Paul Edwards on TWBB

Readers may recall that I had mixed feelings about Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood. Paul Edwards has watched it three times (!) and offers a thoughtful appraisal that makes a lot of sense. Edwards writes:

The Passion of the Christ exceeded all expectations at the box office and since it did, evangelical Christians have come to expect “socially redeeming” films to overtly, explicitly, and clearly spell out the Christian gospel almost “verse by verse.” The gospel is present in There Will Be Blood more in the form of a photographic negative than as a detailed Technicolor® print.

and writing on TWBB's problematic (for me) final sequence:

Even family ties are no match for the unrestrained depravity that overtakes this man by the end of the film, resulting in his truly being abandoned by everyone, including his own conscience, which is the ultimate end of sin. Daniel Plainview’s closing line in the film is nothing more than a paraphrase of James 1:15: “Sin, when it is finished, brings forth death.”