Every time I’m about to watch a Daniel Day-Lewis movie, I expect to be floored — to be brought into a world I’ve never seen and be enveloped by a character who I will undoubtedly obsess about for days, if not weeks.
To say Day-Lewis is a good actor is to say Michael Jordan was a decent ball handler, or that Tom Brady has potential. Right now Day-Lewis is the Robert De Niro of the late 1970s-early ’80s, back when De Niro was a god among mortals — “Mean Streets,” “The Godfather Part II,” “Taxi Driver,” “The Deer Hunter,” “Raging Bull.”
Now, De Niro is much less choosy about his roles and his aura of greatness has disappeared. Day-Lewis, on the other hand, is standing at the top of the mountain and is extremely selective when it comes to picking his projects. Since 1998, he’s only made three movies — “Gangs of New York,” “The Ballad of Jack and Rose” and now this — and “Jack and Rose” was a very small film that few people saw.
Now he’s back with as powerful and compelling a character as he’s ever created, in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood,” based on the novel “Oil!” by Upton Sinclair. Here, Day-Lewis plays Daniel Plainview, a Texas oil prospector who has a knack for finding where the black gold lies underneath the ground.
The first 20 minutes of “Blood” are astonishing in that there is absolutely no dialogue, not a single word spoken. Plainview is deep in the earth, single-handedly trying to mine silver from the ground. It’s brutal work but he’s utterly captivating in his determination.
When he brings that enthusiasm to the oil business a few years later, Day-Lewis needn’t say much to make us believe how obsessed he’s become. One particular scene, in which the oil gushes from the ground and spills onto his face — covering his mouth, nose and every sliver of skin else except for those eyes steely, demonic staring out — tells us all we need to know. Nothing will derail his laser-like focus on being the best and richest oilman in all the West.
Fans of Day-Lewis will instantly recognize that intensity. He used it in spades in Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” as Bill the Butcher, trying to keep his hold on the Five Points district of 1863 Gotham against upstart Leonardo DiCaprio.
We first saw the fierce spirit, of course, in the film that even grizzled actors, filmmakers, studio executives and critics were left shaking their heads in disbelief, in how Day-Lewis completely transformed himself. As Christy Brown in “My Left Foot,” for which he won the Oscar, Day-Lewis exposed his soul. When he won the Academy Award, the crowd let such out a hurrah — he defeated Tom Cruise in “Born on the Fourth of July” — that there has yet to be as much joy in the room after a winner was announced as there was on that day.
There’s little doubt that he’ll be one of the five best actor nominees this year, with competition possibly coming from the likes of Denzel Washington, Emile Hirsch, George Clooney and James McAvoy. Those gents all do stellar work in their respective films, but they should know who they’re up against in Day-Lewis.
It’ll be good they’ll be competing against the actor — a charming and gentle man — and not his on-screen persona in Daniel Plainview. Otherwise, they wouldn’t stand a chance.
Stuart Levine is a managing editor at Variety. He can be reached at stuart.levine@variety.com