There Will Be Blood

The film, ‘There Will Be Blood’ showed me visually and made great connections with the book, ‘The Prize.’

First thing that it shows me and connections with the book is that oil production was very dangerous in the 1880’s. The Prize told us it was dangerous and described explosions, injuries and fires occurred. Watching the film this week gave me a visual on how badly it really was. What sticks in my mind still was the scene when Daniel’s son was at the heart of the first burst of the derrick and he became deaf from the blow. The blow turned into oil bursting out and right after huge flames filled the Sunday ranch with fire and thick smoke. A scene just before that showed a man dying in the well from getting hit in the head. Even after the first man died, they still built more derricks to pump oil. It seemed like they didn’t care and they just continued to pump.

The film also displayed how serious people took oil production. The book describes buying, selling, dealing, hunting and transportation plans of land with oil. We still take it seriously, but for the business just getting started, I think they were going overboard. Businessmen lived for the drive, competition and the gain of power. I’m not sure what personality Eli is supposed to have, but he was greedy when he asked for $10,000 for his church when selling the ranch. The way he looked at Daniel all the time, he was only in it for the money….His character just bothered me.

I keep thinking about what was talked about in class today. We were described in the book and shown on the screen how men pumped more oil out of the ground than we knew what to day with it. With all the excess oil around, they just would dump it in a river or lake. Today, the U.S. doesn’t have enough oil and are fighting over it now oversees. This bothers me how we wasted all that oil.