There will be Blood is directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, it is a period drama film and is slightly based on the novel, OIL! by Upton Sinclair. Daniel Day Lewis plays the role of Daniel Plainview who is an oilman during the late 19th and 20th century in the US. It is regarded as one of the greatest acting performances. He is a ruthless businessman and has the ambition to become the wealthiest oil-tycoon of the world. The conflict in the movie is the grim side of capitalism and greed that arises due to it. The movie comments upon greed, ambition taken too far, family and religion.
Plainview runs an oil drilling company, one of his workers dies and he adopts his son, naming him H.W. We get to see that he doesn’t adopt him out of love or sympathy but because H.W. can be of us. Plainview makes H.W. a nominal partner to his drilling business and presents himself to investors as a family man whom they can trust. We see his cunning ways when he promises to play the Sunday family for their land but when Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) asks him to pay the money, he doesn’t and beats him. H.W becomes deaf in a drilling accident and he send H.W. to a boarding school. At a baptizing ceremony, Eli humiliates Plainview making him admit that he abandoned his son. Plainview ends up killing a man who pretended to be his step-brother. Plainview is a jealous and vengeful man. He has a fear that his wealth will be taken away from him. Deep within himself he knows that this chase for money has left him lonely and is eating his soul away.
In the climax, a grown-up H.W tells Plainview that he wants to dissolve their partnership, even though Planview loves H.W., he mocks his deafness and tells him that he’s just an orphan. Eli comes to ask Plainview for some money but Plainview kills him and has his revenge for when he was humiliated. The last words of Plainview are, “I’m finished.”, these depict how greed and capitalism have left him hollow and destroyed.