Holds up just as well on repeat viewing.
I've come around to the idea that it's miles better than all those gunfighter Westerns at showing the end of the American West: it wasn't the businessmen who crowded out the lawless, which is the impression you sometimes get; some of them were crowded out too.
Once again I didn't notice the possibility that the final scene was a dream sequence until after the fact. I'm not sure which ending is worse -- that Daniel gets his revenge, or that he doesn't. But I suppose it doesn't matter.
Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) reminds me of the George Hearst of Deadwood. A pioneer, yes, and one whose three-sentence biography -- "A self-made man; brought himself up from nothing..." -- suggests strength and determination; the unpleasant details are left between the lines. His strength manifests as a refusal to submit: as he politely puts it,
And less politely:
Paul Thomas Anderson's epic isn't quite so blunt, nor is Plainview quite so misanthropic, but his ambition is still an obsession; increasingly, it's a matter of power. It's not just money.
There isn't much story to tell, so it's surprising that the film's 158 minutes are so tightly constructed. Not a minute is wasted. Day-Lewis is especially good, as is Paul Dano as the disturbed/disturbing boy preacher, Eli Sunday. Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood provides a wonderfully discordant score, jarring the film loose from its placid Western imagery.
You can't go wrong -- it's a must-see.