher.
Sunday has a façade of his own to keep up with. He puts on this God-fearing act of religious purity, but underneath it all, he is just as corrupt and greedy as Plainview is. The baptism scene where Sunday berates Plainview for his sins, specifically making him scream out to the congregation, “I’ve abandoned my child!” repeatedly while Sunday slaps him, showcases the power struggle between them. You can feel the intensity between them and the way that both of them want to have power over the other.
The greed and competitive nature of Plainview is brought to life by an almost unhinged performance from Lewis. He’s in almost every shot, and you can see him becoming more beast than man through Lewis’ body language and facial expressions. Even with the powerhouse performer that Daniel Day-Lewis is, Paul Dano bounces off of him quite well and their scenes together pull you in. Combine that with a superbly written script, beautiful cinematography, and masterful direction from Paul Thomas Anderson, and a masterpiece is born.
