Barry's Blog

Actor Steve Martin's character in the early 1990's movie, Grand Canyon, observes that "all of life's problems have already been solved in the movies." In many ways, good cinema images life, and facilitates genuine reflection and musings on this thing we call "life." One of the most remarkable films I have seen (repeatedly, I might add), is the film, There Will Be Blood, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, and written, directed, and produced by the incomparable Paul Thomas Anderson. Anderson's work often displays cinematic brilliance, and frequently portrays themes of redemption, revenge, and forgiveness, like the movie Magnolia, with Tom Cruise. But his films are not for the timid of heart.

This is certainly the case with There Will Be Blood, which is loosely based upon the Upton Sinclair novel, Oil! (1927), the story of a silver-miner-turned-oil-man on a ruthless quest for wealth during Southern California's oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But as Jean Bethke Elshtain observes in her powerful review of Anderson's movie in the periodical, Books & Culture (May, 2008), this is no ordinary movie. Elshtain, a brilliant woman in her own right (whom I heard give a fascinating lecture at Oxford University a few years ago at a C.S. Lewis conference), has served as a political philosopher at the University of Chicago for the past fifteen years, and is a contributing editor for The New Republic. But one can hardly improve on her analysis of the film, and my observations here are taken almost exclusively from her critique (email me if you would like a copy of the review).

Elshtain observes: 
"Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is to generic movies as Mt. Everest is to an anthill: it towers over what we ordinarily regard as an entertainment. One of our most quirky, ingenious, and religiously steeped filmmakers, Anderson has crafted a dark work of enduring power that features one of the great defining performances in the history of film, Daniel Day-Lewis' Daniel Plainview. Nothing in Anderson's previous work quite prepares us for this... As brilliant as Magnolia was, it seems a confection next to There Will Be Blood. Martin Luther told us that a 'lonely man always deduces one thing from the other and thinks everything to the worst,' a quote that Hannah Arendt favored; for her, it illustrated the mindset of totalitarian ideologues as well as psychopaths. Daniel Plainview is one of Luther's lonely men, a brilliant, driven, stricken person who rivets us in his prime, then enthralls and repels us as we witness his descent into bitter, despairing, alcohol-driven isolation."

Elshtain suggests, and I believe correctly, that in Plainview's story we see illustrated what Alexis de Tocqueville identified as the "dark side of the coin of American freedom and equality," namely, isolation. We are apart from one another, and all the insinuating strands that once linked us having unraveled. And it seems that the tragedy of Plainview that is vividly portrayed throughout the film is that he needs other people only the way an addict needs a fix. As Elshtain observes, "to triumph over, to kick in the balls (sorry, crude but necessary), to bury, all too literally at one turning point. 'I look at people and I see nothing worth liking,' Plainview opines. Even the mere existence of others in the oil business tears him up. He would be an Emperor who reigns over a desert denuded of life, for he must drive out all others in order to be assured of his own triumph."

It is a dark and brooding film, There Will Be Blood, not the typical movie-fare that we digest, but definitely worth viewing. Perhaps we are not like Daniel Plainview, in his unbridled hubris, but it may show us more about ourselves than we care to admit. In the light of the worldwide economic meltdown that we have witnessed in recent months, and disclosures of Madoffian-like greed that boggles the mind, perhaps the Steve Martin character's observation that "all of life's problems are solved in the movies," is truer than we could ever have imagined. There Will Be Blood brilliantly portrays the human dilemma, and our need for redemption, something we cannot do on our own.

"There Will Be Blood is an epic morality play that exalts the craft of filmmaking and honors not only its director but all those who contributed to every aspect of the film. Above all, filmgoers are offered the gift of Daniel Day-Lewis' acting genius at its zenith. His portrayal of Plainview terrifies us as a bitter commentary on a distinctive and identifiable strand of American culture. One does not react with "Ah, yes, we are all like that," as Plainview storms across the screen, with Day-Lewis in nearly every scene. The overwhelming majority of Americans are not Plainviews. Yet we cannot help but recognize in Plainview's excesses and successes something over-the-top, something tumultuous, something desperately and sadly human, something very American."

-Jean Bethke Elshtain, "There Will Be Brilliance," Books & Culture, May 1, 2008, http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2008/mayjun/2.22.html

For more on the background of the movie from Paramount, including trailers, media, and photos, go to: http://www.paramountvantage.com/blood/