There Will Be Blood

[jake]

The thing that grabbed me about the film was how Daniel embodied our own times--he represented progress/success/power and saw everything else as inferior, and destroyed it or manipulated it accordingly. That's very much the political world we live in. On the other hand, as a person, he represented the isolation of modern man; he had no relations with women; no children of his own blood; his brother turned out to be a fake; and religion is a sham. (The two people he literally destroys are both con men of sorts.) Everything he does or might turn to is hollow and seems to only reinforce his belief in progress/power/success as the only thing worth pursuing.