There Will Be Blood -- DVD Review

I was looking forward to seeing Oscar nominated There Will Be Blood. The premise of this movie -- starring Oscar winner Daniel Day Lewis and based on Upton Sinclair's novel Oil! -- seems to be two-fold: first, oil is intoxicating, and second religion is itself demented. Lewis plays a California oil baron named Daniel Plainview who strikes it rich after numerous difficulties. Plainview's big strike comes after he's enticed to check out land that seems to be in the western edges of the San Joaquin Valley. The location is unclear because wherever it is the movie first locates about 100 miles from Santa Paula (near Ventura), but when building his pipeline west to the coast San Luis Obispo, the 1oo mile figure is again mentioned, and its quite a ways further north. Wherever this site is to be found, Plainview decides to buy up land and build a pipeline because he's losing his profits on a big strike in payments to the rail company.

The second part of the story relates to his relationship with Eli Sunday, the preacher son of the man Plainview leases land for the big strike. Eli negotiates a bargain requiring Plainview to pay him $5000 to start his church, money that Plainview never seems to pay. At one point, however, with one last tract of land not in his possession, Plainview is forced to seek baptism to gain access to the land to lay the pipe line. As he comes forward to receive baptism, Eli slaps him around and requires that he shout out: "I've abandoned my boy" (one of the more dramatic scenes in the movie).

This leads to the boy -- Plainview's son H.W., whose mother we're told at one point had died in child birth, but later is said to be an orphan Plainview picked up to assist his attempts to gain land for his oil speculations. Anyway, H.W. goes deaf when the oil well blows open. This changes the relationship, and Plainview sends the boy off to a school.

One of the principles that emerges from the movie, and perhaps it is the foundation piece is that he brooks no competition. Anyone who would threaten his domination, must be destroyed -- even if that person is his own son. Eli has to be destroyed, because he is also a threat, and because Eli humiliates Plainview.

Now, I've not read the book, which I understand is quite different. One of the key pieces that the movie changes, as I understand it, is the nature of the preacher. From what I hear, Sinclair modeled the preacher after Aimee Semple McPherson, a person he at one point admired.

As to the movie itself. I'm not a purist when it comes to movies. I enjoy an intellectually challenging film and films that push my values. I don't mind a film that's slow developing, but I found myself wondering how everything fit together. There are too many loose ends, and the movie, which goes on for more than 2 1/2 hours drags. Indeed, it's not until about 10 to 15 minutes into the film that we have any dialogue at all, and in the mean time we jump nearly 2 decades. It received Oscar consideration, so it's an important film, but I think it needed more editorial work.

Not a favorite, by any means, but it does speak in part to the lure of money and the possibility that religion can be manipulated for gain.