I like to write first thing in the morning but today Wednesday my attention was diverted first by hearing on the radio while getting up that around the time I went to bed there was the biggest earthquake in the UK with its epicentre in Lincolnshire but with people feeling the ground move over 100 miles away. Apparently twenty five years ago there was one more powerful. This surprises me as I have no recollection.
I switched the television on when coming downstairs only find that media attention has changed to the roof top of the House of Commons where protestors about the proposed third runway at London airport Heathrow had got into the Houses of Parliament with large banners, had a cup of tea in the cafeteria and then taken a lift to the roof, all without being checked, especially as there were half a dozen of them now communicating with the media through their mobile phones. There will be a monster row about security at a time when the Commons has become preoccupied with the use of expenses. Is this some orchestrated plot, perhaps officially inspired by interests who believe there is the need to tighten security? My problem is knowing whether this is legitimate because the terrorist threat is real and people are not willing to switch into a total war mode unless the troops are at the door or there are a series of terrorist atrocities as developed in Northern Ireland, or if this is part of a plan to push the nation into accepting a tighter control over individual liberties by those who need such control in order to govern. One would have to be in higher echelons of internal security system to know, and given the Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister programmes one wonders if this was so, would Ministers know anyway? However it is more likely complacent laxity by officials coupled with the genuine desire to enable the public to visit the Commons for debates and to lobby their Members of Parliament.
I once promoted a lobby of Parliament by social workers in favour of the creation of one system of public funded social casework practice in the UK rather than the ad hoc developments as local politicians and Medical officers Health found ways to try and thwart the abolition of the posts under reorganisation proposals for the National health Service. The organisers of the march and lobby decided to issue a press release saying that I was leading the protest and which had an amusing by-product. I had written to my Member of Parliament for area of Teddington when I then lived and his secretary had replied sending his regrets that he would be unable to see me because of another commitment that day. Clearly his secretary had noted the reference to my position in the morning press and advised him that it would be expedient for him to see me. I was unaware of this and on after walking around Parliament Square Whitehall to the Houses of Parliament to queue for entry in an orderly fashion, technically it was a walk because a march was not allowed while Parliament was in Session I entered the central Lobby with colleagues who I joined whoever their Member of Parliament responded to the submission of a card advising of their arrival. I did not submit the request having received the letter in the post saying he was unavailable. One of the leaders of a committee of senior representatives of social work organisations, who was a little put out by he publicity given to my limited role, drew my attention that the Member of Parliament was looking for me, unaware of the letter I had received. Eventually I found the man who obviously had come away from a long lunch with alcoholic refreshment and I then had one of those conversations worthy of a comedy sketch in which one sober and serious individual attempts to explain issues to an inebriated 'what am I doing here' politician. Fortunately a group of professional colleagues had surrounded me for the exchange the exchange and were able to bear witness to the surreal event. The press the following day were impressed by the number of social workers who participated, as were the organisers, given that it was the first event of its nature and that those participating represented the full range of social casework interests and had journeyed from all parts of the UK, and they had also commented on the way we had conducted ourselves and therefore gave our arguments and concerns sympathetic coverage, which in turn helped the government and other party political leaders to understand and give attention to our position. Sometimes there is a ritualistic reality about what happens in Parliament and British Politics, with today's Prime Minister's Question time a good example, but at other's it can be indicate the open nature of British politics and the responsiveness of governments and politicians to a good case made in the right way.
I like to write for as long as possible when I wake, in my other period, late evenings, after I have my evening siesta and recovered, the output is less and inevitably requires rewriting and correction, especially when the recovery is limited, I quickly become tired again and have to go bed. If posted at night I usually have to reedit when the piece is checked.
Previously, only a matter of hours in fact, I expressed surprise that Not a country for Old men won the Oscar as I did not consider it to be a great film although the subject was of interest, and this was the only film of those nominated I had seen. Yesterday afternoon I experienced There will be Blood. I had not considered the film a priority after seeing the trailer although Day Lewis was heavily tipped for the Oscar Best Actor award, his fourth nomination for such a role in his short film career to-date. What tipped me into seeing the film were the comments of Mark Kermode who had experienced the film three times in order to understand its cinematic significance and overall effectiveness. I have only seen it once, read some of the reviews and reached roughly the same conclusion as Mark. It is an interesting way of telling a particular story and communicating something about the forces at work in society throughout time. The story of the film is the reality of the development of oil exploration on mainland USA from just before the turn the 1900 until the great stock market crash at the end of the 1920's. It is the closest I have experienced so far to what it must have been like to have been one of the first vertical shaft prospectors, initially for precious metals, and then for oil. Some ways of dying are worse than others and dying down a vertical shaft, especially if at the time you were working on your own and fatally injured, must have been a horrible experience. It is however only one of many.
