"There Will Be Blood"

Plainview investigates the site and moves in on it quickly: The father, Abel Sunday (David Willis), is no obstacle. But his other son, Eli (also played by Paul Dano), is a wanna-be preacher with grand plans to build his own church. He wants to squeeze as much money as possible out of Plainview -- the better to do God's work, of course -- and the two engage in a wary, tortured dance that's supposed to lead us to an understanding of their similarities, their differences, and the ways in which the pursuit of their respective goals is part of this flawed but remarkable entity we call the American character.

Those are grand intentions, and the movie that's banked around them never lets us forget how grand they are. There are epic impulses everywhere you look in "There Will Be Blood"; what's missing is character development, focused storytelling and, most significantly (apart from that terrific opening sequence), any sense of raw, intuitive drama. An epic has to expand as it proceeds; this one narrows. The movie has eloquence but no guts. Its vigor is the arty kind, and over and over again it raises questions and then acts as if the answers -- or even the questions those initial questions lead to -- are unimportant: When we first see Eli -- who of course looks like Paul, because the two are played by the same actor -- we wonder if maybe they're the same person, a split personality. Later, we find out the truth, but it's revealed as if it were an afterthought, a magic wand that's waved vaguely in front of us to get us to think about the dual nature of good and evil and all that rot.

The tragedy of "There Will Be Blood" is that Anderson knows exactly what he's doing: His skill hasn't disappeared or been submerged. There are a few scenes that are so economical and yet so filled with feeling that they point a way to the wholly different movie Anderson might have made: In one of these scenes, H.W. tells his father, with a directness that's deeply touching, that the youngest girl in the Sunday family, Mary, whom he's befriended (she's played by Sydney McCallister), is beaten by her father when she doesn't pray. This clearly distresses the boy, and in the terse shorthand that Plainview and H.W. use to express their love for each other -- the kind of private language that often springs up between family members -- Plainview asks him, "Mary, she's the smaller one?" to which he responds plainly, "Yes, she is."

That scene has so much dignity that it dwarfs the flashier scenes -- particularly the overplayed, near-screwball ending -- that come later. Over and over again, I found myself respecting Anderson's choices and yet not really responding to them. The movie's weird, insistent, fascinating score is by Johnny Greenwood, of Radiohead (it sounds as if it were written to be played not by violins but by a field of anxious cicadas), and Anderson uses it intelligently in some places and rashly in others.

But the greatest disappointment of "There Will Be Blood" is the way its actors seem to matter less than its themes. This is the first Paul Thomas Anderson movie that feels woefully underpopulated. There are no women in "There Will Be Blood" -- Plainview is apparently so fixated on oil he has zero interest in sex -- and that's fine. But their absence is never addressed; the understanding is that a world of power-hungry men is interesting by itself (which it isn't). Anderson has cast a terrific performer, the Irish actor Ciarán Hinds, as Plainview's right-hand man, yet he barely shows us Hinds' face. That's so uncharacteristic of Anderson's generosity toward actors that it's almost unfathomable. Dano (who played the disaffected brother in "Little Miss Sunshine") is allowed to overact in a way that drains power out of the movie instead of charging it.

But Day-Lewis, holder of that most dangerous title "Great Actor," is the worst offender. Day-Lewis is a great actor, as he's proved in movies like "In the Name of the Father" and "My Left Foot." But his greatness is an impediment here. It seems he's decided that naturalism is boring and that big roles demand some kind of novelty. In "There Will Be Blood," he's chosen to channel John Huston, which makes for some tortured, oddball line readings that are clearly supposed to strike us as brilliant.

In "There Will Be Blood," Day-Lewis' body language tells us more about his character than any of his line readings do: His elbows are locked at an awkward angle, and his gait is stiff and belabored, thanks to old mining injuries -- this is a man who's achieved success in defiance of his body. Late in the movie, Plainview has a telling line of dialogue: "There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking." I don't see that as a cynic's line, but as a jumping-off point for exploring the more elusive qualities of what it means to be human: I'm of the school that believes disappointment in humankind is a greater sign of love for it than bland acceptance. But Day-Lewis' performance doesn't tread into that territory. Over and over again, "There Will Be Blood" drops hints about what its big ideas are supposed to be and then neatly skirts them. (The movie is based on only the first 150 pages of Sinclair's book; its ending demands that we fill in the missing chunks of the story for ourselves.) This isn't a cynical picture, just a maddeningly incomplete one. And it's too emotionally constrained to be worthy of Anderson's considerable gifts. "There Will Be Blood" strives for boldness, instead of just being bold. It doesn't cut, and it doesn't bleed.

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