Daniel Day-Lewis devours the screen as oil tycoon Daniel Plainview in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s turn-of-the-century epic “There Will Be Blood,” one of 2007’s most compelling pictures.

What can be said about a life lived without compassion? Is there sympathy for the devil, or merely a lesson to be learned of the wages of sin?

The film begins and Plainview appears on-screen with no introduction or explanation, a lone figure in a barren landscape, chipping away for silver in a deep earthen shaft.

Without dialogue for the first 15 or so minutes, the action leads up to the moment this rugged laborer draws black blood from the earth, forever altering his fortunes.

But there’s a price to pay, exacted when the rickety drilling mechanism breaks and kills an unnamed worker, orphaning his infant child.

Years later, with the adopted boy “H.W.” by his side, Plainview tours small towns of the west, looking to expand his operation.

A mysterious young man calling himself Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) pays a visit to Plainview, selling him the location of his hometown, where the earth is so rich with oil it seeps to the surface.

Plainview eventually swindles the ground beneath the Sunday family’s feet, along with almost the entire depressed California town.

For years, Plainview battles it out – of sorts – with Paul’s twin brother (this hits on one of the film’s unexplained mysteries) Eli Sunday, an upstart charismatic preacher who, with unsettling ambition, looks to build up his fledgling Church of the Third Revelation.

With only four films to his backing, Anderson is one of the premiere young directors.

His masterful 1997 “Boogie Nights” charged through 156 minutes with brisk energy and delivered an engaging high-art redemption story – set to the background of the 1970s porn industry.

In 2002’s “Punch Drunk Love,” he reinvented the tired Adam Sandler character into something with human dimension.

Anderson’s latest endeavor is equally impressive and recommendable, but not without reservations.

“There Will Be Blood” is of that rare breed of film that looks to demand attention more than entertain, a tale without plot that merely stops rather than ends. Some moviegoers likely will not have patience with the film’s slow-churning momentum, stretched out to a 158-minute running time.

The story is most engaging in the first half and climaxes with a blazing geyser of oil, a moment beautifully photographed. From there the camera lens tends to focus much more narrowly on the face of Plainview, in scenes where the character comes to grips with the all-encompassing hate and rancor inside of him.

Day-Lewis offers a tour-de-force performance of a man who forfeits his soul, most visibly at conflict over what eventually happens to his son. Dano’s sometimes distracting performance as the zealous preacher, on the other hand, never quite seems as genuine or appropriate, veering a bit too far into lunacy. And therein lies one of the film’s potential problems.

To say the film’s message is heavy-handed is an understatement. Even the menacing orchestral score, composed by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, leaves no room to the imagination. From the get-go, this is a story of doom and damnation.

Nevertheless, “There Will Be Blood” is a powerful achievement and worth experiencing.