Paul Thomas Anderson's classic is one of the most operatic dramas ever put to screen. A thoroughly engrossing story of how ambition turns to greed and then to violence, this is the kind of sweeping character arc that would work flawlessly on the stage. The actors throw their whole bodies into their performances, as if begging to be given epic Sondheim anthems as their backing. Despite being an epic, There Will Be Blood is a bare-bones enough film that the pacing would not be hampered by the introduction of inter-character musical numbers flushing out motivations that remain subtextual on screen. Daniel Plainview, his son, and the Sunday brothers all have feelings about the oil drilling that bubble up in strong enough emotion that bursting into song wouldn't feel out of place in the film itself. The collapse of Daniel Plainview's oil rig and Eli Sunday's violent end can be turned into rousing ballads of both the epic and intimate scale found in the film, harkening back to the musical epics produced in the 80s - the period that birthed such musical spectacle as Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera. This musical is unlikely to ever get made, because there will never be as impressive a Daniel Plainview as Daniel Day-Lewis, but this story is with deep and powerful enough it is nigh begging to be presented in an even more emotionally grandiose form on stage. Show-Stopping Number: "Daniel's Confession" - duet between Daniel Plainview and Eli Sunday, in which the former confesses to his poor parenting, amongst other things ("I abandoned my child!"). Like this article? Agree with these choices? Let us know in the comments section below.
Self-evidently a man who writes for the Internet, Robert also writes films, plays, teleplays, and short stories when he's not working on a movie set somewhere. He lives somewhere behind the Hollywood sign.
