Alissa Wilkinson argues There Will Be Blood is the most American movie because it takes the Western frontier mythology and inverts it, showing that unfettered capitalism destroys not just wealth but the soul.
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At 40:40 · chapter starts 40:35
Alissa Wilkinson's case for There Will Be Blood as the most American film is built on inversion. The Western genre typically frames the lone entrepreneur pushing into untamed land as heroic. Daniel Plainview, Daniel Day-Lewis's oil magnate, does everything the mythology promises: he succeeds spectacularly, builds an empire, acquires a mansion complete with a bowling alley. But Paul Thomas Anderson refuses the triumphant ending. Plainview is utterly destroyed — not financially, but as a human being. Wilkinson argues this makes it the most honest American movie: it doesn't say capitalism is simply bad, it traces what happens when the ideals of unfettered liberty and the pursuit of power are taken to their absolute end. The parallels to 21st-century entrepreneurialism, she notes, are hard to miss.
Daniel Plainview wins everything — fortune, land, power — and ends up alone in a mansion with a bowling alley, utterly destroyed. Alissa Wilkinson argues There Will Be Blood doesn't just critique the American Dream; it follows it all the way to its logical, soul-destroying conclusion.
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