10th Anniversary: There Will Be Blood

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, United States, 2007

*Plot spoilers ahead 

"So - ladies and gentlemen - if I say I'm an oil man you will agree."

Those are among the first words we hear in There Will Be Blood, spoken in an intimidating baritone by self-made oil baron Daniel Plainview. He's selling himself to a town that has struck oil, promising to share any wealth he makes from drilling. "I'm a family man," he says, somewhat unconvincingly, pointing to the frozen-looking boy at his side. He knows what the townspeople want to hear, but there's a stiffness in his manner and a hostility in his eyes that betrays his distaste for everyone in the room.

This monologue - the first dialogue in the film - doesn't arrive until nearly twenty minutes have elapsed. The opening scenes of There Will Be Blood silently observe the risky nature of Plainview's work and his incredible endurance. We first see Plainview as a younger man, alone in a mine pickaxing for gold. Climbing down the mineshaft, he falls and shatters a leg. Not forgetting his gold, he climbs out the mine and crawls all the way back to civilization - a horrific shot shows Plainview dragging himself through the dirt, miles of desert mountains stretched in front of him. He survives and earns his reward. Several years later, we return to Plainview - now drilling for oil, the new fastest path to wealth. We are shown how dangerous drilling for oil is when a co-worker is instantly killed in a brutal accident. The dead man had an infant boy, H.W., now orphaned. Plainview adopts him. 

This prologue is masterful filmmaking. Director Paul Thomas Anderson focuses on the process of drilling for oil - not something I'm particularly interested in, but by careful observance of the grueling work involved, Anderson makes it gripping and suspenseful. Anderson's direction was clearly inspired by Stanley Kubrick, the patient slow pacing, detached beauty of the cinematography and shrieking strings score are reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining. The elemental imagery - of oil-blackened hands raised in celebration, of harsh desert plains that yield riches for those brave enough to hunt for it - promises an epic American myth, with Daniel Plainview at its center. These opening scenes show a man at his most comfortable - isolated and working for profit, no matter how nasty the work. His adoption of H.W., though, is puzzling. Was it out of compassion, or something more strategic? He clearly has tender feelings towards H.W., even if he expresses them awkwardly. In one sweet moment, H.W. reaches curiously for his new father's bushy mustache, and Plainview lets him.

The majority of the film is set in the southern California town of Little Boston, where Plainview finds success and wealth after striking oil. There Will Be Blood has often been compared to Citizen Kane, another mythic story of an American tycoon whose greed isolates him from those he loves. It's an obvious and not entirely inaccurate comparison to make, but the tragedy of Daniel Plainview is distinctly different from that of Charles Foster Kane. Kane is an essentially good man who, through his selfish ambitions, drives away everyone who loves him, realizing at the end of his life that all his wealth brings him no happiness without anyone to share it with. Plainview is a lonely-by-choice misanthrope from the beginning who is tempted to connect with others, to care about something other than getting money, and ultimately turns them away. By the end, he doesn't seem to have enough humanity left for regret.

Daniel Plainview's character is illuminated by his relationships to three important people in his life - H.W., a stranger claiming to be his long-lost half-brother, and Little Boston's minister, Eli Sunday. Plainview clearly loves H.W., but just as clearly loves the pursuit of profit more. When a man arrives on his doorstep claiming to be his "brother from another mother", bringing persuasive evidence that he's telling the truth, Plainview cautiously accepts him. He slowly opens up to this man as with nobody else, treating him like a business partner and brother. It becomes clear that for Daniel Plainview, blood bonds are the most important connection. He distances himself from H.W. when it becomes clear that the boy has a very different personality, kind-hearted and only moderately ambitious. Once H.W. goes deaf in an accident at the oil derrick, he becomes too troublesome and Plainview sends him off to boarding school. His ultimate dismissal of H.W.: "there's none of me in you". Similarly, once Daniel realizes that his long-lost brother may actually be an impostor, he is devastated, and not only because of the betrayal. "I'm your friend," the impostor protests in the face of Plainview's fury, but Daniel does not have or want friends. His ego could not handle such a relationship. He only wants to be surrounded by mini-Daniel Plainviews.

