I saw "There Will Be Blood" last night and found it exciting and disappointing. The most important thing about the film for me was the noble treatment of work in America. When do you see a film that so honors physical labor as this one does, that so revels in showing us the male body toiling against nature? I found this incredibly moving and evocative of important values, physical ones, that the meritocracy is destroying…
As for the central ideas and message of the movie, I found them rather simplistic and less nuanced than even Upton Sinclair’s original ideas. Daniel Plainview, the oil mogul played by Daniel Day-Lewis, is a monster. You realize he’s a monster a half hour in, then the suspense is over, for another 2 hours. I know it is a great performance, I got bored. The monstrousness is unrelieved by any larger understanding or humor; and religion is trashed in the film. I believe that Sinclair had religious beliefs. The film murders them.
I would compare this with a genuinely-religious movie, "Into the Wild", which has gotten scarcely as much notice lately as TWBB.
"Into the Wild" is in essence the Robinson Crusoe story, about an alienated individual who becomes a castaway. The same issues that arose in the original case, of Defoe’s glamorization of Alexander Selkirk in the 1700s, arose in Sean Penn’s treatment of Chris McCandless of the wonderful Jon Krakauer book. McCandless was a mental case, and so was Selkirk. Selkirk was, I imagine, a schizophrenic. That is surely the reason he was tossed off that boat in the first place. When he came home, he apparently built a hut in his parents’ back yard. Defoe of course made him heroic; and so does Sean Penn. That is the problem with the movie; there is no sense that this is one screwed-up cat.
Having said that, though, I must emphasize that the movie has a ravishing religious core to it. Notwithstanding this kid’s troubles, one person after another reaches out to try and save him. A hippie girl tries to make love to him (the creep doesn’t respond). Old hippies try to adopt him and bring him into the human family. The Hal Holbrooke character also tries to adopt him and stop him hurling himself into Alaska. The Vince Vaughan character tries to bring him back to engagement with rude boisterous crazy life. All these characters are damaged people, and all reach out to try and help someone that most of us would walk away from. I myself feel contempt for McCandless; the movie shows people loving him. This religious theme is completely under control (unlike the psychological stuff) and uplifting and maybe even revealing about the human spirit. Compare that to "There Will Be Blood," which is a cynical downer and which is getting all this praise, and I wonder what dark materialist mood is convulsing the culture.
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I;m not sure how this posting relates to the treachery of the Jews but I'm sure I'm missing something. One thing did strike me though. Only people who have never had a job that involves physical labor would feel like their missing something.
"Only people who have never had a job that involves physical labor would feel like their missing something."
Only people who have never mastered English grammar would write "their" for "they are."
Who reading this has actually had a job demanding physical labor for their own survival? I am one. For how long?
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