There Will Be Blood (2007)
“20 From the Last 20” is a series of posts on twenty spiritually-significant films from the last twenty years.
The Background
In 2016, BBC asked 177 different film critics from around the world to list their ten greatest movies of the 21st century. They then compiled a list of the top 100. Third on the list was Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 masterpiece There Will Be Blood. To say that There Would Be Blood is a good movie is almost an insult because of its ambition and scope as an American epic. The film itself is about ambition and striving after greatness, something the film itself no doubt achieves. Paul Thomas Anderson is one of America’s best working filmmakers and the film’s leading actor Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the world’s greatest living thespians. For his role as oilman Daniel Plainview, he won his second of three Oscars for Lead Actor, the only male actor to ever do so. The film was nominated for eight Oscars, only winning two for Day-Lewis and for cinematography. It lost Best Picture to the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men—an equally great American period drama.
The Plot
It’s the first decade of the 20th Century and Daniel Plainview, himself a very driven and ambitious man, discovers oil near Los Angeles and begins a drilling company with an orphan boy he takes from a deceased coworker. The boy (H. W.) is used by Daniel as a business partner to appear as a more desirable family company to potential investors. Plainview lies about both his past and the legitimacy of H. W. as his child.
Daniel and H. W. stumble upon a potentially lucrative oil deposit on the property of the Sunday family. A power struggle ensues between Eli Sunday, an aspiring pastor of a fundamentalist charismatic church known as the Church of the Third Revelation, and Plainview. Eli wants a significant amount of money for his church and control over the oil projects in exchange for Plainview being allowed to drill. At an accident in the oil rig, H. W. loses his hearing and Daniel coldly sends him away to a school for the deaf. After another accident, the tension between Eli and Daniel escalates with Daniel beating Eli in front of many of his parishioners. Eli will eventually get his revenge by forcing Daniel to repent and be baptized at church while he screams out his confession of abandoning his child. In the next two decades, Daniel becomes a more successful oilman but descends into alcoholism, anger, hubris, and madness. He even disowns an adult H. W. as his illegitimate son and a “bastard from a basket.”
Daniel eventually gets his revenge on Eli, who had become a successful pastor and radio preacher. Eli proposes to sell another lucrative property to Plainview in exchange for more money for his church and ministry. Daniel promises to accept only if Eli denounces his faith and proclaims himself to be a false prophet. After Eli does so, Daniel admits that he’s already secretly drained the oil on that property. Daniel only wanted to get his revenge on Eli for humiliating him at his baptism in the church. The film ends with Daniel murdering Eli in his bowling alley.
Daniel Plainview’s Rugged Individualism
Let me say this caveat—There Will Be Blood is a layered film with many interpretations and themes, not unlike PTA’s other films. I’m zeroing in on the theme that jumped out to me on my most recent viewing.
One of the best aspects of the film is Day-Lewis’ entrancing portrayal as a man whose lust for power consumes his loved ones, his business partners, and eventually himself. As a country and culture, America is largely marked by its rugged individualism seen in what is referred to as “the American dream.” If a person can work hard enough, they can achieve whatever their heart desires. Like any other culture, American culture has its strengths and weaknesses. Individualism—itself deriving from Western philosophy grounded in Christianity’s view of the value inherent in each person—can provide people with meaning, purpose, and value beyond what they contribute to the country. Individualism can be positive because each person’s life matters. Individualism can also be a cancer that eats up relationships and community. Plainview cared only about his own ambition and used religion, family, and vocation to get there—eventually destroying all three.
The Struggle of American Religion
Now, this is a series about spiritually-significant films from the last twenty years; a large theme of There Will Be Blood is the distinctly American struggle between individualism, capitalism, and Christianity. Whose blood will there be? The sanctifying blood of the Lamb or the blood of the innocent at the expense of power?
Plainview is not a kind or honest man. He claims to not like most people and displays through his actions that he is only about himself and oil. He’s a selfish man concerned with power and personal achievement. He’s also the personification of some of the worst parts of capitalism.
Capitalism and ambition in cinema have fallen on hard times. It’s rare to see a new film that waxes eloquently of the values of capitalism. Last year, anti-capitalism was a large theme in many films of 2019, most notably the Best Picture-winning Parasite. I’m not an economist so I won’t speak on this theme at length, but I do see PTA’s critique of capitalism being that in the hands of the selfish and powerful, capitalism can bring out the worst. In this era of the nation’s history, it is easy to see the negative effects of capitalism with something as lucrative and obvious as untapped oil fields in California.
If Daniel Plainview represents the secular individualism, greed, and capitalism of America, then Eli Sunday represents some of those same aspects of religion. Eli is an ambitious pastor desiring to grow his church and his own personal influence. He sees his family’s oil as a way of getting what he wants. He manipulates and humiliates Daniel in a way that is not only unloving but also controlling. His fiery sermons are intended to instill fear and control over his parishioners. The film’s perspective on organized religion and American Christianity is dubious at best, and evil at worst. One could view Eli as a manipulative conman on the same level as Daniel. But only Daniel wins. Capitalism and power represented by Daniel defeat a Christianity compromised by a desire for the same. Eli would do well to sit with Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and the calling for Christians to be meek, humble, and loving.
Contemporary Poignancy
It’s not a stretch to say Donald Trump has a lot in common with Daniel Plainview. (Yes… we’re going there.) Trump’s hubris, money, and ambition could perhaps match that of Plainview. Plainview, himself not a religious man, engages in prayer, religious talk, church attendance, and even a false conversion, all for the sake of gaining the power he needs from Christians around him. He uses religion to get what he wants. He sees Eli as a false prophet; he looks upon Eli and his church with amusement and disdain; and he completely reels them in for his own gain. I probably don’t have to explain how I can see the similarities between Plainview and Trump…
I don’t want to be didactic here. I don’t want to tell someone how to vote. But I do want to point out some of the dangers of American evangelicalism in this particular moment in our country’s history. If the church is more concerned with money, power, and politics than it is the Great Commission, personal holiness, and God’s Kingdom, then the forces of ambition, capitalism, and greed will destroy us. Daniel Plainview’s power corrupted and corroded Eli to the point that he was willing to say whatever Plainview wanted him to say, even denouncing his own faith. My prayer for the evangelical church in America is that she would not bow to power or princes, but solely to Jesus Christ. Our kingdom is not of this world and its fields of oil.