Blood, sweat and tears

Warning: this article contains plot spoilers

There will be compelling characters. There will be an epic narrative. There will be beautiful cinematography and Daniel Day-Lewis on top form. There will be Oscars.

Nominated for no less than eight Academy Awards, as well as having already won many awards including a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood is an unflinching look at greed, ambition, and the darkness in the human soul. This rather grim story is inspired by Upton Sinclair’s book Oil, and set against the backdrop of the California oil rush of the early 1900s. Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a self-proclaimed oil man. Having discovered oil in his gold and silver mine, he quickly expands his business, using his newfound wealth to acquire more oil-rich land. Tipped off about a small town which is oozing with oil, Plainview heads to Little Boston with his young son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier). Here they find an ocean of oil, along with a sea of troubles. H.W. is deafened by an accident at the oil well, and Plainview sends him away to school. A man turns up claiming to be Plainview’s long-lost brother, Henry (Kevin J. O’Connor), but ends up leaving him more alone than ever. And all the time, Plainview is confronted with opposition from the teenage church leader, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), who not only covets a share of Plainview’s riches for the church, but also seems intent on claiming his soul.

From the moment we meet Daniel Plainview he is clearly a driven man. His desire for wealth is so strong in the opening scenes that even an accident resulting in a broken leg doesn’t halt his search for precious metals. As he claws his way up through the oil business, Plainview becomes more and more ruthless in his pursuit of riches. Abandoning H.W. and disposing of anyone who fails him, Plainview eventually achieves everything he has dreamed of. But at times it seems he has lost everything that made him human along the way. At the height of his success, Plainview has a fortune and a beautiful house complete with underground bowling alleys, and at the same time he seems miserable, constantly drunk, and on the edge of insanity. Earlier in the film, he had confided in Henry, sharing his outlook and goals in life: ‘I look at people and I see nothing worth liking. I want to earn enough money I can get away from everyone.’ Now at last he has achieved that aim and is completely alone. Plainview builds his life on money, ruthlessly discarding any thing else that gets in the way, and the result is that he is left with nothing but the money for which he worked so hard.

Daniel Plainview is contrasted with the charismatic young preacher, Eli Sunday. From the moment they meet, they are antagonists, with their goals seemingly worlds apart. Eli’s purpose and motivation come from the spiritual side of his life. He is committed to increasing the influence of his congregation, the Church of the Third Revelation, and so frequently clashes with Plainview over their control of the town. However, the two characters are more similar than is evident at first. Both are intelligent men, successful in their chosen fields and single-minded in the pursuit of their goals. Both men are also masterful communicators, and are able to exert a powerful influence over the people around them. The dark side of Plainview is not entirely absent from Eli either when things don’t go his way. In one significant confrontation, Eli asks Plainview for the money he owes the church and Plainview viciously assaults him. Returning to his home, Eli then takes out his frustration on his elderly father, mirroring Plainview’s earlier actions by insulting and attacking him. In many ways, Eli is like the brother figure that Plainview so desperately needs, someone who can understand his struggles and the rage which consumes him. Yet perhaps Eli reminds Plainview too much of himself for the two men to ever reconcile their differences. In the end it is clear that the town of Little Boston isn’t big enough for both of them, and only one of them can survive.

Ultimately, both Daniel’s and Eli’s stories end with bloodshed. The film presents both men and their dreams as flawed, and the bloody denouement comes with a sense of inevitability. The root of their problem, There Will Be Blood seems to imply, is that they are too focused on striving for things beyond what they have, whether that be wealth, power, or spirituality. They ignore the reality of their lives in favour of these goals, and in so doing they end up losing their basic humanity and all the things that make life worth living. The worldview of the film is a bleak one, but some of the supporting characters do appear to achieve some kind of happiness. The suggestion is that we should focus our attention on the good things in our lives, rather than striving for something more. While Daniel Plainview eschews relationships in favour of oil, we feel that he might have found redemption if he had allowed himself to care for other people. H.W., although practically baptised with oil as a baby, manages to make a fulfilling life for himself by never allowing his father’s obsession to become more important than his relationships.

While Eli is portrayed as a Christian leader, his beliefs do not appear to be orthodox. The Christian worldview is very different both to those of the film’s characters, and to the approach seemingly advocated by the film. The terrible and inevitable downfall of Plainview, however, powerfully reflects the Christian view of the human heart. The way in which he and Eli behave reveals the darkness within us. Wherever humans interact with each other, they will be motivated by greed and ambition, and our actions in the world are frequently characterised by bloodshed.  We can try to live as the film might suggest, and treasure the good things we have, but it is our human nature to desire more, to fight, and to destroy. The Bible asserts that this is the reality of who we are; having chosen to live without God, humans are incapable of cleaning up our bloodstained world. However, the Bible also claims that there is hope, through the innocent blood shed willingly by Jesus. In There Will Be Blood, the Church of the Third Revelation sings of the ‘wonderful power in the blood’, and it is easy to imagine Eli exhorting sinners to be washed in the blood of the lamb. Certainly, as he baptises Daniel, Eli instructs him to ask for ‘the blood’. There is, however, real meaning behind this clichéd Christian phrase, which could have transformed Eli’s life – and Daniel’s – had he understood it. The idea of being washed in the blood of the lamb is a Biblical expression, which refers to the way in which people can be cleansed from all the badness and darkness in their hearts. The Bible says that:

We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. (Romans 3:22-25, NLT).

The way to escape from the greed and violence of our own human nature, Christians believe, is to trust in the sacrifice made by Jesus. His blood, shed on our behalf, has paid the punishment that humans rightly deserve, according to the Bible. Thus we don’t need to approach the end of our lives with Daniel Plainview’s closing lines: ‘I’m finished’. Jesus’ final words on the cross, ‘It is finished’, mean that his sacrifice has made it possible for all our evil thoughts and actions to be forgiven once and for all. There really is a wonderful power in the blood.

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