A Blood Drenched History of Oil

There Will Be Blood
In Cinemas Now

There Will Be Blood takes us to the early 20th century when oil moguls were making their first moves in creating the oil-dominated economy we live in today.

Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), is an oil mogul with an eye for domination, at any cost. He is more than happy to use and abuse people close to him at whim. Whether they be his family, his workers, associates or the church, it doesn’t matter as long as he gets his way.

Many today would describe men like Plainview as pioneers, entrepreneurs with the finest capitalist spirit. But There Will Be Blood shows the brutal, psychopathic side of such pioneers, who forged capitalist growth and the basis of the economy we live under today by anything but peaceful means.

Another part of this society is represented by Eli Sunday (Paul Dano). He expresses the part played by evangelical Christianity in such times. As is shown in There Will Be Blood, in desperate times many more people will look to the sky for salvation and will more easily fall into the arms of the more fundamentalist faiths that will promise a more all embracing form of belief.

There Will Be Blood is a modern day classic that deserves all the praise it can get. But even more than that, it gives people today an all important guide to where we have come from, and therefore implies a future that we should try to avoid.