There Will Be Blood

We watched the movie "There Will Be Blood" this weekend. I watched to see Daniel Day Lewis' Oscar performance and I have to say, I'm confused. I thought the acting was tremendous. Daniel Day Lewis fully immersed himself to be a man whose character, Daniel Plainview, is anything but in plain view.

The story is simple enough. Plainview is an oil man who leases land in California to drill and ends up in an agreement with Union Oil to build an oil line to the Pacific Ocean. But in the middle, I was caught up with Plainview's character. A man who seeming is driven by greed and shuns people as a way to be isolated from love and community. We never see Plainview speak of love or women, just associates who come in and out of his life. The one person he does love is his son, H.W., who he adopts after one of his workers die in a drilling accident. But after a freak accident in which H.W. loses his hearing, Plainview cannot reconcile the love he has for his little boy to a frustrating and often hurting soul that cannot heal his impairment. His nemesis in the movie are not other business associates, but a young man who claims to be a church healer, a person whose hubris in being the minister of the church leads him and Plainview to be at odds over who runs the town. Is it the healer, who's congregation is blinded by his over zealous messages of faith healing, who the people turn to? Or is it the oil man who is giving them money as he makes millions off as he dries up their fields of natural resources?

I can't decide if I really like this movie or if I just like it. The story ends abruptly [I won't give it away here] and we were left with going to the computer to see what it was about. I told the wife the part of me that's having a hard time reconciling with this movie is the idea of redemption is missing for me. Normally, a story has a character who goes through a redemptive process that makes us want to relate to him/her. Here, I just couldn't relate to Plainview. Or, I didn't want to.

For those who've seen it, give me your thoughts. It'll help me sort through some questions I have about the movie.