I struggle to think what to say about There Will Be Blood.
I love writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, almost unreservedly. I’m aware he can be an acquired taste. His new film is amazing, his best work so far. Daniel Day-Lewis… Words fail. Incredible? Amazing? All trite. A standout performance in an already rich career. (See this scene with Bill the Butcher draped in a flag from Gangs of New York.)
There Will Be Blood is a historical drama that unfolds over thirty-some years. (Amazingly, produced for only $25 million.) But the sets or the costumes are unimportant. You don’t marvel at old-age makeup. It’s just a simple, straight, true accounting of the life of a man. It’s not tricked up or manipulated. David Mamet has written about the difficulties of portraying things in cinema. In the end, there’s only what the camera sees and the microphones record. The temptation is to explain, to have a character — God forbid, the character in question — explain motivation. Or to throw in some action that makes things clear. Well, it may seem this way, but let me explain how it really is.
There are a number of transitions in the film that are never shown. The actions skips ahead years. We never see how two characters become estranged or how a third key character rises to his own success. It doesn’t matter. We see what we need to see. We can only see so much; we can only hope to understand a little. Some people are mysteries that cannot be solved.
For example, the lead character of Daniel Plainview simply is. We meet him as a silver prospector. It is dangerous work. He finds oil on one of his properties. He expands his operations. One day, one of his men is killed and so he adopts the orphaned baby boy left behind. All of this unfolds without words. I think it’s almost 20 minutes into the movie before there’s dialogue. Everything you need to know is shown. I happen to have a copy of the script here and we get to page seven, by which time we’ve moved from 1898 to 1908, before we hear D.C. Plainview speak and it’s a marvelous monologue, addressing a crowd of people whose land he hopes to drill on.
Plainview doesn’t like people. He makes it clear he doesn’t like humanity. It seems that he was probably at his purest down in a mineshaft by himself, not uttering a word for months on end. But to make it in the oil business, he needs to deal with people and, more than that, he needs to acquire the gift of persuasive speech, to lure and cajole.
He only trusts family. At one point, he makes a connection based on that; when he discovers his trust was misplaced, his fury is swift and righteous. He has a very close and complicated relationship with his adopted son H.W. I’m fascinated by their final scene together. Is it anger and betrayal or an expression of love? The adult H.W. seem to have grown up well, despite his father. He has a loving relationship and is building a career. So does Daniel Plainview hate him or love him? Is it possible that he cuts his son loose and pushes him out in the world to be free?
The relationship between Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) and Daniel Plainview is also intense, but combative. I think they recognize something in each other, but Plainview seems to despise Sunday for what he views as hypocrisy. They’re both avaricious and manipulative, but I suspect Plainview feels like at least he’s clear about what he is and what he’s done.
In their initial confrontation, Plainview asks Sunday what he wants. Sunday replies that he wants $10,000 for his church. You see Plainview stare levelly at him, really examining him. He then says, “That’s good. That’s a good one.”
Plainview appears the stronger person, but it’s fascinating to watch Sunday try to bend him to his will, eventually succeeding in the baptism scene. The whole thing pays off in the climatic scene of the film, set in a bowling alley. What’s most marvelous is the way Day-Lewis delivers that final line. Not with a period or a question mark, but almost with an exclamation point. There’s the obvious pun in the phrase he utters, that his life is now destroyed, but also a kind of comic response to his butler.
A lot of people that I’ve spoken to about the movie are very nervous about the title. They think the movie will be very violent. The word “blood” has several meanings. It refers to accidents on the job; it refers to familial blood ties; it’s a religious reference to the Blood of Christ. But it’s also a promise that is finally fulfilled.
Tags: Paul Thomas Anderson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, There Will Be Blood