The Film
From writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson comes There Will Be Blood, starring Daniel Day-Lewis in his Academy Award© winning role as the ruthless and murderous early 20th century oil tycoon Daniel Plainview. The film follows Plainview on his endless quest for more money and more oil. One line from the film sums the character up best when he says "I don't like anyone else to succeed."
When Plainview's greed brings him and his son of questionable origin -- a boy he uses as leverage to bargain with people to his own advantage -- to the small California town of New Boston, he runs up against a fanatical preacher (Paul Dano), son of one of the landowners he swindles. The two have a battle of wills for supremacy through violence and humiliations.
Paul Thomas Anderson, through this film, tells an interesting tale of the early robber barons that are part of the U. S. past, and the battle of commercialism versus deep-rooted evangelism. Both Day-Lewis and Dano play their parts brilliantly, but Anderson misses many of the real social issues by putting so much of the focus squarely on the violence and maniacal avarice of the Daniel Plainview character. The film’s pacing tends to crawl in places, as well. Overall, however, with the film's excellent musical score from Jonny Greenwood, which helps build the tension, the wonderful cinematography by Robert Elswit, and brilliant performance by Daniel Day-Lewis (as has become expected), it is easy to see why so many have piled so much acclaim upon this piece of work.
The Picture
Presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 in a high definition 1080p/24 video transfer, There Will Be Blood on Blu-ray Disc is pleasing and film-like, if not absolutely reference quality. There is a fine amount of detail in both the foreground and background; of note is that almost every bit of stubble on Daniel Day-Lewis' face is apparent. Cloth is all finely textured and film grain is captured and presented flawlessly.
Black levels are good, with deep, obsidian blacks, but shadow detail suffers, and blacks tend to crush in dark scenes. Contrast is also set somewhat high, causing brighter scenes to wash out and whites to bloom just a bit, making things look bleached, particularly in the desert scenes. Flesh tones are natural, and there are no major compression artifacts or processing problems such as edge enhancement or posterization to speak of.
The Sound
Paramount/Miramax offer the options of English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and English, French, and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks for this Blu-ray Disc release. I listened to the lossless Dolby TrueHD soundtrack for the purposes of this review. The mix for this release was nothing more than average. Being a completely dialogue-driven film, the sound only came alive in select scenes such as dynamite being detonated, or an oil well beginning to gush. In such scenes, the LFE was well utilized, offering a full-on rumble and all the channels were filled.
Throughout the rest of the film, however, sound was kept mainly across the front three channels with dialogue weighted to the center. The film score is recorded and mixed with wonderful dynamics and consistently kept in proper balance with the dialogue, which is always intelligible. I did notice, however, in the film's last scene, the dialogue got very loud and distorted just a bit; that was the only time that it ever lost clarity. Overall, it is not a brilliant mix, but it works well for the subject material.
The Extras
Paramount once again offer all the options in high definition and, thankfully, spare us yet another boring audio commentary. Sadly, the extras available on this release don't offer much replay value at all. The one supplement here that may be of significance is the historical The Story of Petroleum promotional film from the National Archives, but really only as a curiosity.
The extras available on this release are:
Final Thoughts
Daniel Day-Lewis' and Paul Dano's performances help to carry this film about the violent struggle between religion and commercialism and one man's insatiable greed. Paramount's Blu-ray Disc release offers a good quality video transfer and decent audio. This disc is definitely worth it for anyone who is a fan of Day-Lewis, P.T. Anderson, or the film itself.
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Product Details
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