There Will Be Blood

This is a story about greed, obsession, and ultimate betrayal. It is a dark, brooding film. There is a saying that greed is dangerous, greed and obsession are worse, but greed, obsession and money is unstoppable. This is what this movie is about. It is loosely based on the novel by Upton Sinclair, published in 1927, called “Oil”. The book was written in the context of the Harding Administration’s Teapot Dome Scandal. Sinclair was labeled a “muckraker” because of all the books he wrote about corporate abuse. Arguably his most famous, and a “must read”, was The Jungle, about the food industry abuses at the turn of the century. This book resulted in Congress creating the Food and Drug Administration.

“There Will Be Blood” stars Daniel Day Lewis as Daniel Plainview, a down-and-out silver miner, and heavy smoker and drinker, who gets into the oil business in California. One of the workers is killed and leaves a small child which Plainview adopts as his own and raises him as his son. Plainview learns the oil business very quickly. He also learns that, in order to get oil rights, he needs to convince many people that they should lease him their land. A young man, Paul Sunday, comes to him one day and clams that, on his family’s land, there is oil. Plainview is skeptical, but pays him a small amount for the information. On the guise of quail hunting, he and his “son”, H.W., scout the land and find it to be oil rich. They then convince the owner of the land to lease it to them. The owner’s son, Eli Sunday (played by Paul Dano, of Little Miss Sunshine fame), a fundamentalist Christian and young preacher, argues that money should be donated to the church. Plainview agrees. It is obvious from this point that Eli and Plainview will be at odds.

The drilling starts. Eli asks to bless the first well, to which Plainview agrees; but when the well is started, Eli is ignored. After several wells are started, H.W. is sitting on the roof of a well-building when it let’s loose with a huge rush of gas and then erupts. H.W. is made permanently deaf from the accident. In the meantime, an imposter shows up claiming to be Plainview’s half-brother. Plainview finds him out and kills him. Before killing him, Plainview admits to trusting no one, liking no one, and being completely a loner.

H.W. reacts to his infirmity with great distress. Plainview can’t relate to him, and ignores him. H.W. acts out, ultimately setting fire to the bunkhouse in which his father and supposed uncle sleep. Plainview ships him off to a home for deaf children. The oil wars go on. Plainview is in a constant struggle with Standard Oil. Union Oil agrees to help him pipe his oil to the coast. Eli leaves town to go on a mission.

Plainview’s drinking gets worse. He makes more money, becomes more successful, but his life is in a downward spiral. His son comes back with a mentor, teaching him to sign, but the link between father and son is not there any more. Years later, Plainview builds his dream home on the coast. It is an example of opulence and overindulgence. It even has a bowling alley. His son, at this point, is about 23. He comes to his “father” and asks if he can leave the business and start his own oil business in Mexico. Plainview, at this point, is so paranoid he accuses his son of betraying him. He also tells the young man that he really isn’t his son, and that the only reason he kept him was for a cute face to help him buy land. The son, shocked, leaves.

Eli shows up from his mission, begging for Plainview’s help. He has lost everything and needs some financial support. This leads to the final confrontation and incredible ending of the movie.

This is a classic study of a sociopath. Daniel Day Lewis plays this part so well, it is actually better than Anthony Hopkin’s portrayal of Hannibal Lecter. It is an amazing tour de force! Paul Dano does an amazing job as a fundamentalist preacher. This movie is not for everyone. If you want a relatively accurate portrayal of history from the early 20th century, and an amazing job of acting, I would recommend this movie. It is dark, brooding, and humorless; but it is excellent. On Jim’s scale of 1 – 10, I’d give this an 8.