“The United States is not only the largest producer of crude oil, but also the largest consumer of petroleum products. For every man, woman and child, we consume about 184 gallons in a year.” Or that’s what we consumed in circa 1923, anyway, according to The Story of Petroleum, a 26-minute-long silent film created by the U.S. Bureau of Mines and Sinclair Oil to educate people about the oil industry. Boasting a new score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, The Story of Petroleum is one of the great bonus features on the two-disc collector’s edition of Paul Thomas Anderson’s stunning There Will Be Blood, which hit DVD yesterday.

There Will Be Blood was unquestionably one of the best films of 2007, and I still can’t quite wrap my head around it: As a huge fan of Anderson’s previous films, I have yet to figure out what makes There Will Be Blood feel so radically different from stuff like Magnolia and Boogie Nights and Punch-Drunk Love and Hard Eight—if I didn’t know this was an Anderson picture, I’m not sure I would’ve been able to deduce as much based solely on its content. That’s not a bad thing, especially considering that There Will Be Blood might be Anderson’s most technically impressive work yet, which is saying quite a bit—it’s just kind of extraordinary, and rare, and it’s one more thing to consider, amongst a billion others, while one’s experiencing the film.

After watching There Will Be Blood a second time, I'm still struck by the fact that it makes me feel like an amateur psychologist: While Anderson’s previous work sucks you in on an emotional level, There Will Be Blood--while still being tremendously affecting--feels more distanced and removed, almost like it’s a psychological case study of its main characters. You get caught up in it, you get involved, but you’re also analyzing the characters as you go--you’re always engaged when you're watching them, but you’re also never allowed to identify with them. You feel alongside them, I guess is what I’m getting at, rather than feeling with them, and it’s a sensation at once engrossing and disconcerting.

The DVD is pretty great: Probably the best feature is “15 Minutes,” a, uh, 15-minute-long montage of old-timey photographs and old film footage, edited together with occasional scenes from There Will Be Blood, which walks you through Anderson’s research and preparation for the film. It's got some incredible footage in it, with images like the one below, and avoids going the snooze-inducing Ken Burns-y route, instead editing the images together to Greenwood's score in a way that's strange and beautiful and *cough*educational*cough*.

That and The Story of Petroleum are probably the most interesting things on the special features disc, though a couple of deleted scenes are well worth checking out--one, titled “Fishing," starts off being all awkwardly expository about oil-drilling techniques before giving us some more insight into the relationship between Daniel Plainview and his nemesis, Eli Sunday, while another, “Haircut,” captures a tender moment between Daniel Plainview and his son, H.W., before evolving into a montage of clips and scenes set to Greenwood’s creeeeeepy, brilliant score. There’s also “Dailies Gone Wild,” which sounds like it might offer some hot Eli Sunday/Daniel Plainview action, but in reality, it just seems like an alternate take on a scene already in the film, with the exception that the kid playing H.W. cracks up at the end.

There are a couple of omissions: The lack of a commentary track smarts, there's a hint of some more deleted footage that's not included (does anybody else recognize that scene pictured at the top of this post? There are a few shots like that that're included in the special features, but that I don't remember from the film), and while the set’s really solid in terms of historical context for the film--something that sounds boring but isn’t, I PROMISE--it doesn’t delve much into the actual production. (Some insight about Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance would have been welcome [no matter how much his performance in this is hyped, it’s still nothing short of astonishing], and it would've been nice to get official confirmation on who the actor was who was originally slated to play Eli Sunday, and if the real reason he didn’t finish the production is because he's a big old baby and he couldn't handle how scary Day-Lewis reportedly was on set.) Also missed: Considering how gorgeous the film is, it’s kind of a rip-off that there’s nothing about the methods of cinematographer Robert Elswit, who won a well-deserved Oscar for his work here.

But yeah, overall? A really solid DVD set to go along with a brilliant, beautiful, and brutal film. If you’re a fan of the film, it’s well worth checking out, and I wish more DVDs would take this sort of measured and insightful route when it comes to special features.