There have been other films about the early days of oil prospecting in the USA, with the most memorable James Dean in Giant, and also other films where the problem of putting out a well on fire has been a feature, and many of us retain images of what happened in the first Gulf War.. Another aspect which struck me is that in some respects this is a film which starts where the Coen Brothers (previously misspelt) have left off, as they become more mainstream Hollywood.
Paul Thomas Anderson who directed, produced and wrote the script of There Will be Blood, loosely uses ideas and concepts from the Upton Sinclair 1927 novel Oil. Born 1970, he was only 18 when he made a 30 mins film about a well endowed porn star which nine years later he turned into a successful full length feature called Boogie Nights with Burt Reynolds and Mark Wahlberg, and making Julianne Moore into a an A list star. It is difficult to judge, I saw Boogie Nights several years ago, how much the interest was because of the subject and how much because of his skill and approach to film making. It was only with Magnolia when he tackled the interaction between seven individuals in a day, using the familiar to him territory of the San Fernando Valley, that this work achieved international recognition with over 100 critics putting the film in their top ten list, achieving three academy award nominations with Tom Cruise for best support role as an actor. This is his first film for five years. He has had 5 nominations for Oscars so far, 4 for Baftas, wining 2 of three nominations at Berlin and 1 of 2 at Cannes covering three of his five full length feature films.
I can understand why Daniel Day Lewis received the acting Oscar. Day Lewis was born into a creative family with his father the Poet Laureate and his mother the daughter of Michael Balcon, the film maker. He was a conventional unconventional youth, unruly and self determining with an early passion for acting and for working with his hands in wood, and at one time he considered becoming an apprentice cabinet maker. In1989 he won his first Acting Oscar for his role as disabled Christy Brown, in My Left Foot, insisting on remaining in character in his wheel chair through every day on set. For his role in the Last of the Mohicans he went off into the wilderness and learnt to live of the land, camping hunting and fishing, including the skinning of animals. For his role as Jim Conlon in the Name of the Father he spent time in a prison cell, kept his Irish accent on and off the set and insisted on being physically abused as the character was in the film. For the film the Boxer he trained for two years with Barry McGuigan, the former world Champion. For a time he disappeared in Italy, where in Florence it is known he worked as an apprentice to a shoe maker. After a gap of five years he returned to the screen with Gangs of New York, receiving his third Best acting nomination and the British Bafta title. He was then offered a role in a film directed by his wife, the daughter of Arthur Miller the playwright and because it concerned the tale of a dying man with regrets about his life, he separated from his wife to experience the loneliness and isolation of the role. In addition to his two Oscars he has won three Baftas. One Golden Globe and two Screen Actors Guild. He has become the finest English speaking Character Actor of the present generation, to be compared to the great greats of the past.
In several of his roles he has played men of extreme violence and in There will be blood he also ends his life in the film in isolation madness, reminding of Citizen Kane. There is also the brief suggestion in the film of an underage sexual relationship with the daughter of the family with whom the greater part of the film is built around. After achieving success in oil drilling as an independent operator his reputation is such that he approach by the son of the Sunday family who live in the middle of nowhere on arid land that is only fit to graze goats and where the land will not sustain wheat so there is no bread, only potatoes. He pays some money up front for information about the land with oil underneath and keeps a promise to pay a total of ten thousand dollars if the information proves accurate. He then buys out the land of the Sunday family as a prelude to buying all the land over the field with one exception which he puts to one side. The obstacle to his success with the project in the second twin son of the Sunday family, a self proclaimed preacher of the Church of the Third Way and faith healer. First the young man requests an additional payment for his Church on top of the money offered to buy out the land of his father and then he asks to bless the first drilling rig. In both instances the admitted competitiveness within the character resists the young preacher, until Day Lewis forced to go through the motions of accepting the role of the preacher and to become baptised when he needs to take a pipeline through the one piece of land he did not originally buy and the owner is a member of the Third Way Church. He also gives the 5000 dollars to the young preacher who then goes off to make his fortune as a radio priest and healer.
The main character has also adopted the son of a colleague who accidentally dies in the early days of prospecting and in an accident when the first rig strikes oil on the Sunday land the boy goes deaf and is eventually abandoned to a special school. As part of his deal to secure the pipeline he brings his son home and later the young man marries one of the daughters of the Sundays, so that the preacher becomes his brother, returning to beg for money when he loses his investments in the great crash. What then happens ends the film and brings point to the film's title.
