I decided to look at (review) “There Will be Blood” as if this was a movie about today, these times. I can see easily the similarity between the turn of the last century and the “The Great Depression”. For over a hundred years we have been in a battle with greed, religion, and oil and we seem not to know how to break free.
PT Anderson, does not do a prequel to Giant, there are no good guys, then or now. Rather he deconstructs the USA, how we’ve become the country we are, through Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis).
Texas Oil Rigs 1920's
Plainview has a permanent chip on his shoulder, never feels respected or appreciated by his family and when given the chance is a bully.
The first time I saw this film, I missed the significance of Plainview’s remarks to Henry. “I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.” followed by “There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking.” and “I don’t need to look past seeing them to get all I need. I’ve built my hatreds up over the years, little by little, Henry… to have you here gives me a second breath. I can’t keep doing this on my own with these… people.”
Over the past decade or more I’ve gotten the feeling that we sometimes give lip service to caring about people. In order for us to really care we need an incentive, like a tax deduction or in Plainview’s case, the right to lease land for a pipeline.
Very interesting. I have seen this film at least 12 times but I've have never considered Plainview as a personification of America. I am always so fascinated by him as an individual in that same way Iago is fascinating; a man with such inhuman characteristics. However, now, after reading that passage above, Plainview also sounds like the US foreign policy. I must watch it again.
There is a lot about the forming of America that is hinted at in this movie. The separation of families, false identities, etc. For example, these families that populated the west were mixed with adopted kids whose background were not known. Slavery had ended and kids made for free labor and were stolen or given away in the larger cities and shipped west. There were a lot of mixed race kids who "passed" who are unaware of their heritage. Upton Sinclair who wrote about the US in not so glowing terms is the source of this movie and could the source of many more.