Blood and Oil

Beware of judging a book by its movie ...

It's always dangerous to see a movie before reading the book it's based on, but in the case of There Will Be Blood I did it anyway, compelled by my admiration for Daniel Day Lewis and the critical acclaim the film had garnered. This is not to say I'm sorry, but it's a case where the film turns out to bear little resemblance to the tale told by the novel.

The dark, brooding portrait of a monomaniacal "oil man" in Paul Thomas Anderson's cinematic fantasy is a study in cold calculation. Lewis's restrained anger, which is destined to burst forth into violence, contrasts dramatically with the raving Evangelical foil of a self-declared preacher. The story comes to be a wrestling match between good and evil. The oil man's obsession with the dark fluid under the earth makes him satanic -- particularly so when lit by the flames of his burning well. The character is deepened by his adoption of the orphaned son of one of the oil field workers. This gives him a human side that would have been lacking otherwise, and makes him more complex.

The movie piqued my curiosity about what Upton Sinclair might have had in mind when he published Oil! back in 1926. Unlike some of his other works such as The Jungle and Metropolis, which are available from public domain sources like Feedbooks and Project Gutenberg, OIL! was only available in traditional print form, so I ordered one from Amazon and plunged in.

How to catalog all the differences? To begin with, the "adopted" son of the film turns out to be a plot device to eliminate a whole range of characters. In the book, the "oil man" is known as Dad from the beginning, with the story told from the POV of his natural son and heir. Rather than the solitary loner of the film, Dad is replete with an estranged wife, a daughter, a sister, and mother, all of whom relocate with the father and son to be close to the latest oil field.

Early on Dad delivers a sales speech to a group of hopeful property owners on whose land he hopes to drill. The speech is repeated nearly word for word in the film, and sets the tone for the methodical nature of this entrepeneur. He's a man who can level with you while stealing the ground from under your feet, and not think any the worse of himself in the process. Once this quotation is over, however, the plots diverge immensely.

The chief victim in the wholesale character eliminations of the film is Paul, the brother of Eli, the preacher. Both are portrayed by the same actor in the film, and they never appear together, so we are led to believe they are a case of split personality which adds to the maniacal character of the "healer" as he strays predictably from the straight and narrow path. But in the novel Paul becomes one of the principle characters, the very embodiment of the workers struggling for justice.

What? Workers? Justice? Right. You'd never guess it from the film, but Sinclair created his Capitalist anti-hero in order to advocate his destruction. The genius of this is the way he gets you to like and admire him first. He's portrayed as the model self-made man, parlaying his gut feelings and street sense into a growing fortune while enriching his country by developing its natural resources. He's seen through the halo of his son's admiration, and in the beginning he's even a boss who treats his employees with decency and respect.

This sympathetic treatment continues throughout the story. Even as Dad is called upon to participate in ever more dastardly deeds to protect his growing empire, it is continually shown that even he is a victim of the system forced to comply with the demands of big business even when it goes against his grain as a compassionate human being.

The son goes by the nickname of "Bunny," though he is also "Jim Junior," sharing his father's name. As he grows up, the story continually broadens in reflection of his widening horizons. Early on he forms an attachment to Paul, Eli's secular brother, who impresses him as someone of complete honesty and lack of interest in money.

Paul goes to work for Dad, but soon takes the side of the oil workers as they organize themselves into a union. Then when World War I breaks out he joins the army, only to end up as part of a contingent of US soldiers guarding the Trans-Siberian railway in Russia.

Where? The book is an education on this chapter of our history, which has been largely swept under the rug. During the civil war that raged after the Russian revolution, the US and its allies actively took the side of the Whites against the Reds, aiding and abetting anyone who wanted to fight them, occupying territory, and supplying arms and troops. This foreign counterinsurgency effort continued long after the armistice that ended the war in Europe. (Any wonder why the Soviet Union was so paranoid about the West?)

Paul returns from this duty thoroughly radicalized, having seen the lengths to which the established powers would go in order to curtail the threat that their own workers might rebel in the same way. From then on he takes up the cause of American workers in this global struggle for rights and dignity, with Bunny following eagerly in his wake.

