There Will Be Blood

This past weekend the older ones watched There Will Be Blood with George and I. The credits revealed that it is based on Upton Sinclair's novel, Oil. Wikipedia reveals that the movie is only very loosely based on the book, and that the screen writer only admits to basing it on the first hundred or so pages. I had drawn all sorts of conclusions about Mr. Sinclair watching the movie, but now I have to mix them in with the producers of the movie, as well as my own personal experience and opinions and those of others.

I have read a few critiques from Orthodox bloggers recently on materialistic or scientific cause and effect. Probably much of "secular" psychology is based on it. I have said before that I'm a bit Freudian in my analyses of people, but I think I need to clarify that by relating it to the idea of cause and effect of childhood relationships with family and other influential people, rather than on erotic tendencies. There Will Be Blood is pretty heavy on scientific cause and effect, to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, theory, mainly in the relationship between fathers and sons. I appreciated the depth of thought and the acknowledgment of how we treat others will affect them, unto the next generations, but the effects were too mechanical, too copy cat. While we may build up steam after being traumatized, and explode on others to a similar degree, I think our reactions are a little more varied, taking into account other influences in our lives, than how they were portrayed in this movie.

Also, there were no efforts towards forgiveness. People seemed unable to control their reactions, and had no other options presented to them, especially not by the cooky churchpeople, who sang a hymn I know and still believe in, "Take it to the Lord in Prayer". However, it did acknowledge complexity in people, such as what to do with inconsistent behavior in parents. The little boy in the movie is portrayed as having the most excusable actions. I imagine that he represents Mr. Sinclair and the screen play writer. We always imagine ourselves the protagonist. But sometimes, maybe we are. The boy has to deal with his greedy, cruel, alcoholic father, who also pays him a lot of positive attention. But the boy knows something isn't right, you can see it in his face, even though he barely speaks throughout the whole movie. When he feels he is being replaced by a long, lost half-brother, he becomes jealous and tries to burn the guy and the stuff that connects him to his father - but there's something not right between his father and the brother, too. When he kicks and hits his father after he was abandoned to a boarding school, his father deserved it, truly. He had been used and replaced. Towards the end, I believe that the son is sincere and correct in being grateful that he had learned a trade from his father, but that it was time for him to move on to start his own business, deliberately out of his father's territory. But his father was paranoid about competition and abandonment and abused him. The son kept his cool and his dignity and rightly walked out of the room. But he did get a pretty good barb in on his way out. The barb had to do with not wanting to be biologically related to his father. That went too far, I thought. I don't think that biological relation has to carry with it the sins of the father. It may predispose one to certain temptations, but I think they can be overcome and the bloodline redeemed. The movie was too fatalistic in presenting effects from influential causes.

There were a few bones throne to the father. Apparently his father, the grandfather, had a mistress, and reading between the lines, he was raised in poverty and probably was not treated very well. I get this mainly from how he sleeps on the floor.

Other than that, the experimental soundtrack noise was quite irksome. The cinematography was really good, and conveyed a tactile sense of being connected to the thentofore unaltered earth. Daniel Day Lewis is a phenomenal actor in everything I've seen him in, beginning with "My Left Foot".

Wikipedia talks about Mr. Sinclair's political activism and socialism. He vilified capitalism, which is very evident in the movie. I recognize abuses caused by greedy profiteering, but I do not idealize the opposite ideology. Any ideologue can be abusive. Wikipedia also says that the book focuses more on the son than the father. I think I'll put it on my very long Amazon wish-list.