Re: There will be blue pencils

To: Retort
From: JS

John Simmons responds to the review of There will be Blood: 

I rather disagree with this estimation of the film, but not to argue, I have a personal comment to make. The scene in which Daniel Day-Lewis beats three-quarters to death the preacher Eli Sunday (leaving the last quarter to the end) I found one of the most beautiful, engaging, and satisfying scenes in all of American cinema. Is it socially relevant? The right question to ask, perhaps, is whether one's own desire, to grind into railroad-bed ballast the face of an evangelist preacher, is socially relevant. I think it is. Upton Sinclair, an atheist who was sometimes called "Sin-Clair," might not have been happy with this 21st century take on his novel. But there are moments that would have pleased him greatly.

JGS