10/20/2023 0 Comments There will be blood stillsThe theme of will power is evident from the very first sequence. Looking back a decade later, I think it comes down to this: There Will Be Blood delves into the ideology of will power that defines so much of the modern world, and the refusal of grace that slowly but surely destroys one modern man’s soul. I knew that Anderson’s film intuited something elemental about America, but that it was far more elemental than politics. This reading bored me then and still bores me now. For many, this social critique entailed a political perspective, and the film was therefore seen as an indictment of Bush-era policies. Anderson’s adaptation (inspired by Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil!) is often read as a critique of the dark heart of American capitalism and religion-specifically, the oil industry and evangelical Christianity. There Will Be Blood checked both of those boxes.īut what really grabbed me was the story. I was also hard at work on a thesis about Søren Kierkegaard and existential philosophy, so anything with tones of alienation, dread, and “the dizziness of freedom” caught my interest as well. What was it about the unraveling of a self-described “oil man” that won me over so decisively ten years ago? I was a senior in college at the time, and like many students, prided myself on an interest in independent films out of left field. I had never seen anything like it, and to this day, still haven’t. But Paul Thomas Anderson’s magnum opus hooked, unsettled, and most of all fascinated me. When There Will Be Blood hit theaters in December 2007, I went to see it, went it see it again, and went to see it a third time.
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