At one level this is therefore a study of an ambitious and competitive, ruthless and violent, man who degenerates into madness, who dislikes talking about himself but occasionally does so admitting he likes to win, and hates the rest of mankind. He is a typical adventuring capitalist, always looking for the best deal and prepared to go to any length to achieve his objectives. He parades his young son as a way of connecting with families. There are only hints about his background and the relationship with his own father, with the unstated indication that he was abused, perhaps sexually abused, given his lack of interest in adult women throughout the film, even when he is hugged and fondled by women when he is baptised. He has no redeeming features much like the Xavier Bardon character in No Country for Old men. In fact there are similarities between the two films as a struggle between good and evil, although in There will be Blood it is a struggle between a dubious evangelical Christianity and Capitalism. At the end of the film the preacher brother church admits that he has sinned possibly to the same order as the Day Lewis character. The Day Lewis Character responds to his brother in law as he did when someone posed as his biological half brother. The Day Lewis character longs to have a close relationship with someone, but then destroys when it does not measure up to the beliefs and hopes of childhood.
Perhaps this in fact a film about the reality of being human and the issues which arise from being open and honest about ones view of the world, driving everyone with the truth, ending life in isolation and madness, and also about the hypocrisy of some of those who profess high moral values but fail to practice what they preach. The Day Lewis character responds to the offer of becoming a millionaire and selling out his oil find from Standard Oil by saying that he only knows oil exploration and the Spartan life with goes with it. When he stops doing this and tries to enjoy his wealth he falls apart. Similarly the preacher is very successful when he has a small and poor congregation but becomes the being he detests when he seeks the trappings of success.
There has to be one final word about the Radiohead music score which many will hate, but which is effective in creating the mood of this film.
As antidote to the seriousness of all this I watched the third in Dirty Dozen series over my evening meals of a mixed vegetable starter with half a glass of red wine followed by a baked sea bass with Italian herb seasoning, followed by green grapes and strong unsweetened rich percolated ground coffee. Later I watched the missed episode of Lost which takes us no further except that the helicopter with Sayed is said not to have reached the freighter and a fast forward reveals that Kate has had a child by Sawyer which means that Jack although speaking for her at her trial for having killed her father to save her mother, for which she only receives probation when mother refuses to give evidence against her, cannot demonstrate his continuing love for her while she has the other man's child. I went to bed and missed the earthquake. I slept long and dreamt long on waking, feeling some of the images still
I switched the television on when coming downstairs only find that media attention has changed to the roof top of the House of Commons where protestors about the proposed third runway at London airport Heathrow had got into the Houses of Parliament with large banners, had a cup of tea in the cafeteria and then taken a lift to the roof, all without being checked, especially as there were half a dozen of them now communicating with the media through their mobile phones. There will be a monster row about security at a time when the Commons has become preoccupied with the use of expenses. Is this some orchestrated plot, perhaps officially inspired by interests who believe there is the need to tighten security? My problem is knowing whether this is legitimate because the terrorist threat is real and people are not willing to switch into a total war mode unless the troops are at the door or there are a series of terrorist atrocities as developed in Northern Ireland, or if this is part of a plan to push the nation into accepting a tighter control over individual liberties by those who need such control in order to govern. One would have to be in higher echelons of internal security system to know, and given the Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister programmes one wonders if this was so, would Ministers know anyway? However it is more likely complacent laxity by officials coupled with the genuine desire to enable the public to visit the Commons for debates and to lobby their Members of Parliament.
I once promoted a lobby of Parliament by social workers in favour of the creation of one system of public funded social casework practice in the UK rather than the ad hoc developments as local politicians and Medical officers Health found ways to try and thwart the abolition of the posts under reorganisation proposals for the National health Service. The organisers of the march and lobby decided to issue a press release saying that I was leading the protest and which had an amusing by-product. I had written to my Member of Parliament for area of Teddington when I then lived and his secretary had replied sending his regrets that he would be unable to see me because of another commitment that day. Clearly his secretary had noted the reference to my position in the morning press and advised him that it would be expedient for him to see me. I was unaware of this and on after walking around Parliament Square Whitehall to the Houses of Parliament to queue for entry in an orderly fashion, technically it was a walk because a march was not allowed while Parliament was in Session I entered the central Lobby with colleagues who I joined whoever their Member of Parliament responded to the submission of a card advising of their arrival. I did not submit the request having received the letter in the post saying he was unavailable. One of the leaders of a committee of senior representatives of social work organisations, who was a little put out by he publicity given to my limited role, drew my attention that the Member of Parliament was looking for me, unaware of the letter I had received. Eventually I found the man who obviously had come away from a long lunch with alcoholic refreshment and I then had one of those conversations worthy of a comedy sketch in which one sober and serious individual attempts to explain issues to an inebriated 'what am I doing here' politician. Fortunately a group of professional colleagues had surrounded me for the exchange the exchange and were able to bear witness to the surreal event. The press the following day were impressed by the number of social workers who participated, as were the organisers, given that it was the first event of its nature and that those participating represented the full range of social casework interests and had journeyed from all parts of the UK, and they had also commented on the way we had conducted ourselves and therefore gave our arguments and concerns sympathetic coverage, which in turn helped the government and other party political leaders to understand and give attention to our position. Sometimes there is a ritualistic reality about what happens in Parliament and British Politics, with today's Prime Minister's Question time a good example, but at other's it can be indicate the open nature of British politics and the responsiveness of governments and politicians to a good case made in the right way.
