Gooseberries, Oil, and the Pursuit of Happiness

Warning: spoilers for There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood is about an advantageous capitalist during America's oil boom. Gooseberries (the story inside the frame story) is about a ruthless man who does everything in his power to get a farm with gooseberry bushes. 

One loves dirty liquid that can be set on fire, one can't get enough of his own sour grapes. So what do they have in common? In short, pretty much everything. The parallels that can be drawn between There Will Be Blood and Gooseberries are surprisingly numerous. 

Both stories feature a person who has a single fixed idea of what they want, and nothing shall stop them from getting it. All Daniel Plainview wants in life is to be unfathomable rich. All Nicholai Ivanich wanted was a small farm beside a river. 

Both stories feature the main character (Nicholai will be the main character of Gooseberries for all intensive purposes because Ivan is merely the narrator) trampling people in their way to get what they want. Daniel Plainview uses a child as a pretty face to make deals easier, beats a preacher boy (honestly, he deserved it, though), and makes deals with land owners that he has no intention of keeping. Nicholai Ivanich marries a widow for her money and proceeds to watch her die without feeling a hint of remorse. 

In the end, both characters have an extremely distorted view of the world and consider themselves to be great men. Daniel Plainview disowns his "son" after his "son" tells Daniel that he wants to start an oil business all because Daniel only saw his "son" as a competitor at that point, and beats the same preacher boy to death after the preacher boy has the guile to try to sell land he has no control over all because Daniel had hated the preacher boy from the minute the preacher boy acted superior to Daniel. Nicholai Ivanich owns a crummy little farm with a lousy dog yet he feels like he's a great man because his serfs love him for providing them with gallons of vodka. 

Even the endings are similar in that Daniel fulfills one of his life dreams (getting the preacher boy to admit that he's a false prophet), and Nicholai fulfills his life dream of being able to eat home grown gooseberries on his own farm.

A story about a government worker turned gooseberry farmer and a story about a ruthless capitalist making his mark on the world in the early 20th century may not seem to have much in common, but they totally do. The main difference is that one likes gooseberries, and the other likes milkshakes.

One of the best parts of the movie