However, Plainview loathes the only character he's actually similar to - Eli Sunday, the charlatan minister of Little Boston. Eli leads a cult-like, heretical church called The Third Revelation. He screeches madly in front of an awestruck congregation, claiming to cast demons out of arthritis-stricken old ladies. Eli is the only person in Little Boston who immediately distrusts Daniel Plainview, and Plainview seems to be the only person who sees through Eli's holy facade. They're mirror images of each other - in different professions, but both are selfish conmen. "It takes one to know one" and both men hate what they see.

At the time of its release, many critics took the symbiotic rivalry between Eli and Daniel to symbolize the dual forces of capitalism and Christianity in America. If that was Paul Thomas Anderson's intention, There Will Be Blood does not develop those themes towards any overarching statement as far as I can tell. Anderson's next two films, The Master and Inherent Vice, show his gift for astute commentary on American history and culture, but There Will Be Blood, for me, has more value as an eccentric character study. 

Any good character study needs a good performance at its center - and as Daniel Plainview, Daniel Day-Lewis is beyond good. It's one of the all-time great movie performances. Day-Lewis builds to moments as bombastic and theatrical as Jack Nicholson at his craziest, but can also communicate much when his character is doing nothing. His proud but uncomfortable body language, the barely concealed hostile tenor of his voice, and especially his slyly hateful gaze make as indelible an impression as his psychotic outbursts.

Of course, There Will Be Blood is not just the Daniel Day-Lewis show. Paul Thomas Anderson's direction is incredibly confident. Anderson has made a film as alternately subtle and over-the-top as Day-Lewis, where patient build-ups lead to shocking eruptions of madness. There Will Be Blood has several astonishing set-pieces that show off Anderson's genius. In one sequence, Plainview's derrick strikes oil which bursts from the earth in a giant black geyser before catching fire, becoming a column of flame. Daniel looks on from a safe distance, his face ominously lit with red and dollar signs on his mind. Jonny Greenwood, of Radiohead fame, composed the unconventional soundtrack, which in this scene sounds like the rhythmic clanking of bones. There Will Be Blood, in moments like this, captures something frightening and primal - the terrifying power of the geyser, forced from the earth through tremendous pressure, and the equally volcanic power of Plainview's greed and hatred. There Will Be Blood is fashioned from the elemental stuff of myth.

Tragic and scary as it is, There Will Be Blood is also surprisingly funny, more so than I remembered. This morbid streak of humor is also reminiscent of Kubrick, who played the dehumanization of his characters for laughs as much as pathos. Daniel Plainview's antisocial behavior becomes aggressive to the point of absurdity. "One night, I'm gonna come to you, inside of your house, wherever you're sleeping, and I'm gonna cut your throat," Daniel says, in response to a mildly condescending comment from a friendly rival businessman. The threat is so extreme and unwarranted that I couldn't help but laugh at the insanity. His petty power plays with Eli Sunday are played as farce that escalates into slapstick violence.

The dual strands of tragedy and black comedy reach their inevitable end points in an epilogue that takes place in 1927, over a decade after the main bulk of the film. Plainview is now hugely wealthy and alone, an alcoholic ensconced in a lavish, Xanadu-like mansion. H.W., now an adult and happily married, visits his father - we understand they have been out of touch for years. H.W. forgives his father and asks for reconciliation, but Plainview disowns him with cruel mockery, claiming he only adopted the boy to have a sweet face around as a business strategy. A flashback of a tender father-son moment when H.W. was younger disproves Plainview's point - he did love H.W., but his selfishness destroyed their relationship.

Now officially divorced from any vestiges of humanity, Daniel Plainview has another visitor from his past - Eli Sunday, in desperate times and asking for money. What begins as a mildly hostile conversation escalates into a drunken, abusive tirade from Daniel. Their selfish impulses have brought these men to a point where they are more caricatures than humans - Eli is nothing but sniveling, cowardly hypocrisy and Daniel is nothing but malevolent, paranoid destruction. I've already praised Paul Thomas Anderson's direction, but his writing deserves as much attention. The dialogue in this epilogue is brilliant and bizarre - Anderson must be a bit of a madman himself to have thought up Daniel's colorful insults and that infamous milkshake metaphor. Their confrontation finally turns to ludicrous violence that would not be out of place in a Tom & Jerry cartoon, surreal and funny but ultimately disturbing. Ironically triumphant classical music meets the cryptic, sick punchline - "I'm finished!"