There Will Be Blood

Director Anderson ventures from the contemporary to a saga that covers some 30 years (from 1898 to the 1920s) following the fortunes of silver prospector turned oil magnate Daniel Planview (Day-Lewis). Misanthrope Planview wheels, deals, and cheats his way to a fortune, dogged by evangelical preacher Eli Sunday (Dano), whose family Plainview took advantage of to get his oil derricks gushing. Plainview's one human contact is the orphan H.W. (Freasier), whom he adopts (and later dismisses) in his obsessive quest for power and wealth. Foreboding, with a powerful performance from Day-Lewis as an egotist driven mad by his ambitions. Loosely based on Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel, "Oil!"