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Oil and the Wrath of God: There Will Be Blood |
"I have a competition in me; I want no one else to succeed."
Daniel Plainview
"What is the chief end of man?--to get rich. In what way?--dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must."
Mark Twain, 1871
"Whoever loves money never has enough;
whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.
This too is meaningless."
Ecclesiastes 5:10
There Will Be Blood is a deeply religious epic. It does not comment on metaphysics, and though our pastor antagonist is made to proclaim that God is a superstition, the movie doesn't care to make an argument for or against this statement. What it is is a commentary on the advancement of America's religious society, and what happens when greed bludgeons God to death with a bowling pin. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The pantomime currently playing out on America's right is the movie's lessons in action. Candidates are racing to humble themselves unto the voting consumer, hoping to be seen as the most authentic Christian free marketeer. The former label is losing its power this electoral season, and not because of any secular conspiracy to sand-blast God off every public monument. Those who are offering themselves as God's preferred candidate are being left behind in a cloud of acceptable bigotries and faux-history, the very things they helped popularize. Ted Cruz says that "any president who doesn't begin his days on his knees isn't fit to be president," his wife adding that "the God of Christianity is the God of freedom, of individual liberty, of choice and of consequence." Meanwhile, Donald Trump is winning primary after primary, mumbling out some form of religiosity as much to protect his personal brand from his own past as to get the Christian vote. He doesn't really need to, though, because he's covered nicely by playing to the base's inherent hatred for Muslims and Mexicans. Trump and Cruz and the rest of them perpetuate the fiction that individuality and enterprise are Christian principles, while the collective is still in need of protection from the secular and un-Biblical, which are deemed "un-American." Trump just doesn't feel the need to humble himself to any god that isn't himself, the Christianity of America making it easy for this billionaire to get away with it. Regardless of its outcome, these candidates continue a century's old political game, and There Will Be Blood is a fable about this game's beginning.
The movie is about the rise and fall of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), a silver prospector turned oil magnate whose ambition is only matched by his nemesis, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano). Sunday runs the church on his family's property, a property that sits on an "ocean of oil." The competition between the two, and their many attempts to control the other, form the dramatic basis of the movie. But does the movie's writer and director, Paul Thomas Anderson, say it's about?
"The politics of power, amassing power, amassing wealth," he told Marc Maron on the WTF podcast. "What's the difference between survival and ambition? They are born with something above and beyond. You feel there was never going to be enough. The agreement between the godless and the faithful, struck a bargain, but always suspicious. [It's] the birth of American industry, and the hustle is a part of that."
"The politics of power, amassing power, amassing wealth," he told Marc Maron on the WTF podcast. "What's the difference between survival and ambition? They are born with something above and beyond. You feel there was never going to be enough. The agreement between the godless and the faithful, struck a bargain, but always suspicious. [It's] the birth of American industry, and the hustle is a part of that."
This hustle, this agreement between the godless and the faithful, can trace its beginning to two men who gained wealth and power despite their religion, not because of it. California was the place for new religious movements in the early 20th Century, as mass migration gave many a preacher and snake oil salesman new audiences. But it wasn't so much the migrants moving into California that gave modern American Protestantism the resources it needed to thrive and spread, rather the wealth that was in the ground. Currently, the state is third in American oil production, behind Texas and North Dakota, but in 1903, it was the leading state. The late 1800s saw a boom in oil production and a scramble for land, and by 1920, seven years before TWBB's conclusion, production had reached 77 million barrels. Oil was, and is, big business in California.
This big business was behind a major series of essays published by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, authored by some of the leading Protestant theologians of the time. These were a stirring defence of conservative Christianity in the face of a number of ungodly movements: modernism, historical criticism, evolution, etc. Three million books were distributed, for free, to church leaders around the county, setting the course for the militancy of American Christian fundamentalism and the acceptable opinions of the future. "These books were a public symbol of the coherence and continuity of the interdenominational movement known as conservative Protestant evangelicalism," says the institute, now known as Biola University, of their crowning achievement, The Fundamentals. They provided the intellectual basis for a movement that would find a larger audience with the First Red Scare, when people clung to religion and free enterprise as antidotes to godless Bolshevism.
This big business was behind a major series of essays published by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, authored by some of the leading Protestant theologians of the time. These were a stirring defence of conservative Christianity in the face of a number of ungodly movements: modernism, historical criticism, evolution, etc. Three million books were distributed, for free, to church leaders around the county, setting the course for the militancy of American Christian fundamentalism and the acceptable opinions of the future. "These books were a public symbol of the coherence and continuity of the interdenominational movement known as conservative Protestant evangelicalism," says the institute, now known as Biola University, of their crowning achievement, The Fundamentals. They provided the intellectual basis for a movement that would find a larger audience with the First Red Scare, when people clung to religion and free enterprise as antidotes to godless Bolshevism.
