We see him sketching a design of the machine in the film’s opening scenes. To Plainview, God takes credit for man’s successes and innovations, as exhibited when he fails to allow Eli to bless the oil drill of which he has overseen construction. Plainview’s tragedy is an inability to escape the presence of God in a land where, to question faith is abnormal. This is all he wants, the world to see with aching human clarity as he does.įor instance, during the ocean scene, he says that he longs to make enough money so as to ‘get away from everyone’. In the God-fearing origins of America, he is frequently placed in opposition to zealous men, epitomised by his desire, during the film’s climactic scene for Eli to denounce himself as ‘a false prophet’ and that ‘God is a superstition’. Plainview speaks of his hatred of most people, but God, or rather the illusion of God, is his greatest enemy. Plainview’s fatal flaw, like Othello, is his pride, but this is a distinctively modern pride, concerned with atheism and man’s relationship with a God who he deems to offer him no freewill. Ironically, other characters attempt to cleanse Plainview throughout the narrative, notably his enemy, Eli Sunday, who washes him in the water of his sins. When the man is unable to do so, Plainview’s suspicions are confirmed and he shoots him dead. Just two frames later, Plainview confronts the sleeping man, asking him to recall a key childhood memory. As a wave breaks over him, Plainview appears cleansed, fixing a steely look towards the camera, presumably focusing upon this other man, realising that he is, in fact, a fake. The scene in which Plainview and the man he believes to be his brother swim in the ocean is one of the film’s more idyllic, other-worldly moments. thus, the film, released in 2007, also reaches into the future faced by today’s generation, where dwindling oil supplies point towards a world in which countries will fight, not for religion or territory, but for control of oil supplies, somewhat explored by McCarthy in The Road. The message is clear – to the twentieth century man, oil is as much his lifeblood as that which runs through his veins. Plainview is anointed with a thump print of newly-discovered oil. In the film’s first scene, the young H.W. Plainview speaks, at one point, of this ‘ocean of oil’ beneath his feet and is often shown bathed in its blackness. Its characters are frequently found submerged, either in oil, blood or, in one striking scene, water itself. For a film set predominantly in the deserts of the American South-West, like a Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, it is strangely oceanic in both its scope and tone. Sinking is a rather pertinent word to use, when considering the artistic execution of There Will Be Blood. The entire film trades upon this ambiguity. In his ‘I have a competition in me’ speech, the archaic phrasing of which is inherently Shakespearean, he admits that ‘I want no one else to succeed’, evoking Coleridge’s view of Iago’s ‘motiveless malignity’. The character is both an Everyman and a diabolic, almost Satantic anti-hero, possessing the sympathetic fatal flaws of an Othello, whilst also embracing the impenetrable psychosis of an Iago. This is shown to the audience through the eyes of Daniel Plainview, one of modern cinema’s greatest and most horrible creations. Oil, and the depths to which man is prepared to sink in order to attain and posses it, is the film’s principal focus. Peter Bradshaw says, ‘that title is subtler than you think’ and he’s right There Will Be Blood is more primarily concerned with another viscous liquid. The name of this cinematic masterpiece calls to mind a slasher movie or Shakespearean tragedy – almost paraphrasing Macbeth’s horrific clarity at the nature of how quickly his violence has escalated – ‘it will have blood they say, blood will have blood’. So, this week on the blog, here’s my Shakespeare/McCarthy-influenced take on a film which was released the same year as No Country For Old Men and which bears the hallmarks of both writers in its language, themes and central character: There Will Be Blood. Some of McCarthy’s novels have, of course, been turned into highly successful films, No Country For Old Men and The Road most prominently, whilst the man himself has also written for screen, albeit less successfully with the critically panned The Counsellor. Back at Warwick this week, I’ve just embarked on a PhD, researching the influence of Shakespeare upon the work of the American author, Cormac McCarthy.
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