BY BOB STRAUSS > FILM CRITIC

"There Will Be Blood" opens with a wordless suite depicting the always essentially alone miner Daniel Plainview's efforts to find silver. He slaves away at it, mortifies his flesh, nearly blows himself up. But he's always drawn back down, whether into an ore shaft or, as the 19th century gives way to the 20th, wells for a new source of subterranean riches.

Ever looking below, singularly intending to extract something that can be converted into the root of all evil.

I guess as good an interpretation as any of Paul Thomas Anderson's first film in five years is to view it as a tale of some kind of devil vs. a corrupt idea of God. Call it a blistering attack on rapacious capitalism, a portrait of a man who won't let light of any kind into his life, a damn fine depiction of the California oil boom's rigors and rascality, or a chance for Daniel Day-Lewis to chew up acres of fantastic scenery in an attempt to create the ultimate movie testament to soullessness (but often just acting entertainingly bipolar).

All of those descriptions can be fitted onto Anderson's bizarre, fascinating, confoundingly discordant period piece. But at base it's a film about America, and that means about faith and greed, how ideally they're at odds but are as inextricably linked as Cain was to Abel.

Anderson sort of adapted muckraker Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil!" But of course he ran off on his own tormented tangents, the stuff that made "Boogie Nights," "Magnolia" and "Punch-Drunk Love" so electrifying. "Blood" has a choppier feel than those earlier enthralling works, and more screen time seems to pass between what we might think of as signature, behaviorally outlandish PTA moments. But he's after a different kind of game here.

With his bigger-than-life mustache and archaic way of speaking, Plainview talks a B.S. blue streak in a formal, syllable masticating Gilded Age accent that Day-Lewis has exultant fun with. There's a giveaway, though; the only times he looks happy are when he's covered in grime or crude.

After wildcatting around the state, Plainview settles into a semi-arid patch near the Mojave called Little Boston. It's here that a lifelong enmity with Eli Sunday (Paul Dano, as talkative here as he was silent in "Little Miss Sunshine") gives vent to the rage that Plainview suppresses for business purposes. A weak-

kneed but glory-seeking preacher who's just as grasping as the oil man, Sunday is rightly certain that his family got screwed out of its property's mineral rights. Plainview knows Sunday is onto his game and despises him as a weaker version of himself. Their pivotal scenes are the film's best.

Sunday gets the worst of Plainview's misanthropy, but it eventually gets the better of its owner. Daniel's few attempts to form bonds prove ungratifying, to say the least, with a dead colleague's son he essentially uses as a business prop (fantastic child actor Dillon Freasier) and a bastard half-brother (Kevin J. O'Connor) he never knew he had. There are no women in Plainfield's life and hardly any in the movie, which is a shame considering how well Anderson writes female characters. And he comes to detect the untrustworthiness he thrives on in every potential partner, leading to more frequent, more embarrassing losses of control.

Sounds like a mesmerizing character, right? Well, yes and no. Day-Lewis is never short of powerful, but sometimes he oversteps the fine line between bravura acting and hamming it up. And the multitude of Plainview's satanic qualities sometimes render him, like "No Country's" Anton Chigurh, a representation of something reprehensible about human nature but not entirely human.

If there's any moviemaker who knows the California Dream was always a devil's bargain, it's Paul Thomas Anderson.

Bob Strauss, (818) 713-3670

THERE WILL BE BLOOD
>R: violence, language, children in jeopardy.
>Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Kevin J. O'Connor, Dillon Freasier.
>Director: Paul Thomas Anderson.
>Running time: 2 hr. 38 min.
>Playing: Area wide.
>In a nutshell: Dark and deadly capitalism in the early days of the California oil rush, with Day-Lewis playing perhaps the greediest character put on screen since, well, "Greed." Hard to like, easier to admire.