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February 7, 2008
If you are remotely connected to the auto industry or just a gearhead fascinated with all things automotive, I can heartily recommend the Oscar nominated movie "There Will Be Blood" - but only for its start.
The beginning traces the rise of "Oilman" Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day Lewis, at the very birth of the oil industry. Plainview is a wildcatter, drilling for oil near the California coast and working out schemes to pipe it to the coast and down to Los Angeles.
The wild landscapes are not only beautiful but are complimented by an extraordinary musical score by British composer Jonny Greenwood that supplies a haunting sense of agitation and impending drama.
As I said, for these scenes alone, I really recommend the movie for an almost breathless sense of what it was like to seek a fortune by digging wells and pulling oil out by the bucket.
Unfortunately, the movie gets bogged down as Plainview and his rising fortunes become intertwined with religion - another great American theme - in the form of a fanatical young fundamentalist minister. Plainview becomes ever more malevolent and the movie ends up as a weird parody of "Citizen Kane" but without Rosebud: in other words, pointless.
PS See "Juno."
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth 
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