After the light-hearted yet dark – and comparatively short – Punch Drunk Love, Paul Thomas Anderson returns to epic movie making in his latest film There Will Be Blood. But whereas the sprawling Boogie Nights and Magnolia seem to have been concerned with the profane details of their all-too-human characters, There Will Be Blood takes on themes as grand and as stark as the southern California desert where it takes place.

As if echoing popular conceptions of the holy land at the time of Christ, the story unfolds in a dry barren landscape populated with poor farmers and their families who can barely scratch out an existence from its unproductive ground. With the discovery of oil underneath their land by the likes of prospector and subsequent “Oil Man” Daniel Plainview – played with both control and an intensity bordering on the diabolical by Daniel Day-Lewis – the temptation to sell overrides all other concerns, particularly that of the social bonds of family, and specifically those between fathers and sons and brothers. It is through these relationships, however tentative and contingent, that the film’s epic narrative is propelled.

Although they aren’t blood relatives, the most significant relationship in the movie (it seemed to me) was the recurring association between Plainview and Eli Sunday. A civilization of sorts springs up around one of Plainview’s most productive oil wells – complete with tent city and a church. Boyish preacher Eli Sunday, played with schizophrenic aplomb by Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine, Fast-food Nation), leads the congregation of the Church of the Third Revelation. Both Eli and Plainview, with varying degrees of enthusiasm take on the role of father figure. But whereas the role of father is incidental to Plainview’s more earthbound role as leader of men and captain of industry, Eli takes his own leadership as something god-given and holy, and therefore above the rabble of men who chase after wealth and power. But at the same time, no matter how much Eli plays at moral and religious superiority, deep down he longs for power. In doing so, he becomes a reflection of Plainview. In essence, Plainview and Eli are spiritual father and son in their shared desire for the things to be gotten in this world. For Plainview however, power is a means to an end: namely in his wish to “get away from people.” Alternatively, power for Eli, in his willingness to lord it over others for his own edification like a domineering father, is entirely attached to his ego and is an end in itself.

Although both characters are ultimately despicable, in his honest misanthropy, in his ability to see people like Eli Sunday for the dishonest beings they really are, Plainview comes across as the moral center, if there can be one, of the film. When he says to “half brother” Henry, “I see the worst in people,” it isn’t just a flippant remark: Plainview means it, and carries out his mean perceptions of the world to the bloody end — and seemigly on people who deserve to have there skulls bashed in with a bowlling pin. In this way, Plainview, rather than being presented as simpy evil, is given a depth and complexity that perhaps only an actor as talented and obsessed as Daniel Day-Lewis could pull off.

There Will Be Blood is brilliant filmmaking. Check it out.