The truly powerful characters remain a part of our psyche and collective consciousness. I could go on and on through a list of characters that were enigmatic, embodied the best and worst of us all, and really impacted me individually but to narrow that down to one single character proved to be almost impossible. After agonizing over the possibilities it came down to a very close competition between Anton Chigurh and Daniel Plainview, with Mr. Plainview edging out our token sociopath for the win ....lolol.
One of the reasons I landed on Daniel Plainview as the victor was due to the actor who portrayed him Daniel Day Lewis. Few actors have so fully transformed themselves into their roles over the years as successfully as Daniel Day Lewis and many of his characters could have easily filled the spot for this particular contest. When he agrees to a role he fully embraces it and become the unwavering embodiment of who that character is.
With regards to Mr. Plainview, I chose him because of the superb methods used to develop the character by the writer and how he represents so much about us as people that we are too ashamed to acknowledge. We all have greed....we all have that consuming competition within our soul....some of us are able to fight it off and live a more noble existence, but it is there nonetheless. Mr. Plainview possesses a singlemindedness of purpose with regards to his pursuits and goals and the desires and needs of other play second to his vision and how he achieves it. He holds up a mirror for us in his depiction of greed and ambition and we are often to afraid to look into that mirror.
He is thoroughly represented by the stellar performance by Daniel Day Lewis in the portrayal and we loathe him at his worse and pity him at times. It is my opinion that the pity we share, ever so briefly, of Mr. Plainview is our indictment of the feelings and desires we harbor deep within our souls but being too fond of living within the norms of society we suppress those desires.
At any rate, Daniel Plainview is my favorite character in this moment and if you haven't seen There Will Be Blood, I can't recommend it enough. The acting is stellar, the writing superb, and the soundtrack scratches against your emotions in a way few other compositions will. Thanks for taking the time to read my post and I love you all!
All That Is Gold Does Not Glitter, Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost -Tolkien
