There Will Be Blood

“There Will Be Blood”

Let me begin by saying that the movie, “There Will Be Blood,” was completely different than I had originally thought it would be. I knew very little about the storyline of the movie and had very little background information. I guess all I really presumed what that �there would be blood;’ which did not happen much either.

Almost immediately after beginning the film, I was less than amused by the look of it. The plot begins in a desolate field; no people, just music. I had realized then that this movie was going to be a time piece, based in what looked to be the early 19th Century; not necessarily my favorite time period. I continued to wonder how I was going to watch this movie, and then turn around and write a reaction paper on it for an Understanding the Bible class. I wondered how in the world this film was going to have any religious or biblical connotation to it, and if it did, was I going to be able to pick up on it.

The film has an apparent undertone: greed. Daniel Plainview’s growing thirst for oil, money and power eventually end up getting the best of him. In route, he loses his son, his closest friends and his sanity. When his son, H.W., loses his hearing in a rig explosion, Plainview does not know what to do. Sadly, he uses his son as a sort of lure to convince people that he is a family man. After shipping H.W. away to a school for the deaf, Plainview’s character plummets into his oil-hungry nature.

As far as how religion ties into this particular film, only a couple of instances stood out to me of having a bit of irony. When Eli Sunday the preacher at the Church of the Third Revelation, asks Plainview for the money he had been promised, Plainview slaps him around and smothers his face in oil; humiliating him. Later on, after Plainview has abandoned is son, lusted, murdered, and been consumed by greed, he shows up at the Church under Eli’s wishes. He confesses that he is a man of sin and that he shall be washed clean of all his sins and wrongdoings. In doing so the tables are turned, and there kneels Plainview before Eli. Eli slaps him around, in a sort of comical way, and is washing Plainview’s head with water. I saw a bit of irony in this scene. Going back to when Plainview was beating and smothering Eli in the oilfield, now Plainview was at Eli’s mercy and being beaten and washed clean with water. It was almost as if oil was Plainview’s version of Eli’s baptismal water.

However, Eli Sunday was not all the man he claimed to be. Actually, Eli and Plainview were very similar in a way: they both wanted. Eli needing and wanting money for his church, and Plainview obviously wanting oil and money. One would assume that Eli was the superior because he was