Eleven-year-old Sarah Rector is sure there’s oil on her property. She just needs to find a way to get to it—and that won’t be easy in turn-of-the-century Oklahoma, since plenty of folks would like to take Sarah’s land for themselves. Sarah’s Oil is a faith-friendly film with some nice messages attached. But profanity and racist attitudes may make this a harder film for some families to drill into.
The land may not look like much. But Sarah knows that looks can deceive.
Why, some might consider Sarah herself exhibit 1-A. As an 11-year-old Black girl living in Oklahoma in 1913, many white folks around there might sniff and say, She probably don’t know much. Never will amount to much.
But Sarah Rector shouldn’t be underestimated, and she won’t be overlooked. She knows her rights. She can read contracts better than a few of Oklahoma’s lawyers.
And Sarah’s sure that the 160-acre parcel of land the government granted her (thanks to a 50-year-old treaty between the U.S., the Creek Nation and the Creek’s freed slaves) has oil. She can hear it, burbling down below. No, the land may not look like much. But deep down, there’s something special.
Thing is, though, a pick and a shovel won’t get to it. No, Sarah’ll need help. And that means cutting a deal with one of Oklahoma’s myriad oil operations.
After she and her dad, Joe, get several doors slammed in their faces, Sarah finally finds someone who’ll at least take a look: Mr. Jim Devnan, a man of fine waistcoats, deep pockets and an eye for a deal. He looks the property over and hems and haws over the cost. “It’s a mighty big undertaking,” he says. “Mighty.” But he finally agrees to lease the land (at a fair market rate, thanks to Sarah’s pressure) and scratch the earth a little. See what’s down there.
Three months later, Devnan seems to throw up his hands.
“We come up dry,” he tells Joe. “There’s nothing there. You and the girl can have it back.”
But even though Devnan rides away, it sure seems someone wants Sarah’s little parcel of property awfully bad. A couple of thugs offer to buy the land. Then, when Sarah and her family refuse, those thugs return to ransack the house and shoot the family dog—all, apparently, in an attempt to steal the deed.
Seems Sarah was right. Her land may have a treasure hiding underneath the dirt—a treasure so valuable that folks might even kill for it.
But those folks picked the wrong 11-year-old girl to mess with. There might be oil on Sarah’s land. But there’s steel in her spine.
We’ve already talked a bit about Sarah—unquestionably the hero here. She’s smart, strong and quite kindly at times. And we can see where she gets all those attributes: from her parents.
Neither of them, Joe and Rose Rector, are convinced that Sarah’s land holds oil. But when Sarah’s sure, Joe dutifully takes her to town to talk to the oil corporations therein. As a Black man in a white and mostly racist town, it’s pretty thankless work, filled with humiliations great and small. But he puts up with them for his little girl. And when people try to take Sarah’s land from her (legally or otherwise) Joe’s there to protect her property, gun in hand if necessary.
Joe’s matched in strength by the family matron, Rose. She’ll do anything to protect her family. And when the Rectors bring on a couple of oil wildcatters to help Sarah drill for oil—and as that drilling becomes ever more dangerous—she gives one of the wildcatters, Bert Smith, an ultimatum.
“I don’t know if you are God-sent or hell-bound,” she says. “But that girl is the salt in my earth and the sun in my sky. … Nothing happens to her. You hear me?”
The fight for Sarah’s land eventually heads to court. At the time in Oklahoma, it was common for Black or Native American children, if they came into money or property, to be forced into guardianships with white caretakers. The law, apparently, was dubious that minorities had the mental or educational wherewithal to handle their own affairs, so they were assigned a Caucasian hand to guide them. Just such a caretaker volunteers to look after Sarah’s interests. The Rectors know the law’s horrifically racist, but they have no choice but to comply—even though they all worry about the would-be guardian’s true motives.
