Several months ago I finally caught up with some of the 2007 Oscar-contending films which had intrigued me: “Atonement”, a brilliant book and a faithful film treatment; “The Counterfeiters” which won Best Foreign Film, and fully deserved the award; and “There Will Be Blood”, in which Daniel Day-Lewis turned in another of his remarkable screen portrayals and rightly won Best Actor, and which, in spite of his contribution, is a disaster on several levels.

As a translation from book to screen “There Will Be Blood” is misguided and nearly incomprehensible. Its’ music is also incomprehensible, disrespectful and what is worse, very annoying.

The film credits state that the screenplay is by Paul Thomas Anderson, who also directed the film, and that it is based on the novel “Oil!” by Upton Sinclair. Well, true enough, the book is about a California oil tycoon living around 1910, and the film also has something to do with oil – that’s about it!

Sinclair’s book is an attack on capitalism and big oil from a Marxist point of view. It was published in 1926 at a time when the world economy was hurtling toward self-destruction. Sinclair was both timely and accurate as he often was. He had written a book in 1906 called “The Jungle” about appalling conditions in the Chicago meatpacking industry. “Oil!” is a similar indictment of the exploitation of oilfield workers and how the oil industry bought politicians and started wars. “Oil!” goes a step further to use the newly emergent Soviet Union as a model for other countries to follow in enabling workingmen to take control of their own destinies; unfortunately, the truth about the horrors of the dictatorship of the proletariat and Stalin had yet to be revealed in 1926. From this enlightened perspective it is easy to look back on Sinclair’s book as being dated and naïve, so it is no wonder, perhaps, that the producers decided “to go in another direction.”

There is, however, an even broader perspective and it is our own, circa 2008. Is it really a Marxist viewpoint to think that American politicians are in the pockets of big oil companies, or that great nations and multi-national corporations are willing to go to war in the Middle East over oil? Sound familiar? The contemporary relevance of these issues makes “Oil!” not only “up-to-date” but far ahead of its time. The makers of “There Will Be Blood” could have made a faithful and powerful rendering of the book but chose instead to dishonor the book by making a silly and incoherent action picture. The movie ends with the Daniel Day-Lewis oil tycoon character beating the evangelist character to death, in the oilman’s bowling alley. Why? Who knows. Needless to say there is no scene like it in the book. The book remains as thoughtful and compelling as it was in 1926. The film “based” on it is just ridiculous.

As for the music in “There Will Be Blood”, it is just as annoying and irresponsible. From the opening scene and for about twenty minutes thereafter we are asked to put up with music/noise – probably inspired by Penderecki’s “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima” – which suggests disaster in the offing. It is unbearable except perhaps if there is a payoff – that is, if it culminates in something truly awful. I was reminded of Richard Strauss’ score for his opera “Salome” in the buildup to Salome’s emergence with the head of John the Baptist, or Bernard Hermann’s music for the shower scene in Hitchcock’s “Psycho”. In these films, the music foreshadowed a horrific payoff; in “There Will Be Blood” the payoff is the explosion of an oil well – unpleasant, but hardly monumental enough for the music that presaged it.

Then, after betraying us with this absurd musical buildup, the director and composer present us with another anomaly. When the oil tycoon inaugurates his new well, the music used is the finale from Brahms’ Violin Concerto. This same music is used again later. I could make no sense of its use on the first occasion and the second occasion didn’t seem in any way related to the first. Brahms’ Violin Concerto is not a programmatic piece; it has only musical meaning. So why use it in the film, especially when the film’s opening music is in a totally different style? For the record, the score for the film is credited to Jonny Greenwood, perhaps best known for being a member of the rock band Radiohead.

I must confess a great love for movies and I admire enormously the work of the best film composers. Film is a special medium and composers must accept the truism that much of the best movie music is that which does not draw attention to itself. But there are times when the music can make a statement of its own in reinforcing the director’s visual creation. The often-maligned John Williams is a master of the medium. Perhaps he is overly fond of brass fanfares but those fanfares added greatly to the success of films like “Superman”, “E.T” and “Star Wars”.

It is easy to understand how Brahms’ Violin Concerto ended up in “There Will Be Blood”. The director probably said to the composer: ‘At this point in the film I want music that sounds like the last movement of Brahms’ Violin Concerto.” If this had been a Hollywood film of the thirties or forties, the composer – Erich Korngold or Alfred Newman, for example, would have delivered the goods – that is, music that sounded like the last movement of Brahms’ Violin Concerto. Composers and directors in our time seem to think that the best solution is to use the real thing. “Why fake it?” they say. Korngold and Newman, et al ‘faked it’, I submit, because they had some respect for i) other composers, and ii) the purpose for which the music in question was written.

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