There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood is a great movie that perfectly combines style and substance. Every scene in the movie is really great, yet every scene is also crucial for the story.

The movie audaciously starts in 1898 with 15 minutes of no dialogue. We just see the main character, Daniel Plainview, working in the oil rigs. It's established right away that this Plainview is a tough man. After he falls down and breaks a leg he crawls to the seemingly very far city on his only healthy leg. Unfortunately he is not the only one to have an accident. One of his colleagues is less fortunate and dies. He has a baby son which Plainview now adopts. Cut to 5 years later and Plainview is now a relatively successful oilman. Together with his 'son' he goes around cities and does all kinds of business with oil. We don't now how he got to do this, but we get the hint that he uses his son to establish trust between him and the people he does business with. One day Eli Sunday comes to him and tells him that there is oil where he comes from and that he'll give him information about where it exactly is if Plainview gives him 500 dollars. Plainview thinks the risk is worth taking and offers him the money. Now Plainview goes to the farm of the Sunday's and it is now that the story truly begins.

When Plainview (together with his son) arrives at the farm he is greeted heartily by the father,Abel, but a little less so by his son Eli, who is Paul's twin brother. Paul assumes they live above oil and gives a very high price for the farm, saying he will use it for his church. Plainview in the end comes to an agreement with Eli and so the work can begin. Plainview has big plans. He wants to build a pipeline, so he isn't dependent on the railways to transport his oil, which of course means he'll earn money. By the end of the film he'll succeed in his plans and will be a rich businessman living in a great house.

An oil rig is built and very soon a worker dies. Eli accuses Plainview, because he did not let him bless the rig. Plainview says that if the workers wouldn't have to go to Eli's preachings they would be less tired and make less dumb mistakes. This starts a lifelong conflict between Eli and Daniel which will come to an end in the ending scene of the film which some found way over the top, but I think it was pretty logical. More on this later.

Two other plot points are still important. After an explosion of the oil rig Plainview's son becomes deaf and mute. This frustrates Daniel a lot and he tries a lot of things to help his son. Mostly unsuccessful and eventually his son has to learn sign language and talk through a translator.

One day Daniel is met by a man who claims to be his brother from another mother and needs help. Daniel offers him a job and a place to live, but when it turns out this man is just imposing for his brother, Daniel kills him.

I've read when this movie came out quite some reviews of the film. They all talked about how Daniel Plainview was a great villain and used words like monster,inhuman and all kinds of other such words. People jokingly talked about battles between Anton Chigurh and Daniel Plainview (Since No Country for old Men and this were the big rivals in the Oscar race). Well I was flabbergasted while watching the movie, but Plainview is not a monster or even a enormous villain. Sure he is no hero either, but if you have to choose between villain and hero I'd choose the latter. Bust mostly he is a hard working human being with some flaws.

It is true that Plainview uses his son to gain the trust of the people. But he does not lie. When he tells them that they run a family business it is quite true. He always explains to his son what and why they are doing and his son does really help him a lot. And it's quite obvious that Plainview loves him, even though he is not technically his. And the son obviously loves what he is doing and he loves his dad. He surely has a better life now then if Daniel left him alone. It's very probable that his real mother is dead, since he was constantly with his father. Now you can put against Daniel that his son doesn't seem to have a real name. He is simply called H.W. Plainview.

In his conversations with his 'brother' it becomes pretty obvious that Plainview does miss his family, but he comes from a poor upbringing so he can go back there. He does everything he can to make some money and live a slightly normal life. Those first scenes are very crucial to the movie. They show that he is just a human being trying his best to make a living. So when he says to his brother that he doesn't like this people he works with we can understand. They work less hard then he does and some may even feel exploited and most hope God will one day save them from their troubles. But they are a lot better with him then without him. Sure Plainview doesn't work himself in the rigs and he earns most of the money. But his workers have better conditions then he ever had. And yes these better conditions aren't there because Plainview loves them so much, but because they are good for business. Plainview never pretended otherwise. Many movies have been made about brave people who stand up for the rights of those who are fragile. Well, this is not about such a man and most people at the beginning of the 20th century simply weren't like that anyway. For Plainview,like for most people back then, that is a luxury he can't afford. Besides no one cared for him when he worked his ass off and he never complained. He tries to do the best he can for him and the people he loves. And he does it all in a legal manner. Most of us would do the same, we can't blame him for that.

We can blame him of course for the killing of his 'brother', but even that is kind of understandable. He confides in him a lot. He seems to be happy that there is finally someone who really seems to understand him. Daniel also does his best to help him, since he had hit a rough patch. When his 'brother' tells him he lied to him we can understand that he is really furious. It was obviously important to have some family around.

After Plainview is insured he's going to get his pipeline, we cut to 1929. Plainview lives in a big royal house. H.W. now older says that he wants to start as an oilmen for himself in Mexico. This makes him Daniels' competitor. This enrages Daniel of course, but we can understand both people's reactions. The enraged Daniel asks H.W. to say it to him with his own mouth and not via his translator. H.W. does this with a lot of effort and this does enrage Daniel even more and tells H.W. he is really a bastard son. In the next scene Eli comes to Daniel and asks him for money. In a scene completely over the top where Daniel seems to be completely mad he kills Eli. Again we can understand his madness. First of all, it is 1929. Eli says he's lost a lot of money. Well it's very probable that Daniel has lost quite a lot of money. Earlier in the film we saw that he is willing to take risks if that's good for business. He probably still does that and taking risks in 1929 was not very rewarding to say the least. Plainview might have lost a lot of his fortune. For a man that had to work so hard to earn that can come as a real blow. In the 21st century the financial crash was a lot lesser then in 1929 and bankers who have worked a lot less then Plainview have committed suicides. But that's not all. Plainview's son whom he learned everything he knows about being an oilman is gonna start his own business, with money probably earned by Daniel and thus become his rival. What's more the first time in years H.W. said something aloud. And it was that he is gonna leave Daniel. Surely it must hurt him that his son only know put in an effort to do this. This after everything Daniel tried to make him speak again. On top of all this Eli comes to him to lend money from Daniel, while hypocritically posing as his friend.

Paul Thomas Anderson is a great director. Besides this movie I've seen Boogie Nights and Magnolia and all three movies are masterpieces. This one is his best. He seems to be interested in people that are not great minds and have no great jobs, but they all try to make a living by doing the things they can do in the best way they can do them. It was true for the porn people in Boogie Nights, it was true for specifically Don Cheadle's character in Boogie Nights whose dream was to sell radio's. It was true for the cop and the nurse in Magnolia and it is true for Plainview. This are not all great jobs, but they are necessary in our society. Anderson's strength is that he sees that this people are important too, without making a moralistic, sentimental movie about how we should all love cops or nurses.

Of course one can't end a post of There Will Be Blood without mentioning Daniel Day-Lewis who does indeed give a truly great performance. It's not one of the best ever however. He basically gives the same sort of performance as he did in Gangs of New York as Bill the Butcher. Of course that was a great performance too. What is more surprising in this movie is that Paul Dano as Eli/Paul acts just as well.