There Will Be Blood

During Hollywood's Golden Age of movie musicals, producers would buy stage properties and turn them into something with no resemblance to the original; for example, The Band Wagon has nothing in common with The Band Wagon, except the title, a couple of songs, and Fred Astaire.  Let's just say that  There Will Be Blood has about the same relationship to Upton Sinclair's Oil! as the Band Wagons do to each other.  Oil! represents global culture sodden and dazed with capitalism, even as corrupt businessmen and politicians cynically manipulate the most innocent for their own nefarious purposes.  In part, the novel is a socialist bildungsroman, as oilman J. Arnold Ross' beloved son, "Bunny" (a.k.a. J. Arnold Ross, Jr.), discovers socialism through the offices of his idolized friend, Paul Watkins.  Although Paul's brother, the vaguely Elmer Gantryesque preacher Eli Watkins, is actually offstage for most of the novel, he is J. Arnold Ross' spiritual double--the head of a new Christian sect (inadvertently invented by Ross!), itself shot through with materialistic impulses, that emerges from Eli's jealous competition with his brother.  The real "demon," Sinclair tells us at the end, is not Eli's "cruel wolf Satan" (437), but oil itself and all its appurtenances, "an evil Power which roams the earth, crippling the bodies of men and women, and luring the nations to destruction by visions of unearned wealth, and the opportunity to enslave and exploit labor" (548). 

As you might guess from that last quotation, Sinclair's novel is in full-blown didactic mode. The reader can hardly miss what it's "about," whereas, as OGIC has recently commented, "I left Blood uncertain of what it was really about--greed? capitalism? capitalism and evangelism? obsessive ambition?--and I remain unmoved by any of the answers put forward in reviews I've read or conversations I've had, while remaining tremendously moved by the movie--especially any scene in which Daniel Day-Lewis's character, Daniel Plainview, wants something."  "What's it about?" may be the wrong question to ask about There Will Be Blood, which pulls Oil! inside out: while the film traces the growing mental and moral corruption of its two antagonists, it is never "about" exposing capitalism or religious hucksterism.   The film preserves just a few scenes and occasional dialogue snippets from the novel, which it turns to its own ends (e.g., the neighbors arguing over the lease, Joe's death, the oil fire); the ruthless, corrupt yet relatively mild-mannered and even fair-minded Ross, for whom Sinclair musters some sympathy, turns into the chilling Daniel Plainview, while the powerful and corrupt Eli Watkins, for whom Sinclair has no sympathy, becomes the equally powerful and corrupt Eli Sunday.  (The name change is presumably a nod to Billy Sunday.)  Ross' darling Bunny becomes the illegitimate orphan H. W., deafened when the gusher explodes, and Paul, who sells out his family in his only scene, is capitalist Judas instead of socialist Christ.  Besides the fact that Plainview drills for oil on the Watkins/Sunday estate, there's virtually nothing left of the novel's plot.

For writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, psychology, not politics, is everything.  Both Daniel and Eli are almost entirely alienated from their fellow men. Daniel, who admits that he "hates" just about everyone, has no friends or connection to his family; while he does seem to love H.W., after a fashion, it's a self-serving love that brooks no opposition.  Eli loathes his family and has only the most tenuous of connections to his adoring congregation.   Both men yearn for some sort of companionship--which is why Daniel can be temporarily tricked by his "brother," for example--but fear vulnerability; in fact, both are, at some level, cowards.  Both men are master rhetoricians, whether selling the promise of oil or selling the promise of salvation; they manipulate others for gain but cannot engage in dialogue.  Anderson develops the parallels through visual and verbal echoes, whether in the form of real estate (both Eli and Daniel upgrade their "houses"), physical action (striking each other, "baptism"), and quotation (the sinner's bench).   At some level, both are aware that they are doubles--that they have similar goals, similar flaws, similar strategies.  Each indicts the other.  But what makes Eli just a little weaker (fatally so) is that he needs to confess his failings; he needs absolution, but in the form of cash, from his "friend."  Daniel, alcoholic and physically tormented by an injury sustained at the film's beginning, asks no forgiveness and offers none.

In this respect, the film's religious themes are much subtler than the novel's.  Certainly, in both cases, there is no religion that is not already fatally corrupted by capitalism; Eli offers no spiritual transcendence to offset Daniel's secularism.  The film's "blood" conspicuously fails to redeem anyone, whether the blood in question belongs to Christ (Eli's church), the quasi-sacrifices to the quest for oil (Daniel's injured leg, H.W.'s father, Joe), or Daniel's victims ("Henry," Eli).  Eli's "baptism" in oil seems no more and no less effective than Daniel's baptism for oil.  At times, the whole affair takes on a vaguely apocalyptic tinge, especially in the long shots of arid desert and the nighttime gusher explosion.   The score contributes considerably to the mood, particularly in the eerie sections that sound like an onrushing plague of locusts.  (The upbeat burst of music that begins the end credits is a fine bit of sonic irony.)

Of course, Daniel Day-Lewis takes much of the credit for making the film so engrossing.   In terms of screen time, he is the film.   Far slicker than Sinclair's Ross, Day-Lewis' Plainview conceals his hunger for domination beneath a gossamer cloak of civilized speech and behavior; there's something atavistic lurking within.  As his surroundings improve, his mind and body decay, until he is literally incapable of straightening either of them out.  His final encounter with Eli is a marvel of tone-shifting: the scene starts out as black comedy, then slowly escalates into something far more horrifying.  "I'm finished," indeed. 

 

Comments

[Professor Zero]

I am "dying" to see this film.

[Wiliam]

Thank you for the wonderful thoughtsJ

[patrick]

finally got to see the infamous There Will Be Blood... Daniel-Day Lewis' performance was top-notch. He takes well to the overbearing, violent father-figure role -- he also did this in Gangs of New York.