An eccentric essay. Review on There Will Be Blood Movie

‘There Will Be Blood’, an Oscar nominee for Best Picture for 2007, is not a fun movie to watch. But, if you can look beyond its dour and rugged exterior, you will strike ‘oil’, in the form of a thought provoking essay on human vanity and greed.

Writer/Director Paul Thomas Anderson who has made a name for himself for churning out bizarre studies of human psychology, this time comes up with an eccentric and expanded adaptation of the book ‘Oil’ (published in 1927) by socialist author Upton Sinclair. Sinclair’s book is loosely based on elements from the real life stories of Edward Doheny (1856-1935), an oil tycoon who built Pan American Petroleum in the 1920’s in California, benefiting from corrupt single-bid contracts by the feds. Anderson takes those facets and juxtaposes them against elements from the life of Billy Sunday (1862-1935) a baseball player turned evangelist. By doing so, Anderson does get the extra punch he wants to deliver, through his broader and rather interestingly comparative study of human selfishness.

The two men never met each other in real life but their profiles become a bit too compelling to be not presented together for Anderson’s  composition. They represent two very different aspects of the social life of those times (the 1920s, and arguably of the present times as well) and by pitting them against each other Anderson gets to show how different, and yet how similar, the pursuits of a misanthropic capitalist and a pitiful faith healer can be. In Anderson’s screenplay the bad in capitalism and organized religion collide often in the form of intense drama. And through its rather macabre moments, the ugliness in them comes out too, showing us the ruthless and the submissive sides of self-centeredness.

In “There Will Be Blood”, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is the oil tycoon, and Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) is the evangelist. The story opens in 1898 with Daniel toiling in the wilderness as a sliver miner, hurting himself physically but never letting it go. His tenacity in exploration leads him to an oil well. One of his men dies in an accident on the site. Not wasting a minute, Daniel adopts his co-worker’s orphaned child, and goes on to build a small-time oil enterprise negotiating new leases with his sales pitches of sympathy for him and his adopted son (‘I'm a family man- I run a family business. This is my son and my partner’). With the same tactics, he hoodwinks Eli’s family to sell him their oil-rich family property in California, for a pittance. As the story unfolds we find out that these were but tiny manipulations compared to what Daniel would be prepared to do, to force his will upon others so he can get ahead, to build his empire, and to make money.  The ending begins with a bankrupt Eli visiting Daniel, seeking collaboration to drill in other people’s property and agreeing to Daniel’s terms for doing so, including renouncing his faith (‘I am a false prophet and God is a superstition’).

This film's cryptic title might be a reference to oil, but it could also be a reference to a religious curse.

As the story moves, first we see quiet images (in fact it feels like a silent movie for a while) of the industrious nature of free spirit and entrepreneurship, and of the social benefits they spread.  And then, we start seeing the abyss that an unbridled pursuit of power and money brings with it (‘I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people. There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking. I want to earn enough money that I can get away from everyone.’). We also see the misery that the practice of faith brings with it, when it is closely linked with lethargy and inaction.

For someone who takes up 95% of the screening time, far from the tedium one fears from such an exposure, Daniel Day-Lewis keeps matters rather engrossing with his intense and outstanding performance. It got him the well-deserved Oscar for Best Actor.

The production values are brilliant, with convincing visualizations of oil drilling and fire accidents. Photographer Robert Elswit won the Oscar for Best Cinematography.

Jonny Greenwood's score is quite unconventional. It sounds very apt, and irritating at the same time.

It is a difficult movie to watch, but it is recommended for how it tries to study the very sources of ambition and corruption, in business and in the practice of faith.