Paul Thomas Anderson’s tragic parable of society’s addiction to oil, fuelled by a zealous Daniel Day-Lewis, is a burning indictment of male aggression and an apocalyptic warning
The title is a prophecy, a warning, or a vengeful supernatural pronouncement. Paul Thomas Anderson’s strange masterpiece, freely adapted by him from Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil!, is a tragic parable of man’s dependence on this commodity: formerly the lubricant of commercial triumph and technological innovation, and now the dwindling lifeblood of our material prosperity, the unacknowledged driving force of our military conflicts, and even the cause of a coming ecological catastrophe. That dark title threatens a calamity now visible on the horizon: destruction of the Earth itself. And it is all inscribed in the story of the movie’s leading character, a man with the Bunyanesque name of Daniel Plainview.
Related: 'An account of how insane we once were' – Paul Thomas Anderson on There Will Be Blood