This is a classic character arc told with the kind of sober restraint common among directors three times as old as P.T. Anderson. His last 4 films, as great as they are, were all obviously made by a young man. There Wil Be Blood is an old man's film.
What I mean by that is it has all the characteristics of a film directed by an old man: the austerity, the formalist's rigor, and the absence of sensational elements (sex, gore, pop music). I would say excessive formalism is a narrow (and favorable) manner of conducting aesthetics. I agree that this narrowness allows for fewer mistakes and could describe 3/4 of There Will Be Blood. The final scene in the Bowling Alley, we see Anderson let go of the formalist's leash on Daniel Day-Lewis's grim mad dog. I think the direction over the acting in the bowling alley scene is actually expansive, and incongruous to the style of the rest of the film, which is why it's so strange and seems so out of place. Plainview doesn't just lose control, the film loses control: just as a narrator in a Faulkner novel loses his grasp on sanity, so too does the prose become fragmented and disorienting. The volcanic lunacy on display in the Bowling Alley, and to a lesser extent, the Baptism, is like the psychotic loss of composure you witness in Jack Nicholson as he taps on the bathroom door in The Shining, “Not by the hair of your chinny-chin-chin?!” Is such flailing ham good acting? Well, not exactly, but it sure is interesting to watch. If Plainview’s outburst at the end had been less wacko, it wouldn’t have had viewers anguishing over what they thought of it days, weeks later, inspiring second trips to the theater. I think the ridiculousness and the monstrousness of Plainview’s outburst is perfect.
There Will Be Blood towers over the other best films of 2007, even, in my opinion, No Country For Old Men.
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