Movies In History: There Will Be Blood

I saw this film on Netflix awhile back and meant to put in a review at the time.

I didn't get back around to it as, quite frankly, I had sort of a M'eh reaction to the film.  I was impressed, but I wasn't.  That's largely still the case, and frankly I think that the plot development and perhaps the acting is the reason why.

Based upon the Upton Sinclair novel Oil!, the oddly named There Will Be Blood follows the story of an early 20th Century oil prospector, who starts off as a silver prospector, on his rise.  During that path, he takes on the infant son of one one of his partners who is killed in an accident and raises him, incorporating him in activities, life and schemes.  After learning of an almost certain oil play in Texas, they travel there and encounter the second pivotal figure of the film, a young homesteader's son who is some sort of devout, and in this film oddly acted and grossly exaggerated, free lance Protestant minister.

The story is sort of, but only sort of, a morality play of a virtually Medieval type.  The central tenant of the film, I guess, is that greed corrupts and corrupts everything it touches.  Some of the portrayals are so over the top, however, that I found the film impossible to like, and indeed really only found the secondary characters, like the main protagonist's son, to be interesting and well done.

In terms of material details, the film is excellent.  Indeed, that's why I watched it all the way through. Clothing and various such details are highly accurately portrayed.  The oil field equipment, including cable tool drilling rigs, are also accurately portrayed.  All that couldn't overcome the defects in the film for me, however, which I'd guess just came down to that the film is odd in some fashion, and that oddness seemingly could not be overcome.  It was like drinking slightly sour milk.  Best avoided.