There Will be Blood.
Recently saw the move There Will be Blood, starring Daniel Day-Lewis. A very good American, almost epical, type of film that follows one mans life from that of prospector/miner to that of successful oil man. The movie spans thirty years, starting pre-1900 and ending in the 1920′s – though most of action takes place in the early 1910′s, where Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) is working new oil fields in Little Boston. He uses his “son” to present himself as a family man with simple values and is the man to sign your oil deal. A quick warning to anyone that is stumbling on this and has not seen it, I have a spoiler or two below this point, so turn back now or you have been warned otherwise just in case.
In a true representation of the early version of an Enron type of dealings, it is all a lie. Reality is that Plainview picked the boy as an orphan when he was a baby to help him sell himself to the plain simple folks that he needed get the mineral rights from. In that regard, the irony of his name, Plainview, is itself something to observe and not let be lost on anyone. Throughout the movie, we see how Plainview represents himself as whatever is needed at the moment, even going so far as to accept joining a fanatical church in order to seal the deal for a piece of land he needs to desperately for his business dealings to be successful.
Plainview is the constant player, always representing himself as whatever he thinks the people want to see him as in order to get what he wants. He does have some interesting quirks that seems to come out when someone refuses to see him as he wants, where he lets loose with seeming uncontrollable rage. Most fascinating to me though is the two characters that he runs into that are most like him – a pretender (first the man pretending to be his brother, and his antagonist throughout, the prophet/preacher) – are found out by him and in a true dog eat dog world – killed at his hand. There is a seeming lesson there as well.
Overall though, this movie reminded me of exactly what it is that I think is so often wrong with corporate America and exactly why I was so happy not really being a part of that corporate America a few years back. Why I am so often longing to return to a simpler agrarian lifestyle, why the simple way of the cowboy have such appeal. In the end despite his success in business, Plainview is a bitter lonely man because he simply lacks that connection with nature and humanity itself. It is interesting to note though, that despite being driven the boy he took in for his purposes, breaks ranks to be in outside, in nature, in the end whether that means success or failure – and for that Plainview dis-owns him completely.