I like to write for as long as possible when I wake, in my other period, late evenings, after I have my evening siesta and recovered, the output is less and inevitably requires rewriting and correction, especially when the recovery is limited, I quickly become tired again and have to go bed. If posted at night I usually have to reedit when the piece is checked.
Previously, only a matter of hours in fact, I expressed surprise that Not a country for Old men won the Oscar as I did not consider it to be a great film although the subject was of interest, and this was the only film of those nominated I had seen. Yesterday afternoon I experienced There will be Blood. I had not considered the film a priority after seeing the trailer although Day Lewis was heavily tipped for the Oscar Best Actor award, his fourth nomination for such a role in his short film career to-date. What tipped me into seeing the film were the comments of Mark Kermode who had experienced the film three times in order to understand its cinematic significance and overall effectiveness. I have only seen it once, read some of the reviews and reached roughly the same conclusion as Mark. It is an interesting way of telling a particular story and communicating something about the forces at work in society throughout time. The story of the film is the reality of the development of oil exploration on mainland USA from just before the turn the 1900 until the great stock market crash at the end of the 1920's. It is the closest I have experienced so far to what it must have been like to have been one of the first vertical shaft prospectors, initially for precious metals, and then for oil. Some ways of dying are worse than others and dying down a vertical shaft, especially if at the time you were working on your own and fatally injured, must have been a horrible experience. It is however only one of many.
There have been other films about the early days of oil prospecting in the USA, with the most memorable James Dean in Giant, and also other films where the problem of putting out a well on fire has been a feature, and many of us retain images of what happened in the first Gulf War.. Another aspect which struck me is that in some respects this is a film which starts where the Coen Brothers (previously misspelt) have left off, as they become more mainstream Hollywood.
Paul Thomas Anderson who directed, produced and wrote the script of There Will be Blood, loosely uses ideas and concepts from the Upton Sinclair 1927 novel Oil. Born 1970, he was only 18 when he made a 30 mins film about a well endowed porn star which nine years later he turned into a successful full length feature called Boogie Nights with Burt Reynolds and Mark Wahlberg, and making Julianne Moore into a an A list star. It is difficult to judge, I saw Boogie Nights several years ago, how much the interest was because of the subject and how much because of his skill and approach to film making. It was only with Magnolia when he tackled the interaction between seven individuals in a day, using the familiar to him territory of the San Fernando Valley, that this work achieved international recognition with over 100 critics putting the film in their top ten list, achieving three academy award nominations with Tom Cruise for best support role as an actor. This is his first film for five years. He has had 5 nominations for Oscars so far, 4 for Baftas, wining 2 of three nominations at Berlin and 1 of 2 at Cannes covering three of his five full length feature films.
I can understand why Daniel Day Lewis received the acting Oscar. Day Lewis was born into a creative family with his father the Poet Laureate and his mother the daughter of Michael Balcon, the film maker. He was a conventional unconventional youth, unruly and self determining with an early passion for acting and for working with his hands in wood, and at one time he considered becoming an apprentice cabinet maker. In1989 he won his first Acting Oscar for his role as disabled Christy Brown, in My Left Foot, insisting on remaining in character in his wheel chair through every day on set. For his role in the Last of the Mohicans he went off into the wilderness and learnt to live of the land, camping hunting and fishing, including the skinning of animals. For his role as Jim Conlon in the Name of the Father he spent time in a prison cell, kept his Irish accent on and off the set and insisted on being physically abused as the character was in the film. For the film the Boxer he trained for two years with Barry McGuigan, the former world Champion. For a time he disappeared in Italy, where in Florence it is known he worked as an apprentice to a shoe maker. After a gap of five years he returned to the screen with Gangs of New York, receiving his third Best acting nomination and the British Bafta title. He was then offered a role in a film directed by his wife, the daughter of Arthur Miller the playwright and because it concerned the tale of a dying man with regrets about his life, he separated from his wife to experience the loneliness and isolation of the role. In addition to his two Oscars he has won three Baftas. One Golden Globe and two Screen Actors Guild. He has become the finest English speaking Character Actor of the present generation, to be compared to the great greats of the past.
