(Continued)

OK, James, I feel you. You don't like Day-Lewis. You see his wheels turning. The scene with his brother doesn't work for you. He shoves you out of the movie. I'm coming to doubt that any argument I can advance will reverse these "almost autonomic" responses.

Still, I must add that the key to character and performance in "TWBB" comes in Plainview's query: "Can everything around here be got?" The answer is pretty much yes. Day-Lewis chews scenery in "Blood" because he's incarnating a monster bent on eating up as much of the world/movie as he can. "I have a competition in me," he shares almost clinically -- and that's the engine that makes his wheels turn. He hardly knows how to act naturally, with his brother or anyone else.

How can we dismiss the way Day-Lewis employs his voice right up and down the scale to seduce, to smash, as a conduit for what possesses him. It raises the small hairs when he clasps his son's head, at once lovingly and lethally. Notice how physically constrained the man is by indoor spaces, so painfully alien does Plainview find human shelter and company. Savor the way he conveys -- in voice and expression and stance -- the appalling agony of having to kneel down before Eli Sunday and his fake god, of having to bow down before anything on earth (except maybe a gusher). He's a terrible spectacle, a prideful Satan imploding with rage because he's been downsized to human scale.

Ultimately, I cannot forget the uneuphemized blackness of the soul onscreen. There's no holding back, no last-minute conversion, no hook on which to hang some shred of humanity. I admire and respect Day-Lewis' skill and courage in creating a monstrous mystery, a character that never invites anything but awe and horror. There's good reason that George Clooney called Day-Lewis "the f***er all actors bow to."

KAM

Dear Kathleen,

Well, subjectivity and emotion are integral to any argument about film and acting: We can -- and must -- point to the evidence onscreen, but (thank gods and monsters) our responses to them will never be limited to the purely rational. So, how indeed can we "dismiss" Day-Lewis' manipulation of his voice and his body? How can we get past it? He places his technique at center stage, insisting that we notice it -- not at all like the Coens' fluent command of their skills in "No Country." That's what I mean (though not what T.S. Eliot meant) when I say Day-Lewis' craft falls between the emotion and the response, between the idea and the reality, between the actor and the character, between the audience and Plainview.

I very much like what you say about "TWBB" being "a kind of storytelling that doesn't really invite you in, but compels you to feel in your blood an awful process ... both 'sickening and elating.'" Anderson has said he wanted to approach it as a horror movie, a monster movie, or a boxing match -- and while watching it I feel that's exactly what he's compelling me to feel, and yet I don't feel it. Intellectually, yes, but not in my blood.

It's funny you should mention George Clooney, whose less-is-more approach to acting stands as the antithesis of Day-Lewis. That Clooney would deify Day-Lewis is also apt, perhaps in ways he did not intend. Clooney plays men. Day-Lewis plays a puppet master playing a man. Like the messianic but puny Eli Sunday, he preaches a false god: Acting! (As Jon Lovitz might say.) On Oscar night, I hope the actor-worshipping crowd is standing for, not bowing to, Clooney.

JE

Dear Jim, it's clear I can't talk you out of what seems to be almost a moral/visceral revulsion with Plainview the character and Day-Lewis the actor. But this has been one of those great film arguments, the kind that forces both combatants to think smarter, write more passionately. The fact that one of us is wrong isn't the most relevant issue, is it? Let's cross swords again soon!

KAM

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Jim Emerson is the former editor of Microsoft's online/CD-ROM movie encyclopedia, Cinemania. He has written a lot over the years, mostly about movies, for many publications and Web sites, and is now the editor of RogerEbert.com, where he also publishes his blog, Scanners (blogs.suntimes.com/scanners).

Kathleen Murphy currently reviews films for Seattle's Queen Anne News. A frequent speaker on film, Murphy has contributed numerous essays to magazines (Film Comment, the Village Voice, Film West, Newsweek-Japan), books ("Best American Movie Writing of 1998," "Women and Cinema," "The Myth of the West") and Web sites (Amazon.com, Cinemania.com, Reel.com). Once upon a time, in another life, she wrote speeches for Bill Clinton, Jack Lemmon, Harrison Ford, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, Art Garfunkel and Diana Ross.