Admittedly, There Will Be Blood seems a perfect balance between excess and restraint, as Anderson establishes a sprawling history while maintaining concentrated intimacy with his characters. Two of these frequented themes - familial relationships and theological musing (at play, bluntly, throughout Magnolia) - have been retained here, but with newfound restraint. Anderson’s filmmaking is unquestionably distinct, but his previous films have been excessive for my tastes, both in craft and theme. While Upton Sinclair’s Oil! - upon which There Will Be Blood is sourced - has a socialist bent and concerns issues of government scandal in the Nineteenth Century oil industry, Paul Thomas Anderson’s film is less broad, and avoids political rhetoric. While fictionalizing history, There Will Be Blood is fully aware of the approach of the latter’s view of the past, embarking on the disintegration the self-made man, that heralded image all too symbolic in American mythology, and the trampling effect of those in power.

Revisionists magnify the plights of these anonymous masses, providing minute details of their suffering while distorting the glorification long attached to the men who dreamt up such projects.

The path to progress is one strewn with victims, a consequence traditionally accepted in history books we read accounts of the casual yet lethal accidents that occurred during the construction of Transatlantic railroads, or of factory workers exhausted and racked with illness during the endless shifts of the Industrial Revolution, all in the name of man’s progress.

There will be blood stills