There Will Be Blood

Huston’s fingerprints are all over Paul Thomas Anderson’s parable of self-determinism carried to baleful extremes. Most saliently, star Daniel Day-Lewis modeled his character’s speaking voice on Huston’s, and his personage—a California oil tycoon not above siphoning natural resources—can be seen as a forerunner to Chinatown’s Noah Cross. Anderson watched The Treasure of the Sierra Madre each night before bed while writing the script, inspired by the film’s themes of “greed and ambition and paranoia and looking at the worst parts of yourself.” Abundantly deserved Oscars went to Day-Lewis and cinematographer Robert Elswit for the film, and Jonny Greenwood’s eccentric score contributes to its sinister vibe. As intrepid, cerebral, and unsettling as the best of Huston’s work, There Will Be Blood’s central performance captures both his magnetism and his unfathomability.