Every now and again, when the credits begin to roll, I think to myself, “That film was made just for me.” Such is the case with Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. The film is many things but right out of the gate it has a lot to say about capitalism and religion, which puts me squarely on board. There Will Be Blood is a hell of a film, but I warn you, it’s not a very nice one. Its characters are brutish, conniving, self-serving, and misanthropic—yet completely fascinating. It’s an ugly film, and yet one of the most beautiful of the modern era.
For the first fifteen minutes, no one says a word. We silently follow Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) as he scrapes and scraps, eking out a living as a miner. After gaining a bit of capital by what appears to be sheer force of will (and greed) he starts a small oil company—and the silence is broken. The first words spoken are half-truths, exaggerations, and promises unlikely to be kept Through this initial speech, it’s easy to see that this man is despicable and misanthropic. He is a man who thoroughly enjoys seeing others fail but relishes in envy of their accomplishments.
Plainview’s booming voice evokes power. He commands, men act. When he says something is so, there is not a doubt in his mind the listener would think otherwise. His son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier) seems to be following in his father’s footsteps, but when an accident leaves the boy deaf, Plainview’s words can no longer control him. Now relegated to baggage, H.W. is shipped off to a school for deaf children. Plainview has a near biblical notion of what being a “family man” means—he seated as the all-knowing patriarch, with everyone else living in subservience—but when his commands are no longer effective due to his son’s lack of hearing, his outlook on family life is shaken. Resentment and ugliness soon set in.
A man like this has rivals, naturally. Some manifest out of business, but one is of a philosophical nature. Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) is a fire and brimstone preacher who is every bit as vile as Plainview, with only a slight difference in approach. He claims his motivations are Godly and pure, but he’s selling snake oil and Plainview knows it. Eli is just as ambitious, just as egotistical, and just as rotten as Plainview, but only one will admit it. These two men spend the film jabbing at each other’s hypocrisies and egos, but when Eli tricks his rival into a show of repentance in front of his entire congregation, a true and unforgivable hate is formed. Watch Day-Lewis here. The hatred seethes from him, yet it could be argued he’s enjoying it.
Plainview hates religion and its institutions, likening them to a con, but he also sees the church as competition to his power. He is the word. He holds sway over men, not God. Eli is his rival in this sense as well—how dare he claim to speak to God when Plainview’s sermon is enough. Eli may claim to hear God’s word, but when the chips are down, he sings a different tune. This, Plainview sees through from the beginning and waits patiently to expose it—which he does gleefully, and in grand fashion.
There is very little goodness present in There Will Be Blood. It’s a mean film filled with vicious characters. Even the score is menacing (by Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood). It’s jagged and unsettling music, sounding more like something out of horror than anything else. You can hear the muck and grime and black oil through the orchestra. These disquieting strings mix perfectly with the open landscapes and bleak outlooks of cinematographer Robert Elswit, who won an Oscar for his work.
The physical landscape could be compared to that of John Ford’s, but the demeanor is John Huston’s. Huston was a master at depicting doomed partnerships and doomed men, with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) being Anderson’s biggest influence. Day-Lewis also appears to have based his mannerisms and speech on Huston (with a dose of Orson Welles’s Charles Foster Kane), which seems highly appropriate to me. Anderson isn’t aping a style, however. He’s too inventive for that. Just as Sinclair’s book was the inspiration for the film’s story, so are Ford, Huston, and Welles’s styles. He doesn’t quite wear this inspiration on his sleeve, but it’s there, in the nooks and crannies of his vast and fatal world.
Studies of deeply flawed characters can be difficult. Inevitably, you may find yourself identifying with this aspect or that of these hateful men, and that’s a tough spot to be in. This is not a horror film or psychological thriller that uses stand-ins or allegory to plumb the depths of humanity in search of truth. The viciousness is front and center, and its motivations are ones that we all share and understand on some level. Human nature is hard to stomach sometimes, and so is There Will Be Blood, but its warnings of the dangers of unchecked greed and ambition are likely to remain relevant for some time.
James is a writer, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.