This is one of the biggest Oscar movies, which I watched just before the Oscars, but am writing this after it. This is certainly a very well made movie, with a great performance by Daniel Day Lewis.

The plot is fairly simple, it is about a successful oilman (Daniel Plainview), how he achieved success and how he relates to other people. His relationship with his son is to me at the center of this story, it shows us what kind of a person he is with the only family he has.

He is a very interesting character, he obviously cares for his son, but at the same time he does many things to alienate him. It is not correct to say that he doesn’t love his son, but he definitely values his work as much if not more than him.

The Eli character is very interesting. I am not sure if he was supposed to be the same character as Paul, I thought he was but towards the end Daniel talks about Paul as if he were somebody else, still we have never seen Paul after his visit to Daniel.

The last part of the movie was a time jump, not sure how I feel about that part, though I think it might have gone a bit too far. Before that there was enough ambiguity about Daniel’s nature, which was destroyed at the end.

I like this movie, I found it interesting enough to let me think about Daniel and his behaviour. However for some reason this story just didn’t touch me emotionally. There might be something about Paul Thomas Anderson that just doesn’t appeal to me. I haven’t seen all his movies, but the ones I’ve seen have all been lost on me. Nonetheless, this is still a good movie.

Rating: 3.5 Stars