Violence begets violence

Rating: 10/10 (30 May 2008)

In watching There Will Be Blood, I was a little worried to consider the old saying, like begets like, because it makes me realize that violence has always been too much of a prevalent part of American history. I am sad to realize that we might be one of the most violent countries in the world, in a way, at least because American history is peppered with intensely violent episodes, starting with the very first settlers who arrived here in the 18th century.
There Will Be Blood takes place in turn of the 20th century America in the classic American frontier. Expansion is taking place everywhere, and we meet an ambitious prospector curiously named Daniel Plainview. Daniel Day-Lewis is clearly one of the most talented actors working today, and is a giant among even the greats of film history. There is a lot of talk about how he created the unique voice for his character, and it has an introduction that Orson Welles would have appreciated, in that there is not a word spoken in the movie until 15 minutes into it.
It is curious the way music is used in the movie, as we get some suspense music at many points of the movie, perfectly relating the sense of unease and uncertainty that must have permeated through those times.
We never learn anything much about Plainview. We don't know where he comes from, only that he has no friends and no family except a man who shows up midway through the movie claiming to be his long lost brother and an adopted son, who Plainview seems to take under his wing out of an inability to leave him for dead after his father was killed in a mining accident, but later it becomes clear that the boy can be put to good use for business purposes. When he grows up and wants to go into business for himself, Plainview's view of their relationship becomes clear. This is the ruthless business that was taking place in the early American oil industry.
Plainview, a wily businessman if ever there was one, soon becomes immensely wealthy through his drilling ventures, so much so that he is able to effectively compete with the oil giant Standard Oil, throwing million dollar offers back in their face at a time when a million dollars was a truly astronomical amount of money.
Standard Oil has been casing an area around the Sunday family ranch, until one of the Sunday sons, Paul (Paul Dano) introduces himself to Plainview and offers to tell him of a place where there is surely a huge oil deposit for payment of a few hundred dollars. Plainview is suspicious but pays him with a vicious threat if the tip turns out to be false. Upon arriving, he basically cons the Sunday father into giving him drilling rights for next to nothing, making a permanent enemy out of the other Sunday son, Paul's twin brother Eli, an evangelical nutcase.
Paul Dano has made a jump that I didn't predict in his acting career. He was so good in Little Miss Sunshine that I didn't see him making such a big jump into such a completely different role, and even though his character was a little too over-the-top for me once or twice, it's clear that his acting career is progressing much faster than I would have anticipated.
There is also, by the way, an interesting dichotomy in Eli's character. His only motivation throughout the movie is the propagation of his church and religion, which drives him to constantly try to wrest money from Plainview from his drilling profits, which reminds me of the constant relationship between organized religions and the never ending requests for donations from church members. According to the movie, religion is as much a business as oil drilling. We even see a variety of early "photo-ops," one of which Plainview publicly throws back in Eli's face. He has nothing but contempt for religion, as he does for most people.
The movie is loosely based on Upton Sinlair's novel Oil!, which I understand tells a remarkably different story, but nonetheless this is a fascinating story about the formation of the American oil industry. Daniel Day-Lewis gives a performance that is alone worth watching the movie for, and while the film is not without it's imperfections, the effectiveness with which it recreates the American past is nothing less than stunning. I can't wait for a film adaptation of Sinclair's The Jungle!