There Will Be Blood

29 October 2018

There Will Be Blood 2007

• Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
• Based (loosely) on the novel Oil by Upton Sinclair
• Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Ciarán Hinds, Kevin J O’Connor
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Daniel Day-Lewis – Nine, Gangs of New York, The Boxer, The Age of Innocence, The Last Mohican, My Left Foot, Stars and Stripes, A Room with a View, My Beautiful Launderette, Gandhi
• Paul Dano – Looper, Taking Woodstock, Little Miss Sunshine, The Sopranos
• Ciarán Hinds – The Woman in Black, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Harry Potter, Life During Wartime, Hustle, In Bruges, Margot at the Wedding, Hallam Foe, Amazing Grace, The Calendar Girls, Shackleton, Titanic Town, Jane Eyre, Some Mother’s Son, Mary Reilly, Circle of Friends, Excalibur
• Kevin J O’Connor – Seraphim Falls, Amistad, Canadian Bacon, Steel Magnolias, Peggy Sue Got Married
• Why? Upton Sinclair
• Seen: 27 October 2018      

       For those of you who aren’t familiar with Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) he was a Pulitzer prize winning author whose most famous book The Jungle, an exposé of the dreadful working conditions of the meatpacking industry, led to the founding of the Food and Drug Act and other reforms. He was a Socialist. This one is about the early oil industry. I haven’t read it.

       Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) is an oilman in the early 20^th century. Using any method necessary he acquires land and drills for oil. It’s a dangerous process. Men are killed. His son loses his hearing in an explosion. He makes an enemy of a religious fanatic whose land he has appropriated through unethical means. He does not hide the fact that he hates most people.

       It’s a strange slow-moving film about a malicious greedy man. The oil industry is still malicious and greedy and it is destroying our planet. Upton Sinclair could not have known this would happen, could he? But he knew the minds of malicious and greedy oilmen and religious fanatics.

       There are powerful moments in the film and the acting is strong but there are essentially no women in it and it doesn’t tell us how to stop religious fanatics and the oil industry.

3* of 5 (Hal gave it a 4)