There Will Be Blood by Paul Thomas Anderson

Introduction

The film, There Will Be Blood, is strange in a magnificent way in marking a noticeable departure by writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson. The film examines the character of a central California oilman in a somewhat insidious and intense manner. The film is framed in the backdrop of the oil boom in California during the late nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. It narrates the story of jealousy and greediness which assumes alarming proportions. The director has taken the story from the novel Oil by Upton Sinclair and portrays a stunning character in Daniel Plainview as played by Daniel Day-Lewis, in revealing the peculiar circumstances of the oil world where money appears to be the most important.

Main body

Anyone who has seen the film will realize that there are lots of Biblical references in the entire length of the film. Such references start with the naming of characters, such as a person named Abel Sunday selling his land to Plainview; Abel is shown as having two sons named Eli and Paul. Eli Sunday eventually became a means to send out an array of revengeful Christian rhetoric against Plainview, whose first name Daniel means Judgment by God, and God is my judge. Indeed there is an element of double meaning in this context since Plainview is indeed judged by God at the end of the film. He is also revealed as having the urge to fancy himself as being a judging God. He had also shouted at Eli in saying that he was the Church of the Third Revelation. In this regard, Plainview reveals his thoughts to Henry in saying that he had the desire to rule without ever being asked to explain himself to anybody. This attitudinal complex of equating himself to God assumes immense importance in the context of the ironic ending of the film.

The first fifteen minutes of the film, which reveal the conditions that Plainview is going through in the year 1898, are uneventful as he struggles to extract gold and silver, and then moves on to oil exploration. He becomes considerably well of by the year 1911. Having been tipped about the activities of Standard Oil, an established company, and about the awesome potential of oil exploration in the rural areas, Plainview strikes a deal on pretenses with the owners. He can get the rights for drilling from them and right away installs oil derricks on their property. These actions would result in making massive fortunes for Plainview. During such exercises, the movie reveals an artistic approach to music and language distinction. The film vividly portrays the intensely dangerous efforts that were involved in setting up such facilities in the pursuit of black gold. The production design of the film as provided by Jack Fisk via the scattered equipment and improvised buildings lends the arid landscapes a unique sense of attractiveness.

The film involves a mesh of intricate relationships that intersect different sets of sons and fathers and brother pairings, with the lesser portrayal of women. It is however the intense attachment with his son which increases Plainviews stake in giving powerful emotional support to the story as depicted in the historical and pictorial sweeps in the film. There are repeated instances of fires that rage endlessly and devastatingly, there are geysers of oil, and of course the inevitable bloodshed without which the movie would not have been labeled the way that it has been in keeping with the atrocities as committed by the main character. There are intense moments of emotion and love as displayed by Plainview for his son H.W. who becomes a virtual partner with his father by the time he is ten years of age.

A large part of the film relates to the year 1911 since by this time Plainview had become a successful oil baron. He travels through the entire state of California with his son in an attempt to sniff out opportunities in getting lease land for oil exploration. It is during these visits that he makes a bargain with the Sunday family who approached him with clams of oil seeping out of the ground in their family ranch. Very soon he has the population of the local areas in his grip that he has won over with his promises and soothing talk. The confused inhabitants of the area have high expectations from him in getting water, roads, and schools, which he promises to provide. There is only one competitor for Plainview in the form of Eli who is a magnetic holy man who preaches in giving hopes to people for a new church.

Although Plainview is portrayed as a captain of the oil industry in California, he eventually loses all that he has including the humanity that is expected from a baron of his status. The movie, in essence, can be said to be about his transformation into an inhuman and immoral person. It is only his adopted son who keeps him from getting evolved into a monster, who would care only to make big money and to beat the competition at any cost. The inhuman aspect of his personality is amply revealed at a point in the film when Plainview intimidated a man with threats of slitting his throat because he expressed a desire to buy out his company.

There Will Be Blood has classically exemplified the creative control that Anderson has displayed in having a distinct control over his work in exhibiting his style. The film flows very smoothly and builds upon the momentum in revealing the unbearable tensions amongst the characters. The performances by the actors are thrilling in bringing about large-scale agitation between being a theatrical spectacle and cinematic realism. The visible tensions between the realism and the theatrical spectacle make the viewer uneasy throughout the film. As a consequence one appears to be continuously drawn away as also attracted towards the compelling Plainview whose search for black gold seems to resemble a war-like situation of using every possible means to conquer the oil business.

The strikes of his 1911 endeavors represented the contradictions in the film in visual and graphic terms. The director pushes forth the viewer very close to the overwhelming command of the flaming geyser and then goes back in giving a longer vision while the sensuous camera work keeps pace with the doings of Plainview and his people as they jostle around in attempts to salvage and control what they had let loose. But the inferno had been unleashed and the black smoke billows thus destroying Plainview. The film is certainly a complete work of art in transcending the context of its making regarding its historical relevance. The pleasures of the film are unashamedly artistic in revealing, exciting and at the same time provoking and disturbing the viewer in opening new windows for human consciousness.