Oil! is a different story than There Will Be Blood. More enervating then enigmatic, more coming of age than aging. The bones of capitalist veracity remain intact in both. But while the book juxtaposes acts of violence against absurdity and ignorance, the film disguises the violence beneath a sheen of beautiful and horrifying awe. In Sinclair's case, the sad state of human affairs are the result of privileged apathy and greed, useless philanthropic apathy in the face of great need for progress and community. Sinclair believes in a kind of change, even though fraught with failure. For Anderson, the status quo is an inevitable fact of life, a death drive to destruction. (Sounds like a black metal title.)

I prefer There Will Be Blood mostly for the Milton-esque language study that creeps indefatigably through the epic imagery and editing. Eden, in pre-lapsarian meaning, is a place of earthy abundance, untrammeled by corruption or greed, where words have but one definition. Anderson constructs the pre and post-lapsarian world through a series of contrasts. The last flashback shot reminds us that the original Eden once existed. But the body of the film shows us how the moment becomes twisted through the vice of capitalism, an abstraction that becomes a subtextual character, an invisible antagonist that presides over the saga like Sauron of Mt Doom or Milton's God. Honesty exists at first in silence or reluctant speech. When the words arrive they only serve to deceive and cause pain. The preacher's loquaciousness and the grifter's swindle are both signals of decay. Once those apples are eaten, silence is silenced - the mute son, a human echo of Edenic silence, must make his own way on Earth without his father, against even his father. Plainview himself ends up most like Satan, trapped in the grip of capital C Capitalism, traveling the road most familiar to himself to a lonely, embattled end.