There Will Be Blood provokes powerful reaction 

Feb 8, 2008, 16:34 GMT

Making a movie is like prospecting for oil or silver, said US director Paul Thomas Anderson, whose film There Will Be Blood was screened Friday at the Berlin Film Festival.

Berlin - Making a movie is like prospecting for oil or silver, said US director Paul Thomas Anderson, whose film There Will Be Blood was screened Friday at the Berlin Film Festival.

This, Anderson told a press conference in Berlin was because 'you don't know if you are going to get anything out of it. But once you get something good you keep going.'

Anderson appears to have struck gold with There will be Blood, which stars London-born Daniel Day-Lewis, having received almost universal claim and having been nominated for eight Oscars at the Academy Awards set down for later this month.

This includes a best actor nomination for Day-Lewis who plays the ruthless, obnoxious but charismatic Daniel Plainview who sets off in search of silver in the west of America at the turn of the last century.

But instead Plainview discovers oil and within a few years he becomes incredibly rich. As the title of the film suggests Plainview accepts that blood will be spilt as he strives to fulfil his ambitions.

During his ruthless rise to power he runs into a Christian fundamentalist and his family with Plainview in the end paying a high price for his fortune.

Day-Lewis' nomination for his role as Plainview comes 17 years after he won his first Oscar for his role as Christy Browne in My Left Foot. Born with cerebral palsy, Browne learned to paint and write with his only controllable limb - his left foot.

Along with his powerful role in There Will Be Blood, Day-Lewis has been nominated three times for an Academy Award with some critics now describing him as the greatest living movie actor.

He has already won a Golden Global Award and an American Screen Actors' Guild Award for his portrayal of Plainview.

Wearing his now trademark country look, 50-year-old Day-Lewis appeared to play down expectations of what might emerge from Oscar night. 'I am just going to turn up and see what happens,' he told the press conference in Berlin.

'I feel drawn into the orbit of a world that was unknown to me,' he said about playing the role of Plainview. What appeals to him in acting are, he said, 'lives that are utterly mysterious to me.

But Day-Lewis said the deal was done once he had read Anderson's script, which was loosely based on a 1927 book Oil! by Upton Sinclair. 'I thought there was no way to avoid it.'

The son of Britain's poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, he first came to movie prominence in the mid-1980's for his portrayal of a young skinhead who has a gay relationship with a Pakistani in British director Stephan Frears My Beautiful Laundrette. A few years later came more fame with My Left Foot.

Altogether he has made about 20 movies, including The Boxer, In The Name of the Father, The Crucible and Gangs of New York.

Day-Lewis' dedication to his roles has also helped to enhance his reputation as an actor. For his role in US director Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans he learnt to hunt and skin animals.

Either way, Day-Lewis performance in There Will Be Blood tends to bring out a powerful reaction from movie audiences.

Los Angeles-born Anderson, whose previous films include Magnolia, Boogie Nights, as well as Cigarettes and Coffee, said There will be Blood and and Day-Lewis' portrayal of Plainview had already generated a very differing response from people who have seen the movie.

Some people say 'I like him,' others say they did not like him, said Anderson. Some said they felt sorry for him in the end. One woman told him she wanted to sleep with Plainview.

But, said Anderson, others simply said: 'He really let me down.'