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Sunday infuriates Plainview. The oil man probably recognizes his own deceitful tactics manifested in this man of the cloth. And he knows he'll win this community's trust only if he makes some kind of tenuous bargain with this evangelist.

When industry holds hands with religion, there's more arm-wrestling than affection. The marriage of Christianity and capitalism is easily corrupted. Businessmen exalt themselves by squeezing precious resources, even their children, for the sake of money, just as evangelicals can succumb to ego and self-righteousness in their zeal to save souls.

Dillon Freasier plays an orphan boy whom Plainview uses as a means to an end

When Plainview himself accepts Jesus Christ—or goes through the motions in order to win the congregation's approval—Sunday gives him a public beating until Plainview roars "I want the blood!" We're not sure if he's demanding Christ's blood for salvation—or Sunday's blood in revenge for this humiliation.

The film's title is also a promise from Anderson that all of this evildoing will end badly. Plainview damns himself because he cannot conceive of a relationship outside the framework of control or competition. When oil erupts in a pillar of fire—the most spectacular sight at the movies this year—we suspect that this will be followed by an equivalent eruption of Plainview's own hatred for "these people."

There's a biblical simplicity to these events, as brother turns against brother, father betrays son, and son strikes back at father. Eventually, Plainview's guilt about his crimes against a brother and a son leads to something other than repentance. He wants to turn one of heaven's "sons" against the Almighty himself.

These symmetries emphasize one of the film's central themes: How we treat our brothers, sons, and fathers will define us. Heaven is a grace-filled community, and hell is isolation and the absence of love. If there were categories in the video stores called "The Wages of Sin" or "The Nature of Evil," this film could fit perfectly in either section.

Day-Lewis has finally found a film where he can unleash his full potential without overwhelming the scenery. Plainview's as volcanic and arrogant as any big screen character portrayed by DeNiro, Pacino, Brando, or even Orson Welles. It's an extraordinary performance.

Writer-director Anderson on the set with his star actor

But the film is an even greater show of Anderson's talent. His first four features—Hard Eight (aka Sydney, 1996), Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999), and Punch-Drunk Love (2002)—earned him a reputation as an unpredictable talent who divides audiences. Since then, he worked as assistant to one of his heroes, Robert Altman, on the set of A Prairie Home Companion. He must have learned some new tricks. The patience that Anderson demonstrates, trusting Day-Lewis and Dano to dig deep and find moments of spontaneous genius—that's pure Altman. The torch has been passed.

There Will Be Blood is a masterpiece. While it's dedicated to Altman (who died in late 2006), Blood feels more like a collaborative effort from Stanley Kubrick, Terrence Malick, Peter Weir, and Francis Ford Coppola. And the film's bizarre finale is 100 percent Anderson—a plunge into the unexpected that will bewilder and divide viewers. Decades from now, cinephiles will still be passionately debating this film.

Like Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blood boasts a brilliant musical score in which dissonant waves of strings seem to shriek and groan like plate tectonics, alarms blaring from the desolate landscape. Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood has composed a soundtrack that will probably inspire imitators.

Like Malick's Days of Heaven, Blood's centerpiece features a glorious, terrifying conflagration. Photographed by Anderson's faithful cinematographer Roger Elswitt, the film's visual metaphors suggest that Anderson has been studying Malick.

Like Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave, and The Mosquito Coast, Blood exemplifies Anderson's interest in landscape as metaphor.

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