Paul Thomas Anderson is one of my favorite filmmakers. Watching Magnolia at the age of 12 was a major turning point in my adolescent development, and single-handedly inspired my desire to become a filmmaker. I was lucky enough to work as a P.A. on the set of There Will Be Blood last August, after harassing Anderson at a rare public Q&A earlier in the year. I spent a lot of time on a dusty ranch near Palmdale operating the air conditioning unit, assisting the video assistant, and lugging buckets of fake oil from place to place. It was an intense, fascinating experience, and gave me an amazing first-hand perspective of the day-to-day realities of filmmaking.

Me and P.T. Anderson at the There Will Be Blood wrap party. This picture is more than a little hilarious.

I saw the completed film for the first time in its entirety on Monday night, and I’ve been slowly processing it ever since. As one can tell from the trailer alone, Blood is a complete departure from Anderson’s signature style, in both content and form. The distancing from his earlier work is deliberate, a definite attempt to approach filmmaking with a different aesthetic and with a fresh set of talent. Leaving the comfort zone payed off in spades: Blood is a precisely crafted minimalist masterpiece.

In fact, I was surprised just how minimal it was, especially for a film that runs two and a half hours long and spans thirty years of California history. There was even less dialogue than had been laid out in the already sparse script, and several scenes of zealous theatricality had been toned down or removed entirely. By taking away the frog rain, pop songs, prosthetic dicks and decadent dialogue of his earlier films, Anderson has allowed himself to focus entirely on a careful study of the film’s anti-hero, Daniel Day Lewis’ magnificently callous Daniel Plainview.

I wouldn’t call There Will Be Blood perfect: most glaringly for me, at least on the first viewing, were a few unexpected moments of misplaced humor that dampened the impact of crucial moments. I’d also be interested to know if Anderson was satisfied with trimming the film down to a “mere” 158 minutes, or if we’ll ever see a Coppola-esque four hour director’s cut. While it may not be a masterpiece, Blood is a terrific film– undoubtedly one of the best of the year– and an important step in Anderson’s slowly blooming canon of work.

The Hollywood Reporter has a well-written review that’s worth a read, and for fellow P.T. Anderson devotees, there’s always Cigarettes and Red Vines.