Supporting Biola University and The Fundamentals were two brothers, Lyman and Milton Stewart. They had made their money in the Union Oil Company of California, and they meant to use it for God. Out of their influence came a new generation of theologians who opposed modernism and supported Christian governance. Attempting to spread their very conservative evangelicalism, Milton funded missionary work in China; it was Lyman who had the most impact on the United States. In addition to The Fundamentals, he published and distributed William Eugene Blackstone's Jesus is Coming, a book that helped popularize a Biblically literal, Zionist millennialism. Millennialism is the belief that Christ will come back and literally rule a Messianic kingdom on earth for a thousand years, and without this belief, "there could not possibly be a Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, PTL Club, Jerry Falwell, and Moral Majority, or any of a myriad of similar personages and movements," says Gary Wills in his book Head and Heart: A History of Christianity in America. Without the Stewarts, there could not possibly have been millennialism.
It's into this history that There Will Be Blood digs deep. The director is sort of obtuse about the philosophy behind TWBB, but if it has a political motivation, I would interpret it as saying that the brothers Stewart have failed and were always doomed to fail. To combine wealth and power with the inherent humility of Christianity is a flawed plan, one that only helps the wealthy. Two scenes betray this message, and they are connected thematically by the force of the Third Movement of Brahms' Violin Concerto in D Major, Opus 77.
The first begins with Eli asking Daniel his permission to bless the newly erected oil well; Daniel agrees to mollify Eli and his church, but at the last minute usurps his prayer dedication, instead taking the time to make a pointed reference to Eli's abusive father. This is the first instance of direct conflict between Daniel and the church, and the back and forth becomes increasingly desperate as they try and get what they need from the other. Daniel even agrees to be baptized in order to obtain a crucial parcel of land owned by one of the congregation's most devout members. It's a scene that not only shows Daniel's deviousness, but also the movie's sense of humour, which I don't think gets enough credit.
The second scene I'm referring to ends the movie: Eli, who has been out of Daniel's life for many years on "mission work," returns to the secluded millionaire a penitent sinner, grovelling for a deal that would give him the money he needs to continue his work. Instead of money, Daniel gives him a cold truth: he "drank his milkshake", sucking the oil right from under Eli's land. He then bludgeons the snivelling Eli to death with a bowling pin, the pastor simply an annoyance to him now. "I'm finished," he tells his butler in weary triumph, the final words of the movie moving right into Brahms. It's a powerhouse finale.
The first begins with Eli asking Daniel his permission to bless the newly erected oil well; Daniel agrees to mollify Eli and his church, but at the last minute usurps his prayer dedication, instead taking the time to make a pointed reference to Eli's abusive father. This is the first instance of direct conflict between Daniel and the church, and the back and forth becomes increasingly desperate as they try and get what they need from the other. Daniel even agrees to be baptized in order to obtain a crucial parcel of land owned by one of the congregation's most devout members. It's a scene that not only shows Daniel's deviousness, but also the movie's sense of humour, which I don't think gets enough credit.
The second scene I'm referring to ends the movie: Eli, who has been out of Daniel's life for many years on "mission work," returns to the secluded millionaire a penitent sinner, grovelling for a deal that would give him the money he needs to continue his work. Instead of money, Daniel gives him a cold truth: he "drank his milkshake", sucking the oil right from under Eli's land. He then bludgeons the snivelling Eli to death with a bowling pin, the pastor simply an annoyance to him now. "I'm finished," he tells his butler in weary triumph, the final words of the movie moving right into Brahms. It's a powerhouse finale.
Warning: this one's a teensy bit brutal.
After all, America is the land of prosperity gospels, Joel Osteen and John Maxwell, a place where the camel can go through the eye of a needle and come out a superior person. The poor are unemployed because "benefits keep people from going and finding jobs," says indicted Congressman and noted scumbag Tom DeLay. We have "rewarded laziness and called it welfare," prays one minister before the Kansas legislature, never mind that Jesus asked his followers to sell all they owned and give the money to the poor. Most Republicans believe that poor people are poor because of "a lack of effort on his or her part," while the wealthy are wealthy because of "hard work." They have neglected the most humble teachings of Jesus in order to accept the most bravado parts of the American myth as Truth.
And that's because the godless and the faithful are not so different when it comes to power. Comparing Daniel and Eli, we see two fixed entities, the stasis of their characters revealing so much. Their ambitions, goals, and ideas never change, even after they've succeeded in taking what's theirs. What changes is circumstance, the alienation that comes with constantly going after more. After casting off his adopted son, H.W., who he accuses of being a competitor after H.W. decides to go off on his own, Daniel is alone. Eli is alone, too, bankrupt and scheming, struggling to make it as a preacher who wants nothing more than to feed his ego with money. Money to buy the church, money to attract the congregants, money to be the charismatic preacher of the faith.
In the end, it consumes him, much as it's consuming America today.
Sources:
Head and Heart: A History of Christianity in America by Garry Wills
https://philosophynow.org/issues/74/There_Will_Be_Blood
http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SDU18911017.2.61
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-moyers/bill-moyers-and-ross-dout_b_1441744.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fundamentals
http://now.biola.edu/news/article/2013/feb/25/biolas-fundamentals-still-relevant-today/
https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/torrey_ra/fundamentals/71.cfm
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