“Not one of us can see in that man’s heart,” Rose admits. “But there’s something we can do. Tomorrow we can walk into that courtroom 10 feet tall. … They may have the money and the titles, but we have the dignity.” We get the sense that Rose, perhaps more than anyone else, gave Sarah her critical sense of self-worth and equality.
Sarah’s case ultimately draws national attention, and a young civil rights lawyer named Kate Bernard becomes an instrumental player in Sarah’s affairs—holding firm to the purest of motives.
We should make mention of the wildcatters who help Sarah on her quest to find oil. Both Bert and his partner, Mace, mainly want to strike it rich: Sarah’s claim and their partnership with her is just their latest episode to drill their own fortunes. But not many white people in 1913 Oklahoma would partner with a Black family—and take their orders from a little girl, at that. Mace ultimately comes to care more for the Rector family than any fortune.
Bert’s a more complex character, as we’ll see, but his first interaction with Sarah hints at a bit of generosity: Sarah walks into a whites-only restaurant and asks for a glass of water. When the waitress refuses and tells Sarah to leave, Bert steps in and buys the girl a glass of lemonade.
The goodness we see from the Rectors—be it Sarah, Rose or Joe—is apparently rooted in the family’s shared sense of faith. And when Sarah’s forced to go to court, a deep spiritual root runs through the proceedings.
On the eve of her court appearance, Sarah worries she won’t know what to say. “God will give you the words,” Rose tells her. And indeed, God seems to do just that. As Sarah talks, we can hear people say “Amen” from the balcony (where Black people were forced to sit). And when the proceeding is over, they sing the old spiritual “Nobody but you, Lord.”
But Sarah’s faith in God is sometimes mixed with her belief that her land holds oil. “God gave me ears to hear it, Mama!” Rose is still skeptical, but she says she likes Sarah talking about God’s role in all this “a lot better than all that I, I, I, my, my, my talk we’ve been hearing.” Later, when the deed to the land puts the family in danger and Sarah is ready to get rid of it, Rose encourages her to stay strong. “God gave you that land for a reason,” she says. “So why give back what was given?” (Elsewhere, Rose says that she believes in “signs.”)
Sarah later admits that her desire to strike it rich might’ve gotten in the way of her values. “I used to go to church,” she says sadly. “Before I got oil fever.”
Bert is not a particularly spiritual man, but he does pretend to be so when it suits him. When Sarah quizzes him about where the Bible talks about forgiveness, Bert says, “A lot of places! By that lake! That mount! Where Jesus was doin’ all that fishin’ and loafin’ and all of that stuff!”
We hear references to prayer (and whether it works to clear oil wells). Sarah quotes her teacher who says that everything in life has either moral, spiritual or economic value. Sarah prays for God’s guidance, and she proves to be a strong spiritual influence on Bert.
We later learn that the real Sarah Rector used some of the proceeds from her well to help others. As the film closes, the narrating Sarah says, “As my mama said, ‘God gave you gifts. The only sin is not to use them.’”
Bert is quite the ladies’ man, often playing on the affections of rich widows for financial gain.
He faces one of his previous paramours, and the conversation suggests the relationship was sexual. (“You think I slip off my bloomers for any man who comes along?” she demands. “Well, take a girl to dinner. Don’t just disappear.”) Other apparently wealthy women seem to know Bert pretty well, too. The smarmy fellow flatters a woman to try to get money for Sarah’s oil well. (Sarah steps in, shoves Bert’s flattery aside and makes her own above-board deal with the woman.)
Devnan compares the desire for oil to a quick affair. It “catches hold of you and twirls you around the dance floor ‘til you’re dizzy drunk, and then it leaves you high and dry like a floo—” he begins. He means to say “floozy,” but Sarah’s father clears his throat to stop Devnan before he can complete the word.
Oklahoma was a dangerous place to own oil-rich land in 1913, especially if you were a child born into a minority population. We hear about the murders of two Native American children who also owned oil. And it’s quite clear that Sarah’s life—and the lives of her family—are all potentially in jeopardy, too. (Sarah’s Oil takes place just a few years before the events chronicled in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, incidentally; the threats against Sarah were no isolated incidents.)
