Vox Nova at the Movies: There Will Be Blood

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZOMYSEHZeQ

First off, in case you were wondering, yes, there was blood.

There Will Be Blood is loosely based on the Upton Sinclair novel Oil!, which in turn was loosely based on the life of oil tycoon and Teapot Dome scandalee Edward L. Doheny. Daniel Day-Lewis plays Daniel Plainview, a Dohenyesque character who starts out as a penniless prospector who quickly rises to become a ruthlessly successful oilman. The plot of the film is somewhat disjointed, and mainly serves as a vehicle for Lewis to show off his semi-crazed acting chops. Viewers who saw Gangs of New York will see some similarities between his role in Blood as his turn as Bill the Butcher in that film (frankly, I like Bill better, as he had more flair, but at least in Blood one does not have to sit through the intolerable Dicaprio/Dias love scenes).

Also of note is Paul Dano, who plays the fundamentalist preacher/cult leader Billy Sunday, and actually comes close to stealing the scene from Lewis in several cases (Lewis, invariably finds a way to one-up him, however). Sunday and Plainview clash when he begins building wells in the small town where Sunday has his church. Before seeing the film, I was warned by a friend that I might find it anti-religious; Plainview is himself fairly anti-religious, and Sunday doesn’t come across as being a very admirable character. Then again, Plainview isn’t very admirable either. By the end of the film he has descended into a morally feral state, and the movie is not so much anti-religious as anti-religious hucksterism, which I do not find objectionable.

Sinclair’s book, Oil!, apparently had quite a bit about socialism in it (for those familiar with Upton Sinclair’s work generally this should not be much of a surprise). This explicitly political message has been mercifully excised from the film. A political subtext is definitely there below the surface, but I would hardly call There Will Be Blood a political film. It is instead a character study of a fairly twisted man who no one could take as being representative of oilmen or of businessmen generally.

I like the movie. It had a kind of ominous feel to it, as if at any moment something awful was about to happen, and the longer you waited the worse it was going to get. It was kind of like one of those horror movies where you are held in suspense waiting for the monster to jump out from around the corner, except in this case the monster is center stage from the beginning. Lewis is probably a shoe-in for the best Actor award, but apart from his performance (and the above mentioned Paul Dano) there’s really not all that much to the film. I don’t think a best picture win is in the cards.