Nathan Bick

  In my interpretation of this film, it presents statements on two broad categories of meaning: the first being the nature and interaction of two great American “religions”; the second, aspects of the personal human condition.  First, a brief summary. There Will Be Blood is an adaptation of an Upton Sinclair novel about oil, although that is about as much as I know about that novel. The main character, Daniel Plainview (played by Daniel Day-Lewis), is an oil wildcatter in the U.S. Southwest working in the late 1890s through 1920s. He’s an extremely driven but damaged individual, a serious alcoholic. He works with his young adopted son, H.W., an orphan whose father was a colleague of Daniel’s killed in an oil rig accident.  Daniel is told of a very promising oil field in Southern California by a poor resident boy of the area, prompting Daniel to go there and speak with the boy’s family. It is here that we meet one of the other primary characters, the first boy’s identical ...