[lexicon]

More oil than man
Is There Will Be Blood a dramatization of peak oil?
Posted by Kit Stolz at 1:59 PM on 25 Feb 2008

In the realm of art, no interpretation of a work can be final, but intriguing hints from no less than writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson suggest that the stunning movie There Will Be Blood is actually a story not about the rise and fall of a man so much as the rise and fall of a commodity: oil.

there_will_be_blood

Of course, even the intentions of the creators -- and in the case of There Will Be Blood, that means principally writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, star Daniel Day-Lewis, cinematographer Robert Elswit, and composer Jonny Greenwood -- don't necessarily prove anything. (After all, Anderson revealed in one interview that he "had no idea what we were doing" until he heard Greenwood's revelatory score.)

But consider what Anderson said in an interview bout the movie with Terry Gross:

We all know what has happened with oil, don't we? We all know the end of the story. It's a bit like Titanic, we all know the boat sinks. The fun of the story is watching how we get there.

Or what he said in an interview with Charlie Rose, in reference to the oil industry's recent fortunes:

I haven't been living in a bubble for the last six years.

Or what the great music critic Alex Ross said of the score in The New Yorker:

Greenwood, too, writes the music of an injured Earth; if the smeared string glissandos on the soundtrack suggest liquid welling up from underground, the accompanying dissonances communicate a kind of interior, inanimate pain. The cellos cry out most wrenchingly when Plainview scratches his name on a claim, preparing to bleed the land.

Too literal an interpretation of what Anderson described to Charlie Rose as "a great boxing match" between the two of the most powerful forces in recent American history -- evangelical religion and the oil industry -- would be pointless.

But when it comes to the controversial ending, we have to consider the possibility that this story is not about an individual, or even an industry. We have no choice, really, because it's only in this context that the finale makes sense.

more...

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/2/24/18140/8270

[Revi]

I really liked the Grist article on the movie. I was vaguely uncomfortable with the movie. I thought that it might have been a commentary on the oil industry.

"What if Anderson's oil man was not so much a man as the spirit of oil? Would not this chthonic essence be raw, brutal, ruthless, endlessly competitive, and utterly without heart? Much like Daniel Plainview?" From the Grist article:

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/2/24/18140/8270

Or do we think of Lee Raymond, the ex-ceo of Exxon Mobil who has a $400 million dollar retirement package while the rest of us have to buy his $4 heating oil or freeze to death?

That movie was something to be repulsed by at first, but it has worked on me. I see it as the sad story of the oil boom and bust.

It is like peak oil. Deeper and sadder as you learn more about it. Sadder still as we watch it happen.

[joeltrout]

Its also a great depiction of the phrase "money can't buy you happiness". Daniel had all the money in the world but ended up lonely and unhappy. He could buy anything but didn't have a family or friends that loved him.

Its a great visual of focusing too much on one thing and letting it control your life. Then missing out on the most important things in life such as family and friends.

joeltrout

[TheDude]

4 out of 5 milkshakes! SPTTFFFTTTT!