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 it’s 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 Ross’s 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 it’s 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 can not 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.
Mark Turner
BOTH ‘OIL!’ AND ‘THE JUNGLE’ BY UPTON SINCLAIR ARE AVAILABLE FROM WELLRED BOOKS
