Tonight on Netflix: Sweat and Blood with Daniel Day-Lewis

When Daniel Plainview hears about a small town in California where an ocean of oil is said to literally flow from the ground, he decides to try his luck and travels to Little Boston with his son H.W. In this lost place, where everyone is fighting for survival and where the only obstacle is the church led by the charismatic priest Eli Sanid, Plainview and his son see the smile of fate.

Even if oil fulfills their expectations and captures their wealth, nothing will be the same: tensions rise, conflicts erupt, and human values ​​such as love, hope, sense of community, faith, ambition, and even the bonds between father and son are threatened. With corruption, betrayal… and oil.

After his excellent Punch Drunk Love (in which, let’s remember, Adam Sandler finds one of the best roles of his career), the talented Paul Thomas Anderson wanted to radically change the register for the fifth film. While living in London, he came across a fluffy book by Upton Sinclair, oil!, which the author wrote in 1927.

An adaptation of this novel will be Blood “Mixture of western and horror” As the director will say later. Although the film has elements of both genres, it is first and foremost a brutal and harrowing story of America, the very foundations on which the country was built and the hypocrisy of its self-proclaimed noble intentions. History written with sweat, tears, mud and blood.

We can never stress enough how Daniel Day-Lewis is a tremendous actor, the greatest of his generation, who unfortunately decided to retire after his last film, Phantom Thread, still under the auspices of Paul Thomas Anderson. Recognized for the dramatic intensity of his compositions, too method of actionHe is the only actor to date to have won the Oscar for Best Actor three times, including one Blood will be spilled.

Delivering an absolutely phenomenal and electrifying composition in the mask of Daniel Plainview, the actor was closely involved in the creation of his character: the director sent him the script when it was only three quarters finished. He accepted the role immediately, thus allowing the whole team to refine the character of Daniel Plainview with the help of the actor.

According to an anecdote told by the New York Times, his particularly intense performance alarmed actor Kel O’Neill to the point where he was replaced by the wonderful Paul Dano, who plays Eli Sanid. A solid asset for PT Anderson as Dano has already provided an answer to this monster method of action Three years earlier in The Ballad of Jack and Rose.

In contrast to the ambitious, strict and often violent tycoon of Plainview, Eli Sand is an eloquent, gentle and quiet preacher. But beneath that layer, beneath the surface, lurks an ambition that is practically the same as Plainview; The same greed and lust for power that drives Plainview to exist.

“His use of his faith, which is very ambiguous, is certainly what drew me to his character the most.” Paul Dano told us when we caught up with him for the film’s release. “He is a very cunning and manipulative character. He uses his faith to gain power, and the danger is that the public worships you and not God when you preach on stage. By the end of the film, you realize how pathetic he is. You question his sincerity. As an actor, it’s great to play all in this aspect.”

Bathed in extraordinary cinematography by Robert Elswit, rightly an Oscar winner for his excellent work on this film, Blood will be spilled Also features a hypnotic and discordant score by Johnny Greenwood that never leaves the filmmaker. Black as hell, this gritty and brutal work is one of the best films of the 2000s.