There Was No Blood | Religion and Identity

Not the most romantic of movies, but we went to see There Will Be Blood last night. It's a terrific movie. If you haven't yet seen it, do. No matter how big your plasma screen, you'll need to see this one on the big screen.

Oil, Crude and Spiritual, are the two things two men are drilling for. Boring down into dangerous fissures within themselves and their communities, risking explosion and hurt to those around them. Daniel Day Lewis' extraordinary performance as Daniel Plainview, and Paul Dano's equally good one as revivalist revelation cult leader Eli Sunday are full of gutteral, primordial sounds, helped along by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood's score.

No matter how deep they dig, and what riches they bring themselves - crude or spiritual - it's real blood that they both know are absent. Plainview's 'son' is simply an orphan he took on, the brother that finds him a fraud, and the blood of Jesus that Sunday screams for never materialises into grace. There may be oil and wealth, but there is no blood, no family blood to root one of them, none of God's blood to save either. And so they fight and drill deeper into darker places.

This is, of course, a film about the American identity: a country built on escape from back-slidden families, a new puritan world with opportunities for all. A country built on, and sustained by, oil. Yet, it seems, a country at sea in its own quest for identity, for real history. As an outsider it seems the US is, more than elsewhere, a country in search of blood. Family blood - desperately trying to cling on to Scottish, Irish, African, Spanish heritage - and God's blood - desperately trying to divine Christ's blood to purify all the soiled ground beneath everyone's feet.

And, in the final instance, as in the film, there is blood. There always will be. In the madness of the consuming search for God's blood and our family's blood, we strike out and wound the other. If we get blood-fever, like Gold or Oil Fever, then blood we will find. Violent, painful and destructive. The same blood lust that wounded Christ.

Grace needs no drilling, no violence to the earth or the body. Instead, it seeps into us if we will seek the peace and silence to simply wait for it. Only then will it, in the mystery of the elements, become blood, binding us to God and our brother, allowing a gentle security of identity to take root.

Technorati: American | Grace | There Will Be Blood | Violence

Comments

[priest]

just got back from the cinema. i like your take on American identity. i found it interesting that there was an exchange of forceful baptisms in blood by the two men.

powerful message for this blood thirsty country. pax

[maggi]

great review, kester - I'm off to see this v. soon

[bob c]

truly, this is a powerful insight:

As an outsider it seems the US is, more than elsewhere, a country in search of blood. Family blood - desperately trying to cling on to Scottish, Irish, African, Spanish heritage - and God's blood - desperately trying to divine Christ's blood to purify all the soiled ground beneath everyone's feet.

We are also a country premised on exploration - progress measured in new land conquered, new souls conquered.

p.s. is there a better description of commerce than:

Here, if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There it is, that's a straw, you see? You watching?. And my straw reaches acroooooooss the room, and starts to drink your milkshake... I... drink... your... milkshake!

[Patrick]

"a country built on escape from back-slidden families, a new puritan world with opportunities for all."

Not entirely. And I think that's maybe a misconception about American identity. Yes, there are those people that you talk about.

But there are also the people who were literally starving to death and found life on these shores. Mostly they just want to be left alone and raise their family, helping out friends and neighbors as they can, seeking enough to help the next generation do better than the one before.

And this is important because you have to realize it's not the oil barons who join the military, oftentimes it's the folks who, rightly or wrongly, genuinely feel they are doing what is a contribution to helping others find that better life.

The Clint Eastwood movie Pale Rider comes to mind in this. There are claim miners and then there the strip miners. The latter maim and destroy and suck the life out of land and people. The former are wanting to find enough of their own to no longer be under the sway of barons and lords, whether such are because of blood or cash.

Most Americans are refugees from something, at some time in the past, escaping what was unbearable to find a new possibility. Some of those people are no better than those they escaped. Some are a whole lot better, even if a whole lot more poor.

[Patrick]

To add to that, the Best Picture winner No Country for Old Men is a great contrast to There Will be Blood.

Tommy Lee Jones is the quintessential American, putting in his time against the struggle that's bigger than any one generation. But so too is Josh Brolin's character, who mostly wants to be independent, with a mix of ethics that mostly leave him a good guy, but sometimes just in way over his head. And a lot of Americans see these kinds of characters all over the world, and like Tommy Lee Jones feel there is something to doing the utmost to give them that chance.

This isn't saying this is an ultimately correct approach, but it absolutely does show a different motive than many folks attribute to Americans. And it's not entirely clear that letting folks slaughter each other while afterwards regretting the fact is any more correct. Darfur is not entirely a great moment in world diplomacy.