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There Will Be Blood is just not meant to be enjoyed easily. Let’s start with how the viewer gets assaulted even before an image is displayed on the screen. A highly distorted string note is played, invoking feelings of nausea. That’s not the end of it. For the next 20 minutes, the audience has to sit through mute actions. Finally, it ends after almost 2 and a half hours with a scene that is completely and utterly perplexing. One would wonder if it even made sense within the context of the entire movie. I won’t lie; it absolutely terrifies you and makes you want to think of everything else the movie states. But then a day or two later, as you reflect on it, you begin to understand why it is shot that way. mastery is something that does not happen instantly and something that reveals itself later, and this is a perfect example of that.
Every second of this film astonishes me. Even though four years have passed since directing prodigy Paul Thomas Anderson’s last outing, and the oft-retired, critically acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis is in the film, There Will Be Blood arrived with almost no expectation or publicity. The movie missed Cannes, Venice, and Toronto, and was released in silence right before the award season. Such a strategy indicates bold confidence, almost as if they were channeling the self-belief of the character Day-Lewis plays, Daniel Plainview, who, even by his standards, gives an astonishing performance.
With cutthroat determination and boundless ambition, Plainview might not be a hero, but he is most definitely a protagonist. From a lone prospector to an oil tycoon, he truly made wonders happen. The first time we see him, he is rugged, blistering with sweat, and striking rocks with a pickaxe at a makeshift mine. He risks his life for a handful of silver which in turn will fuel his desired profession, oil. He has a few ruthless employees and suffers for several months in the desert as well. Eventually, via sheer luck, he strikes oil. But soon he is not so lucky as he suffers from an industrial accident and is found with a baby he adopts as his son H.W. (Dillon Freedasier). The reasoning behind his actions is not clear from the get-go.
A long, wordless opening leads up to the main conflict. Fast forward a decade, and Plainview is trying to acquire oil rights in a new town. At the same time, we finally hear him speak, and his voice is deep, smooth, and as captivating as his words. John Huston served as the inspiration for Day-Lewis’ character’s speech, which is nearly as distinct as the character’s gruff voice suggests. It is heavy with authority, and nearly impossible to argue against. Plainview then makes his way to Little Boston, California, all thanks to a tip-off from Paul Sunday (Paul Dano). Some black gold spills from the unspoiled ground in the town, but so does his competition. He now has to compete with Paul’s twin Eli Sunday (Also Dano), a charming preacher with an even more powerful voice than Plainview. Instead of dangling faith as a prerequisite for riches, Eli decides to make a different offer to redeem and deliver him from the struggles of living in a frontier land.
His style of religion is one that spits and shrieks, forcing belief out of his followers, squeezing it out with his speeches and deeply rooted faith in his own beliefs.
The film pivots on the interplay between these two gigantic characters what’s central to the film is Einstein’s calm disposition towards violence that covers but cannot conceal his brutality, while the preacher shows superhuman calmness that conceals his disgraceful violence. Plainview’s disdain for Sunday’s form of preaching is clear, but he deliberately avoids having an argument with him, instead marking his plan and waiting. During this sequence, the uncapped well serves as a metaphor for both the immense destruction and the stunning development of his business for the local people, hinting at the literally seismic change this industry brought when it arrived in town. On the other side of the ocean, Sunday behaves like a gentleman who has all the time in the world to gently rip out the soul of Mr. Plainview, and even while still being able to maintain some sort of moral superiority, he is becoming increasingly confused by the level of his opponent’s resourcefulness. He is mercifully granted a fleeting burst of triumph, but it is easily swept away from him before he gets the chance to really savor it.
If these two serve as the overarching representatives of religion and capitalism in America, then the picture that Anderson creates of his nation’s soul is perhaps the most pessimistic one can paint. Both Eli and Plainview are similarly corrupt, merely using each other as a means to achieve their goals, and then inevitably back-stabbing those who place their faith in them. At least Plainview is trying to approach honesty when it comes to his betrayal, but The Rot runs deeper for him than anyone there is no low he will not sink to in pursuit of more land, more money, and more oil. It is a deeply unsettling portrait and one which, while bafflingly evil, cannot be completely disbelieved similar to Gangs Of New York’s Bill The Butcher serving as a test run. Eli’s faults are not in the same league, but his unwavering hypocrisy and discomfort with the existence of another stronger figure make him incapable of drawing sympathy.
Fascinatingly, none of the actors except Freasier who played H.W. can be heard, as he’s largely mute. He is the only remaining challenge to our understanding of Plainview’s inner life: a dutiful child following around his father. While the relationship between them certainly enables Plainview to present himself as both a family man and oil magnate, it appears that they do have a real relationship even if Plainview would (and does) dispute it. Even toward the end, the extent to which he is a pure sociopath is open to question, does he totally lack feeling or does he choose to suppress it? That last scene does tend to suggest the former. It seems like the long-sustained build-up of pressure is suddenly becoming gusher, without warning; before the opening up of low-grade conflict heralds the final two hours of the movie there is an outburst of high emotion. It’s almost parodic, out of place, and it’s certainly unintended for satire. Day-Lewis passes the words through his mouth to chew on, like it’s candy. He rips off the lines, viciously spitting them out as he roars and gasps. Stripped of his last-minute charm or need to persuade.
But on reflection, it’s almost a twist, a reveal of how all the film’s themes get together when the characters are most naked and actions have consequences. It, like much of this film, is discomfiting at best, but it is impossible to tear your eyes away from it.
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