Top 10 Movies (Richard Schickel)

#9. There Will Be Blood

Paul Thomas Anderson's film, loosely based on an old Upton Sinclair novel, which was, in turn, loosely based on the life of Edwin Doheney, who made a vast and not entirely honorable fortune wildcatting for oil, is a slow-rolling American epic. At once a celebration of and an assault on unfettered enterprise and, curiously enough, a no-holds-barred attack on religious fundamentalism, it is unquestionably the oddest movie of the year. Yet thanks mainly to a truly astonishing performance by Daniel Day Lewis — cannily reserved for most of the picture, toweringly rageful at its conclusion — it is also a mesmerizing meditation on the American spirit in all its maddening ambiguities: mean and noble, angry and secretive, hypocritical and more than a little insane in its aspirations.

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