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Blood & oil
There Will Be Blood
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
US, 2007, 158 mins
On general release
Oil!
By Upton Sinclair
Penguin, 2008 (first published 1927), £8.99
Reviewed by
Greg Maughan
THE OSCAR-nominated movie There Will Be Blood is a
visually stunning and engaging piece of work. Loosely based on the Upton
Sinclair novel Oil! it concentrates on one particular aspect of the book
and is an intelligent and challenging work in its own right although it
omits many of the themes which would have mattered most to Sinclair.
Spanning a period from the turn of the 20th century
to the eve of the 1929 economic crash, There Will Be Blood tells the
tale of Daniel Plainview (J Arnold Ross in the novel), a ‘self-made man’
and oil pioneer. This is a powerful performance from Daniel Day Lewis as
we follow Plainview’s journey from grafter to oil millionaire – a
traditional ‘rags to riches’ narrative trajectory. However, in order to
achieve these riches Plainview abandons his beliefs, his son and,
eventually, his humanity. The film very effectively depicts this
descent, but what it lacks is a questioning of the system which
facilitates it, which the novel does: "It appeared as if the whole world
was one elaborate system, opposed to justice and kindness, and set to
making cruelty and pain".
In both the film and the novel there are lengthy
sections on the oil drilling process – on screen depicted by wonderfully
shot, quite long scenes with no dialogue, and in the novel described in
detail with a reporter’s eye. To me, this was partly reminiscent of Moby
Dick where Captain Ahab’s obsession with the white whale is expressed
through whole chapters on the whaling process, the genealogy of whales,
the history of the tools used in whaling, etc. In both instances, the
effect is to outline the all-consuming obsession with the pursuit of
profit. However, unlike Ahab, Plainview is drawn as a sympathetic
character, more so in the book, as there we see him through his son’s
eyes. This heightens the effect of his monstrous transformation, as HW
(his son, Bunny, in the novel) is really the central character and the
one whom we are encouraged to identify with.
Although inspired by Sinclair’s novel, and indeed
with some sections of dialogue directly lifted from the book, There Will
Be Blood concentrates on one theme: that of greed and the dehumanising
effect of capitalist competition. The two decisive scenes in the film
both show us characters renouncing their personal beliefs for financial
rewards. Firstly, we are shown Plainview, a sceptic who is critical of
organised religion, undergoing a demeaning baptism in order to secure
the rights to build an oil pipeline over the land of a follower of the
Church of the Third Revelation. In the second crucial scene, we see this
process reversed when Eli, the head of the church, is forced to denounce
God in front of Plainview.
The film concentrates on individuals, chiefly
Plainview and HW, and shows us the negative effect of business and
competition upon them. However, the themes embraced by the novel are
much wider than this and much more compelling.
In the film, we see individual corruption. In the
novel it is made clearer that this is systemic. We see Ross repeatedly
bribing people. In one instance, he bribes a local Republican leader and
Bunny exclaims to his father: "I thought you were a Democrat!"
Corruption in the organised church is also touched on. For instance,
when Bunny asks if Eli helps support his impoverished family, he is told
that "the money is sacred, it belongs to the Holy Spirit, and Eli is His
treasurer".
However, the most important aspect of the novel, and
the one which is wholly absent from the film, is the conflict between
capital and organised labour. This is really the central theme of the
book, with large sections of the novel taken up recounting strikes,
public meetings and the bosses’ machinations to break the Oil Workers
Union.
As the readers’ point of reference, Bunny looks up
to his farther but also idolises Paul Watkins, a young man who works as
a carpenter on the oilfield, becomes a union organiser, and is
increasingly radicalised through his experiences. Bunny is torn between
these two contrasting father figures who are pushed in opposite
trajectories in the course of events. Ross becomes an increasingly
brutal and vicious employer while Watkins is propelled in a socialist
direction.
Initially, Bunny attempts to balance between these
two poles, casting himself as a mini-social reformer, building a reading
room next to the oil workers’ quarters and decorating the area with
plants and flowers. But as the strike progresses and a security fence is
erected between the workers’ quarters and the drilling equipment,
Bunny’s sister bluntly states the futility of his endeavour: "Bertie
remarked sarcastically [of the fence] that it would be another place
where Bunny and ‘his Ruth’ could grow roses. This jibe hurt, because it
summed up to Bunny the part he was playing in this struggle – growing
roses on the barbed wire fence which separated capital from labor".
For Sinclair, this was the key to the novel. Born in
1878 and introduced to the ideas of socialism around 1902, he saw his
role not simply as a creator of fiction but as a journalistic
whistleblower and political agitator. One of his earlier novels, The
Jungle, had initially been serialised in the socialist newspaper, Appeal
to Reason, and he states in the introduction to Oil!: "The picture is
the truth, and the great mass of detail actually exists. But the cards
have been shuffled".
This approach informs his prose style, which is easy
to read and clearly influenced by his desire to report social problems
of poverty, labour exploitation and inequality to as wide an audience as
possible, as well as his political aim to build support for the
alternative to this: socialism. Although it may sound contradictory, his
style also contains echoes of the epic tradition and ancient Greek
literature in particular. The effect of this is that everyday events,
the casual exploitation of workers, corrupt business dealings, are given
an added resonance.
Throughout the novel we see Bunny trying to make
sense of the world via the people who surround him. Initially, he thinks
that his privileged position can allow him to make the world a better
place: "When you happen to be the son of a successful oil operator, you
can make your dreams come true". There are a number of references to
what he has been taught in social ethics classes at high school and then
an attempt to reconcile these ideals with the reality he is confronted
with.
As the novel progresses and Bunny goes through the
experience of a lengthy industrial dispute his initial desire to reform
and reconcile is exposed as utopian. Paul clearly nails his colours to
the mast of the Third (Communist) International, set up after the
Russian revolution. However, reflecting his own class background, Bunny
is unable to fully draw these conclusions and, instead, "Bunny was drawn
to the Socialists [reformist social democracy] by his temperament".
Within this, we see some of Upton Sinclair’s own
internal political dilemma. He stood for senate on the ticket of the
American Socialist Party a number of times and was sympathetic to the
revolution in Russia. However, later on he drew the conclusion that,
"The American people will take Socialism, but they won’t take the
label". Stemming from this, he stood as a Democratic candidate. Sinclair
failed to understand the need for an independent political voice for the
working people of America, thinking that the more ‘acceptable’
big-business party could be used as a tool for social change.
Despite this, the novel Oil! along with many of his
other novels, offers an engaging and very readable tirade against the
effects of capitalism. Oil! in particular is of interest for us today as
it explores the roots of an industry which is still key to the world
economy and still blights the lives of millions across the globe.
Although the novel takes in much broader issues than
the film, fundamentally, they both explore the lure of, as Sinclair put
it, "an evil Power which roams the earth, crippling the bodies of men
and women, and luring the nations to destruction by visions of unearned
wealth, and the opportunity to enslave and exploit labor".
There Will Be Blood is an excellent work in its own
right. But Oil! is in another league altogether and, thankfully, has
just been republished to tie in with the film.
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