The scope of the story has gone from the personal to the community -- with Dad greasing the wheels of local politics to get roads built where he wants them -- then to the state and the nation -- as Dad, now a member of a powerful association, plays kingmaker in the Presidential election -- and finally to the global scale of worldwide economic oppression of the masses.

Through all this Bunny is the pivot point, his sympathies for Paul and the workers always at odds with his loyalty to his father and his own inherited wealth and position. As we know, it is not possible to serve two masters, at least not for long. The tension between the two builds as the characters continue to become ever more symbolic of the struggle they are acting out.

The conclusion will be familiar to any student of recent history. Because when faced with the choice between comfort and freedom, which one do we always choose? Yet still we are left with hope, because Bunny -- Jim Junior, his father's son -- was born with a conscience, and the will to exercise it.

Yes, there will be blood, plenty of it, and there's still oil in it.

The Men Who Would Be King

Of all the versions of this tale, the true one is the most amazing ...

I've long been a fan of John Huston's 1975 film version of Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King, and have watched it several times. But only recently did I finally read the original short story it is based on. The film is faithful to Kipling, but even more incredible is the real story that lies behind them both.

Starring Sean Connery as Daniel Dravot, Michael Caine as his pal "Peachy" Carnehan, and a youthful Christopher Plummer as Kipling, the film tells the story of two adventurers in the days of the British Raj in India who set out to forge a kingdom for themselves in Kafiristan. In those days this remote province of Afghanistan might as well have been darkest Africa for all that was known of it. Foreigners who went in were seldom seen again.

Our heroes are not to be discouraged, however. Full of British pluck they set off on a pair of camels loaded down with concealed rifles, disguised as a crazy holy man and his servant. The ruse is intended to keep secret their identity and the fact that only one of them speaks an indigenous language.

Once in the country they quickly form a series of alliances by offering their services (and rifles) in support of one local ruler against another. This of course was a practice that the British, like the Romans before them, used in many places including Scotland, Ireland, and America, as well as in India. With each victory they add to their followers and the size of their territory. And they use their military experience to train a growing army.

In Kafiristan their right to rule is recognized by a fortunate fluke. The inhabitants claim to be the descendants of Alexander the Great, whose army established an outpost there two thousand years ago. There is also a connection between Alexander and Freemasonry having to do with the Gordian knot, and the Masonic medallion around Dravot's neck is a match to the ancient and revered symbol in their temple. This is all they need to consider him a god who has returned to claim his throne.

This detail is the most marked difference between the film and Kipling's yarn. As the author -- a Freemason himself -- told it, the natives actually knew the secrets of the sect, including handshakes and the initiation rites for the lower orders. I suppose Huston and his screenwriters thought this would be a bit much for general audiences in the 20th century.

But power soon goes to the newly crowned head of Dravot. He begins lording it over his subjects, including the hapless Carnehan, to whom falls the task of training the army while his friend tells them what to do. In the story version Dravot's plans run wild. He foresees himself delivering the whole country to Britain as a perfect bulwark against Russian expansion in the region, from which his fortune, medals, and a knighthood are sure to follow.

In the end it is his desire for a queen that proves his undoing, in a way I will not mention so I don't spoil the plot for anyone. Suffice to say that only one of the pair of adventurers makes it back alive, and I won't say which one, or what is the fate of the other.

The Story Behind the Story

Kipling's story was long thought to have been based on the exploits of James Brooke, an Englishman whose foreign adventures ended with him becoming the Raja of Sarawak in 1841, a post he held until his death in 1868. But it has since been discovered that there was another possible model in the person of Josiah Harlan, whose story has many parallel details to the ones in Kipling's tale and is an even more likely source.

Harlan was an American Quaker from a small town in Pennsylvania. When his girlfriend broke his heart he left the country to seek his fortune abroad, and ended up serving as a self-declared physician with the British army in Burma. For this alone his Quaker meeting revoked his membership when they heard of it. Little did they realize what was to become of him later.

