nan | 楠木

The last of the five 2008 Oscar best pic nominees that I’ve watched, There Will Be Blood is a startling film – it is dark, cold and yet intense, fiery; it is fixated on the greed and ambitions of one man, but it is also a uncompromising reconstruction of the early days of American capitalism.

The film opens in a style that is very reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The background music, an electronic buzz, gradually becomes louder and higher in pitch – then we see the first scene, a panoramic shot of some mountains, barren, desolate. Then next scene is a dark shaft, one man axing away in the darkness, with occasional sparks flying from the impact of his tool on the rocks. The miner has an accident, breaking his leg in the course, but even that does not stop him from getting what he strives for – precious metals. It is man versus nature, in its most original form – man stubbornly enforcing his will on nature, shaping it, changing it, to derive his wealth and prosperity, to satisfy his greed and hunger.

That was 1898, and the miner, we soon learn, is Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis in this Oscar winning role), a man determined to make his lot from digging and drilling. In 1902, he starts drilling for oil. Another accident on the site (nature is very punishing towards man’s greed, it seems) leaves a baby orphan, which Daniel takes as his son. By 1911, he has had some initial success, and is informed of some prospects in the West, by a young man named Paul Sunday (Paul Dano, the dysfunctional brother in Little Miss Sunshine). Paul is sure that there is oil on his family’s ranch and the nearby land.

Daniel goes out west with his young son, H.W. as company. This relationship is one of the film’s most complicated threads. Daniel calls H.W. his partner, but that is of course more of a marketing ploy to sell to people since the young boy is instantly lovable; however, Daniel’s love for the boy is sincere, and is perhaps the only sincerity he shows, apart from his lust for wealth.

Daniel finds that Paul was true to his word – there is oil, and lots of it. The people of the land are easy preys for his polished salesman skills, and he soon has leases for all of the land. The only fly in his soup is one Eli Sunday, brother of Paul Sunday, who demands large donations for his church in return. Daniel initially agrees but later reneges, laying the foundation for a bitter rivalry between the two men (whose only common trait is their greed for power) that will span the rest of the film, right till its bizarre ending.

The rest of the film is a mesmerizing tale of how Daniel builds up his oil empire, tediously, methodically, relentlessly. It is the story of America and capitalism, at its very roots. And at the center of this epic is Daniel, a man with no interest anything else besides money (not even women, it seems), and who cares for no one but his adopted son – but even that relationship he eventually estranges, when his son, all grown up and married, decides to open his own oil company. “This makes you my competitor,” the old Daniel growls. “You’re not my son… just a little piece of competition.”

There Will Be Blood is an epic. In a way, the film suffers from the same flaw as its leading character, in that it is almost blindly driven by its ambition, and that it will stop at nothing to stake its claim to greatness. The film’s ending, to many people, is a disappointing letdown. But I do agree with the notion that for a story of this proportion, there could hardly a satisfactory conclusion – after all, this is a story on the history of capitalism, a topic so broad that there could be no agreement on how it should end.

9/10