There Will Be Blood

Last night I saw “There Will Be Blood,” which last month garnered Daniel Day Lewis his second Best Actor Oscar. It’s a colorful, if occasionally plodding and increasingly bleak movie which turns out to be based on an Upton Sinclair novel, “Oil!” about an upstart oil entrepreneur whose foster son is part of his artful pitch to would-be leasors of land to him and who bears a little-man grudge against Big Oil represented in this movie by Standard Oil executives. In the movie, which takes place mainly in 1911 California, Lewis’ character becomes increasingly more sinister. The movie is rated R for violence, even though there is virtually no violence for the first half or more of the 2 ½-hour movie. More spare than the equally long “Boogie Nights,” also by the director Paul Thomas Anderson, the movie depicts a fascinating relationship between Lewis’ character and his son (played by Dillon Freasier) as well as fascinating period in American history. The story – of ruthless, but charming entrepreneurs enlisting the aid of poor, desperate people and then running over them (as well as of ambitious religious leaders who heal and inspire but also exploit their followers) – seems relevant today, whether the charmers are neocon politicians selling a war in Iraq or creditors selling balloon, adjustable-rate mortgages to working-class families desperate to become homeowners/real estate speculators and laissez-faire-no government intervention until we seek a bailout policies to compliant government regulators.