A couple of ruffians are in Devnan’s employ. They carry guns and they’re not afraid to use them. One shoots the Rector family dog, Blue (the gunshot is heard, but we don’t see it), and the dog disappears—Rose says so it can die alone.
Guns are elsewhere brandished and pointed. A group of men fire a machine gun at Sarah and other people working on her property. One man is shot and killed. Threats are issued. Bert punches someone in the face. Oil wells are wired with dynamite, and one explosion is triggered. Joe is physically thrown out of an oil company.
We hear more profanity than you’d expect in this faith-tinged movie: a few uses of “d–n” and “h—” show up, as well as two questionable uses of God’s name. And, given the timeframe of the movie, we hear scads of racial and ethnic slurs, including one truncated use of the n-word.
Rose stuffs Sarah’s land deed into a cigar box. “You smoke cigars?” Sarah asks, apparently never having seen the box before.
Sarah and her family tackle a lot of obstacles in Sarah’s quest to find and, just as importantly, keep her oil. Racism is pervasive, and we see it frequently on screen—sometimes relatively subtle, sometimes dangerously aggressive. One of the most onerous signs of racism, though, is the guardianship laws that make for one of the movie’s most important plot points.
A character tries to play the system for financial gain—seemingly betraying Sarah and her family. A man swindles some women out of their money and is forced to make a hasty getaway.
We’re told early on that Sarah’s Oil is “inspired by a true story,” and that feels about right. The film takes its historical nuggets and polishes them to a Hollywood gloss, scrapping some of the details.
It’s not unusual. Real life is rarely that cinematic, and it’s hard to stuff the complexities of Sarah Rector’s story into a crisp 100-minute runtime. And let’s be honest: We’d rather walk out of a theater smiling, not scratching our heads over Oklahoma’s turn-of-the-century guardianship laws.
But while Sarah’s Oil may be simply “inspired” by history, it’s an inspired story in itself.
The movie gives us a brave heroine in young Sarah Rector, a polite but steadfast girl who’s determined to do what’s right—not just in her own eyes but in God’s. She finds an ideal partner and foil in Zachary Levi’s Bert, a smarmy salesman whose words are as smooth and greasy as Oklahoma oil.
Bert thinks of himself as a man of the world, and he teaches Sarah a trick or two. But in the end, it’s Sarah who’s the real teacher. Her simple wisdom trumps Bert’s wiles when it matters most. Her pure sense of right and wrong puts 1913 Oklahoma’s racist legal system to shame.
That goodness and purity is rooted in faith: a faith fostered by family; a faith tempered in the forge of an unjust, unfair world. Sarah and her family don’t follow God with a Pollyannaish belief that everything’ll be just fine. Experience has taught them otherwise. But believing in Christ isn’t transactional: You follow Jesus because He’s the truth, and that’s the only thing that matters.
Sarah gets it. When Bert insists that “when the game is rigged, it’s best you do the rigging,” the girl tells him that this isn’t a game. What they’re engaged in isn’t about oil rights or guardianships or becoming richer than your wildest dreams.
“Then what is it about?” Bert asks.
“Your soul, Mr. Bert Smith,” Sarah says. And so it is with us all.
But while Sarah’s Oil indeed comes with some nice Christian messages, the road to get to them can be a little bumpy.
Some of these bumps are just plain inescapable: The horrific racism that Sarah and her family face are integral to the story. The violence and threats of violence in that era’s Oklahoma are part of history.
However, we hear more about Bert’s romantic dalliances that we need to, and the language can be surprisingly strong for a faith-friendly film.
Sarah’s Oil is a nice, often sweet and very watchable movie, and Levi makes for a deeply likable cad. Moreover, the film comes with some very lovely messages, and you don’t need to drill very far to find them. But you do have to deal with some problematic impurities to get to this bit of oil.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
