BlissAndConversation.com

How often do we go to a theatre to escape the problems and mundanities of everyday life?  How often do we come out of the theatre talking about what we saw, what it meant and, specifically, what it meant to us and how it made us feel about ourselves in the world as we see it?  This series is a contribution to that dialogue

            Why will there be blood?  The combustion of materialism and evangelism is visible in Paul Thomas Anderson’s loose adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s novel “Oil!” in which Daniel Day-Lewis did a dazzling Oscar-winning turn as Daniel Plainview who pulls himself up by his muddy bootstraps from a prospecting hole in the ground to a mansion on the heights.

            This film is on a whole different plane from anything that’s been made in years.  Against silent tracking shots of tawny Western plains and ocean dunes, Anderson has stripped his screenplay of political and sociological trimmings to shape a portrait of one man’s soulless ambition.  We never really know why, though the appearance of Henry (Kevin O’Connor) who introduces himself as the half-brother Daniel never knew, brings back memories of a bruised and shattered childhood.  “I have a competition in me,” says Daniel.  “I want no one else to succeed.”

            The film may not have achieved the stature it has without the interpretation of its star.  Day-Lewis works rarely but when he does, he immerses himself in a role.  In this one he plays a brilliant charming sociopath who uses his gifts to cheat naïve farmers out of their oil-soaked land.  His dark eyes twinkle as he cajoles the natives out of their last cent and we are as charmed as they are.   His eyes become completely opaque as he stares down someone he suspects of cheating him before taking brutal action.

            His partner is his adopted son whom he calls H.W., played as a child with absorbing naturalism by Dillon Freasier.  The film’s one tender moment occurs when Daniel is riding on a train with the infant H. W.  He seems to see no competition in the baby’s round uncritical eyes and touches his face gently as a father would.  When H.W. is deafened in a mining accident, he becomes sullen and uncontrollable.  His jealousy of Henry impels him to set the house on fire and Daniel sends him to a school for the deaf in San Francisco.  Their father-son relationship is extremely well painted in shades of closeness and possessiveness.

            An on-going battle rages between Daniel and Paul Sunday, the evangelistic son of a farmer he’s cheated.  In actor Paul Dano’s hands, Paul Sunday’s cleverness is smugly masked by sanctimoniosness until it’s devastatingly shredded in the final scene.  As part of his Dad’s deal, Paul has started a church on the family land.  He’s just as ambitious as Daniel but no match for him in the early days of their relationship.  Daniel thrashes him soundly and rolls him in the mud.

            Some years later Daniel is blackmailed into joining Paul’s church where Paul takes his revenge by forcing him to declare himself a sinner.and makes him scream, “I have abandoned my son.”

            The years go by.  H. W. returns and, with the help of an interpreter, settles into the life of an oilman and marries Paul’s sister Mary, his childhood sweetheart.  He wants to start his own business in Mexico.

            Daniel, now a recluse of limitless wealth in his hilltop mansion, can’t bear to let him go.  He does but not before telling him he’s adopted, a “bastard in a basket”.  It’s Paul who takes the brunt of his wrath.  He finds Daniel in the mansion’s bowling alley and the final scene in their lifelong battle of oneupsmanship is played out in humiliation and blood.

            The film doesn’t always hang together coherently but it’s so magnificently photographed and directed and so vividly illuminated by the vision of Daniel Day-Lewis that it has already earned its place in the cinema hall of fame.

             Making the movie work for you.  Ambition and faith are two of the most powerful human drives.  Respect them but beware of serving them. Make them serve you