Leaving Burma he made his way to the Punjab region of India (later Pakistan) and formed the idea that he wanted to explore Afghanistan--oh, and perhaps become king of it. He was quite aware that the last European to do so was Alexander the Great, a person of particular historical interest to Harlan, and one whose mantle he saw himself taking up.

How he did so is related in exquisite detail in Ben MacIntyre's 2004 book, The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan. Through an amazing series of diplomatic encounters, Harlan managed to obtain support from both the British (as an intelligence source) and the deposed Shah of Afghanistan (as one who would create a rebellion and restore his lost throne). Armed with the Shah's money and his own chutzpah, he proceeded to raise an army of loyal supporters of the Shah and bands of mercenaries, and led them to conquest under his personal banner--an American flag made to his order by a local seamstress.

I recommend MacIntyre for the rest of this incredible story. But it is worth noting that along the way Harlan took in two deserters from the British army who were out to seek their own fortunes by offering their services as military commanders to anyone who would have them. They are Dravot and Carnehan incarnate. Like those characters, Harlan too started out by impersonating a holy man who had taken a vow of silence as a way to conceal his foreign identity until he could learn the language. He even ended up in Kafiristan where he may have married, or at least cohabited with, a Kafiri woman--though with better results than in Kipling's tale.

Harlan's exploits predated those of Brooke by several years. In fact, when the British finally invaded Afghanistan they found Harlan comfortably in residence. Now with a title, the Prince of Ghor, and claim to much Afghan territory, he found himself at odds with the imperious Brits, who refused to take his sage advice about how they should conduct themselves (ultimately with disastrous consequences). Eventually he left in a huff to return to America. Back home he penned a book that was so critical of the Empire's bungling in the region that it created a scandal all over Europe--one more reason that Kipling was quite likely to have heard of Harlan's story even many years later.

Harlan's end was less dramatic than that of Kipling's heroes, but no less tragic. Back in his own country he was an utter failure. When the Civil War erupted he took up a commission in the Union army and tried to replicate his military successes overseas. But he was now so out of touch with the customs of his homeland that his troops mutinied. After the war he spent much time lobbying the government to establish a corps of camel cavalry, putting himself forward as the only person to go abroad and bring back the camels. Perhaps he was just looking for a free pass back to Afghanistan. At any rate, this too was a failure.

His last days were spent in San Francisco, a city where he knew not a soul, and where one day in 1871 he died on the street. He might have been forgotten altogether but for MacIntyre's research. More than a century later, his curiosity aroused by the American invasion of Afghanistan, he discovered Harlan's journals in a box in a back room of a public library in Pennsylvania.

At the bottom of the box was an ornate document signed with an official seal: the proof of Harlan's royal title, and the grant in perpetuity of his Afghan lands.

Charlie Wilson and the Economics of War

Imagine for a moment that you consider yourself a pacifist, as I do. Then imagine that one day you find yourself inwardly cheering when you see a helicopter blown out of the sky by Islamic militants, and chuckling when the vanquished have the following toast proposed to them: "Here's to you, you mother****ers."

Such is the effect of the film, Charlie Wilson's War, in which the occupying Soviets are oh so evil, and in which the poor downtrodden Afghanis are oh so good and pathetic and heroic. Not to mention that a congressman and a CIA operative are somehow subversive radicals who manage to divert huge amounts of government funds into military aid without public notice. Yes, you even find yourself cheering for that.

The characters are so likable, and the story of protecting the weak from the strong is so compelling, that it is impossible not to go along for the ride. Never mind that the oddly reversed roles of the conflict made the Islamic radicals our allies in the Cold War, and that Osama Bin Laden (who is never mentioned) was among them.

There is an even more pointed moment, in case anyone hasn't got on board yet. After a scene in which Julia Roberts, as a wealthy Texan raising funds (and Cain) for Afghanistan, has to be asked to tone down the religious nature of her appeals, we jump to a montage of Soviet armor being destroyed to the soundtrack of "And He Shall Purify" from Handel's Messiah. Yikes! This makes "Onward Christian Soldiers" sound like a Boy Scout campfire song.

In a lot of ways the film only turns serious at the end. After the Soviet army has to admit defeat and leave, Wilson continues to push for aid to rebuild Afghanistan. But this task is not so easy as fighting a war, and he is unable even to get funding to construct some schools. The historic consequences are plain, and don't have to be spelled out.

