SoulHonky

I'm going to break up my film reviews into two categories: reviews (in which I'll say what I think and who I'd recommend the film to) and responses (breakdown of the film, which would include spoilers).  This is a response so if you haven't seen "There Will Be Blood", you might not want to continue.

As I waited for the theater light to dim and the film to begin, I couldn't help but eavesdrop on a conversation a group of people sitting behind me were having.  They were talking about their cross-country trip and going over many of the crazy places they'd been. One of the "funniest" was somewhere in New Mexico where they saw people, including some Native Americans, doing their grocery shopping at a gas station.  I thought the story was depressing but the group behind me giggled as they mocked the people for buying marshmallows for sustenance. I could only shake my head as, finally, the lights went down and the film began.

The movie started and I have to admit, I never cared.  Perhaps the travelers behind me had stirred up my lack of faith in humanity but I simply didn't get into the movie.  I never saw any hope in the characters. I never thought Daniel (played amazingly by Daniel Day-Lewis) had an ounce of good in him. I never believed Eli Sunday was pure of heart. I never thought there was any love between Daniel and H.W. or Daniel and his "brother". I was simply watching evil men do evil things and end up where you'd expect them to in America.  Day-Lewis had everything but still woke up in the gutter of his own creation.  Sunday would renounce his God if he thought it meant Earthly salvation. To me, the film was not much different than the story I overheard earlier; I was observing people who didn't just have misplace values as much as they didn't even understand that their values (and emotions) belonged elsewhere.

And this is perhaps by biggest complaint about the movie.  Yes, it was superbly acted and an almost perfectly constructed metaphor for the ills of capitalism and its bastard offspring, big business and sham religion, but do we really still need those metaphors?  Shouldn't we be updating Upton Sinclair rather than simply repeating his storm warning, a cry to which we've most certainly turned a deaf ear? People understood the metaphors of the film but they only saw it as far as it affected others and not as it continues to infect all of our lives. "There Will Be Blood" was a tremendous piece of art. Many film critics and cinemaphiles already place it high upon a pedestal, a most ironic place for a socialist adaptation to end up.  If there's no real argument being made, what's the purpose?  Isn't it just watching two people crumble under the weight of their own misplaced desires?  And if that is all there is, how much better is that to the story the travelers told before the film? Is admiring a well-crafted tale about the fall of the well to do any better than laughing at a crude story about the less fortunate?