In several of his roles he has played men of extreme violence and in There will be blood he also ends his life in the film in isolation madness, reminding of Citizen Kane. There is also the brief suggestion in the film of an underage sexual relationship with the daughter of the family with whom the greater part of the film is built around. After achieving success in oil drilling as an independent operator his reputation is such that he approach by the son of the Sunday family who live in the middle of nowhere on arid land that is only fit to graze goats and where the land will not sustain wheat so there is no bread, only potatoes. He pays some money up front for information about the land with oil underneath and keeps a promise to pay a total of ten thousand dollars if the information proves accurate. He then buys out the land of the Sunday family as a prelude to buying all the land over the field with one exception which he puts to one side. The obstacle to his success with the project in the second twin son of the Sunday family, a self proclaimed preacher of the Church of the Third Way and faith healer. First the young man requests an additional payment for his Church on top of the money offered to buy out the land of his father and then he asks to bless the first drilling rig. In both instances the admitted competitiveness within the character resists the young preacher, until Day Lewis forced to go through the motions of accepting the role of the preacher and to become baptised when he needs to take a pipeline through the one piece of land he did not originally buy and the owner is a member of the Third Way Church. He also gives the 5000 dollars to the young preacher who then goes off to make his fortune as a radio priest and healer.
The main character has also adopted the son of a colleague who accidentally dies in the early days of prospecting and in an accident when the first rig strikes oil on the Sunday land the boy goes deaf and is eventually abandoned to a special school. As part of his deal to secure the pipeline he brings his son home and later the young man marries one of the daughters of the Sundays, so that the preacher becomes his brother, returning to beg for money when he loses his investments in the great crash. What then happens ends the film and brings point to the film's title.
At one level this is therefore a study of an ambitious and competitive, ruthless and violent, man who degenerates into madness, who dislikes talking about himself but occasionally does so admitting he likes to win, and hates the rest of mankind. He is a typical adventuring capitalist, always looking for the best deal and prepared to go to any length to achieve his objectives. He parades his young son as a way of connecting with families. There are only hints about his background and the relationship with his own father, with the unstated indication that he was abused, perhaps sexually abused, given his lack of interest in adult women throughout the film, even when he is hugged and fondled by women when he is baptised. He has no redeeming features much like the Xavier Bardon character in No Country for Old men. In fact there are similarities between the two films as a struggle between good and evil, although in There will be Blood it is a struggle between a dubious evangelical Christianity and Capitalism. At the end of the film the preacher brother church admits that he has sinned possibly to the same order as the Day Lewis character. The Day Lewis Character responds to his brother in law as he did when someone posed as his biological half brother. The Day Lewis character longs to have a close relationship with someone, but then destroys when it does not measure up to the beliefs and hopes of childhood.
Perhaps this in fact a film about the reality of being human and the issues which arise from being open and honest about ones view of the world, driving everyone with the truth, ending life in isolation and madness, and also about the hypocrisy of some of those who profess high moral values but fail to practice what they preach. The Day Lewis character responds to the offer of becoming a millionaire and selling out his oil find from Standard Oil by saying that he only knows oil exploration and the Spartan life with goes with it. When he stops doing this and tries to enjoy his wealth he falls apart. Similarly the preacher is very successful when he has a small and poor congregation but becomes the being he detests when he seeks the trappings of success.
There has to be one final word about the Radiohead music score which many will hate, but which is effective in creating the mood of this film.
As antidote to the seriousness of all this I watched the third in Dirty Dozen series over my evening meals of a mixed vegetable starter with half a glass of red wine followed by a baked sea bass with Italian herb seasoning, followed by green grapes and strong unsweetened rich percolated ground coffee. Later I watched the missed episode of Lost which takes us no further except that the helicopter with Sayed is said not to have reached the freighter and a fast forward reveals that Kate has had a child by Sawyer which means that Jack although speaking for her at her trial for having killed her father to save her mother, for which she only receives probation when mother refuses to give evidence against her, cannot demonstrate his continuing love for her while she has the other man's child. I went to bed and missed the earthquake. I slept long and dreamt long on waking, feeling some of the images still
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