There is a subtext, however, which I found interesting, whether it was intentional or not. In one of the planning sessions, the point is made that the hand-held anti-aircraft missiles that are being supplied to the Afghanis are a small fraction of the cost of the helicopters that they are bringing down. The ratio means that the "evil empire" can be vastly outspent, and for a bargain price.

Obviously the same math can work just as well when the shoe is on the other foot, as it is now in Iraq, as well as in Afghanistan. Every time another suicide bomber detonates himself, the casualty rate is bound to tilt in his favor. And every roadside bomb that goes off exchanges a few dollars worth of explosives for a vehicle costing tens or hundreds of thousands--not to mention the cost in lives and caring for the wounded. The implication is that the sheer expense of modern weaponry is now a disadvantage to the side that is better equipped. As long as some influx of low-cost weapons exists, the cost to the stronger side will be hugely greater.

This is not necessarily to say that the United States is losing the fight for control of Iraq and Afghanistan; but it insures that the price of success will be enormous, as we are finding out--as the Soviets found out, and as we should have remembered from our own experience in Vietnam. Eventually, if our foreign policy demands continued military interventions elsewhere, the expense may have such a crippling effect on our economy that we will be forced to change our behavior in order to survive.

In short, military domination may have become too costly to work in the modern world. A huge and expensive army may be what you need to destroy another huge and expensive army, but it is not the right tool for controlling a population, or creating real social change. This trend is likely to become more pronounced as new technologies continue to make the old ones more vulnerable at lower cost.

And maybe, in the long run, that really will be something to cheer about.

The World of Wars

War of the Worlds, Peace, Power and Disaster

Only about a dozen years ago news commentators were speculating about the arrival of a Pax Americana--a period of global peace and prosperity that would follow the Cold War as the United States of America, at last the only super-power, presided over a "new world order." Such a hopeful phrase ... in the words of performance artist Laurie Anderson, it may not have been very specific, "but at least it promised to be something new, and worldwide, and orderly."

The reality has turned out to be something less than peaceful, all too familiar, and far from orderly, though certainly worldwide. America has emerged as an empire, and not a very nice one. Plagued like ancient Rome by "barbarians" at home and abroad, it has lashed out and in the process rediscovered the limits of military force.

Perhaps this sense of inadequacy is haunting us as a nation. That could explain the compelling nature of Steven Spielberg's remake of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds. Though shrill (someone should explain to the Tom Cruise character that the best way to calm a hysterical child is NOT to yell at her), it is nevertheless a vivid portrayal of what happens when society breaks down in the face of something it cannot control. The aliens are as technologically superior to us as, let's say, a cruise missile is to a cavalry charge on camel back. In one stroke--a scientifically accurate electromagnetic pulse--all communication and transportation is knocked out, reducing us to the status of vermin ready to be symbolically stepped on by the strides of the towering alien machines. Instantly, it's everyone for themselves.

This is an interesting contrast to what happened only a couple of years ago when our President visited Hollywood to get them to help whip up some war fever. There was a marked increase in the production of heroic new films, and an immediate abundance of old ones unearthed to be aired on television. A particular favorite of mine was Paul Verhoeven's take on Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, where the infantry heroes battle giant insects (the perfectly dehumanized enemy) in a landscape uncannily like that of Afghanistan. It didn't seem to bother anyone that the world government on earth had the militaristic trappings of the Third Reich, or that citizenship was not universal but had to be earned by things like, well, military service for example. Legislation anyone?

But it doesn't take a war or a superior enemy to deliver the nightmare of national impotence. Look what a handful of terrorists were able to do by redirecting the paths of a few airplanes. And see how we throw up our hands in helplessness when confronted with the wholesale destruction of a city by the natural forces of wind and water. Pulling triggers is easy compared to providing for the human needs of human beings. When we stop taking aim and start taking time to tend to the real needs of those at home and abroad, maybe then historians will be able to identify the Pax that emerged from this chaos, and to name a date when we finally outgrew our need to be powerful.