After assiduously avoiding spoilers etc. for what seemed like months, the cinetrix was finally able to take in There Will Be Blood on MLK Monday. She's late to the party, to be sure, but she hears there's some critical consternation about the bowling alley. Really? Because that setting made perfect sense to me and the 'Fesser both.
People, Daniel Plainview lands in his mansion [actually built by oil magnate Edward Doheny and later occupied by the Big Lebowski] in the late 1920s. Every self-respecting robber baron had his own private bowling alley by then. Don't believe me? Check out the lanes in the Rockefellers' Playhouse in Pocantico. Shit, even the White House has a bowling alley, as does Camp David.
So where else would a driven self-made man like Plainview, who knocked down every obstacle in his path, finally land [forgive me] in the gutter if not a bowling alley?
