A
Review of ‘There Will Be Blood’, the film written and directed by Paul Thomas
Anderson
And ‘Oil
!’, the novel by Upton Sinclair
The poster for
this film says that it is based on Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel. Socialists, and
lovers of American literature, should be grateful to Anderson for being
responsible for Sinclair’s novel being back in print and in the shops. But not
for much else. Indeed, I would advise
anyone who has read and enjoyed ‘Oil!’ to steer well clear of the much lauded
film.
Sinclair, made a
socialist by being exposed to extremes of wealth and poverty during his youth,
was one of a clutch of socialist ‘artists’; writers and journalists like Max
Eastman and John Reid to make powerful artistic works driven by a passionate
anti capitalism and commitment to socialist ideas.
In 1927 he wrote
‘Oil!’, ostensibly about the close relationship between a rapacious independent
oilman, J Arnold Ross, and his son,
Bunny. The novel is rich in its portrayal of family tensions and emotions, with
a depth that ensures the main characters are never less than believable. They
are far more than symbols or ciphers for the class conflict which plays out
around them. But the main narrative drive of the novel is the conflict between
the capitalist class, as exemplified by the oil companies, and the workers, in
unions and socialist parties.
Bunny, born into
a world of privilege, mixing with the bourgeois and Hollywood stars of Southern
California, finds himself impressed with the poor and intellectually superior
Paul, who first tips the Rosses that there may be oil on his family’s land.
Paul fights for his own education after running away from his religiously
overbearing father, and through a mixture of study and experience becomes a
socialist. Paul returns to work for J Arnold Ross on the oil fields at his
family ranch, but inevitably becomes a trade union agitator and leads a strike,
gets arrested and imprisoned. J Arnold
indulges his son and repeatedly bribes and bails Bunny’s ever widening circle
of working class socialist activists out of jail. As J Arnold’s oil empire
grows he inevitably becomes more embroiled with the oil employers’ association,
led by the major players, and his natural sympathy for the ‘working stiff’ is
severely put to the test. He also becomes involved with the oil companies
covert campaign to ‘buy’ the Presidential elections. Bunny’s socialist ideals
do not sit well with the playboy lifestyle he leads and increasingly he leads a
dual life, part time socialist journalist (his dad gives him the money to set
up a socialist newspaper!) and part time famous playboy.
Paul (like Upton
Sinclair himself, who after initially opposing US entry into WWI on
internationalist grounds; for a while reversed his position) becomes
politically disorientated by the First World War and enlists, only to find
himself used as one of the international forces sent to support the forces of
reaction in Russia following the 1917 revolution. Following his harrowing experiences Paul
becomes a committed Bolshevik agitator. Bunny is sympathetic but would he be
able to completely break with his bourgeois background and reformist friends to
join him?
There is a
preference in American novels for an episodic structure and Sinclair’s epic
uses this stylistic approach. In American literature there is also a convention
that the story is told by a ‘picaresque’ character, from the bottom, for
instance Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, so you may expect Sinclair to use
Paul, the working class urchin come Bolshevik, as the eyes and ears of the
author and reader. But actually, Sinclair’s hero is Paul, viewed through the
weaker, indulged rich boy Bunny, in the same way as Scott Fitzgerald tells the
tragic story of Gatsby through the eyes of another, less interesting
character. Sinclair uses the familiar forms
of the popular American novel to lay
bare US class makeup, the brutal nature of a capitalist class when its profits
are threatened, the corruption at the heart of this ‘democracy’ and the truth
about the Bolshevik revolution.
But if you think
you’ll rush down the video store and get out a socialist film classic when you
rent There Will Be Blood, forget it. Imagine if Mario Puzo’s ‘The Godfather’ had
been made into a film about an ordinary middle class American Italian family,
who lead normal law abiding lives. That’s how similar this ‘adaptation’ is to
Oil! To turn a socialist epic into a frankly ridiculous two dimensional story,
which even fails to demonstrate any psychological cohesiveness is an abuse of the
original novel. Asked why he bought and read ‘Oil!’ Anderson admits that he was
feeling homesick and the book had a painting of Southern California on the
cover!
In the novel, J Arnold Ross (called Plainview
in the film) is a kindly speculator, hard but fair, who loves his son and is
prepared to support him even when he personally stands to lose out. The novel
explains the processes and tendencies that place pressures on even well meaning
capitalists and his respect for Bolshevik Paul cannot prevent him from falling
in with the strategies dictated by his class interests. In the film the
character is simply a greedy misanthrope, a murderer in fact. Wheras the
evangelical revival and religion is exposed and satirised in the novel, Ely,
the preacher of ‘The Third Revelation’ is actually a sympathetic character in
the film. There is no politics, no mention of unions, no Paul, except for a
very brief appearance in the beginning. Whilst Day Lewis creates a character
somewhat like the one in the novel, and the scenes at the beginning are similar
to the book, none of the main themes appear and what is left is a shallow film
with an increasingly over the top personifaction of evil by Day Lewis.
Do yourself a
favour – if you are in the mood to speculate, the film is a dry well, but read the
book and you will strike a rich vein.
