Film Review:There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood is a film for people who love film. The strength of this epic lies in what is primary to the medium of film itself: the image. Nearly every shot could be captured and framed, as a still a perfect visual work of art. In fact, the first ten minutes of the film are devoid of dialogue, reflecting the historical beginnings of film, a time where the visuals carried the story, not the words. The opening sequence also demonstrates the essential theme of the film, a theme thoroughly American and vital to cinema reaching all the way back to Citizen Kane, and tapping into an American mythology that has circulated since its Westernized inception, that a man can come from nothing and through his own individual efforts and hard work achieve the American dream of accumulating vast wealth and as a result find true happiness. We see this theme distilled in the visual poem that is the beginning of the film as Daniel Plainview, having broken his leg falling down a mine shaft he built with his own two hands and a single bucket-full of rudimentary tools, pulls himself out of the earth by his own power. Plainview starts the film alone in the American wilderness, a stark and desolate place, feral and rife for exploitation, and these opening images forecast the development of the rest of the film, which will explore the terrain of alienation lurking in the underbelly of that old American myth and the horrific side-effects caused by the unfettered pursuit of wealth and the “gentle” reminder of how easily corruptible the human soul is.

If you need another reason to see this film other than the cinematography which is dazzling, beautiful and brilliant or the performance by Daniel Day Lewis which joins the ranks of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, Robert DeNiro in Raging Bull and Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet as a performance that transcends any conventional category or label and captures something immutable, compelling and frightening, then I will argue that this film is also great for its realization and reinvention of illusory aspects of the great American myth that the individual is the supreme force in the universe, that the pursuit of wealth and happiness are the chief aims of human existence, and that self-reliance is the vehicle best suited to the human condition. These ideals and beliefs pushed to the end of their logical conclusions lead to a world fueled by greed and selfishness, where only the most ruthless and the “fittest” are able to survive and do so exploiting the vital fluids (blood and oil) of other people and the earth, caring little for the subsequent destruction it causes. If this story is not one of the sharpest and spot-on critiques of our modern Western civilization, then what is?

Roger Ebert’s initial review of the film also compared it to Citizen Kane (which for the record I read AFTER making the connection myself), but Ebert claims that “There Will Be Blood is no Kane however” because “Plainview lacks a ‘Rosebud’” (rogerebert.suntimes.com). I, however, respectfully disagree. Rosebud, Charles Foster Kane’s dying words and boyhood sled, function in Citizen Kane, as a MacGuffin in the sense that it sets the action of the film in motion and propels the narrative, but unlike a traditional MacGuffin, which may have little meaning outside of a simple plot vehicle device, Rosebud signifies a pivotal moment in Kane’s life where as a young boy he lost his childhood, something he would spend the rest of his life trying to compensate for in his relentless pursuit of materialism. In this sense Rosebud is more than a MacGuffin because it gives the viewer a glimpse into Kane’s psychology, which is something the other characters in the film are not afforded despite their efforts. While I will grant Ebert that TWBB has no apparent MacGuffin, and therefore no Rosebud in this sense, there are a few moments which give us similar insight into the vulnerability and fragility of Plainview, as Rosebud does for Kane, and as I would argue is the more important way in which Rosebud functions Citizen Kane. One such example is Plainview’s welcoming of his supposed half-brother Henry. The viewer is skeptical of Henry’s story, and it seems incredulous that Daniel wouldn’t see through it in an instant. However, Daniel awkwardly tells Henry, “I’d like to hear you say you want to stay” in what passes for this emotionally stunted social misfit as a petition for help and an invitation to companionship. It’s apparent in this scene that Plainview is hungry for human contact, for a blood relation, for someone to partner with and confide in, even if what he has to confide is that he hates all people and that he has a competition inside him that makes him want to destroy everyone and everything around him. Another insight into his overcompensation for his feelings of vulnerability is Plainview’s over-the-top reaction to Standard Oil’s representative’s suggestion he retire from the oil business and spend time with his son. Plainview takes the man’s casual remark, which is largely prompted by Plainview himself, as a slight on his duty as a father, and as a result Plainview says he will find the man asleep in his home and slit his throat. His reaction, so out of proportion to what’s actually said, indicates not only that Plainview is cracking up, but that what he’s lashing out against is not really this man but rather his own inner demons, his own guilt for having abandoned his boy because of his hearing impairment. Plainview can’t cope with his son’s hearing impairment because, as the apogee of the great Darwinian maxim, Plainview is unable to tolerate any flaw, weakness, or imperfection that may hinder his survival. Ironically, he is oblivious to his own tragic flaw, that ancient Greek hamartia of hubris, or pride, a flaw as old as evil itself that would become his own undoing. Nevertheless, while Plainview may have no childhood sled locked in a vault in his mansion, these scenes create the same glimpses of vulnerability in his character, as that of Kane, and make him not merely an unfathomable idea pushed to an extreme conclusion, but rather a human character who is fragile, defensive and hurting and an ultimately tragic figure of epic proportion.

Another common complaint of the film I’d like to address is the ending. It should be noted that Plainview’s last words “I’m finished” work on a number of levels, one of the more abstruse ones being a sort of mirroring of Jesus Christ’s final words “It is finished.” It may seem a stretch at first, until you consider other Christological images in the film, which reflect the idea that Eli Sunday sees Plainview as a sort of messiah. This is shown visually in the film when Sunday approaches Plainview right before Daniel dedicates his first oil derrick. Sunday wants Plainview to dedicate the derrick to him and make a speech about it, however, after assenting to do so Plainview instead dedicates the derrick to Eli’s sister and in doing so further establishes the animosity that festers in their relationship for the remainder of the film. In the scene Eli’s point-of-view shots show Daniel positioned in front of two supporting beams which make an obvious cross on which Daniel appears to hang. This image of the cross is then repeated in the famous “conversion” scene and then again in the conversion scene’s doppelganger in the cross that hangs around Eli’s neck in the final scene. So in this sense the ending ties together several of the film’s main concepts, the linkage of oil and blood as well as the messianic relationship gone awry that blossoms between Eli and Daniel.

To touch on the oil and blood theme very briefly, it’s fairly obvious how the two work together in the film, as the first two deaths occur in oil pits where blood and oil mix together becoming indistinguishable. In the third death, Daniel’s murder of Henry, Daniel digs a shallow grave and slides Henry’s body into a pool of oil, and finally Daniel’s murder of Eli which ends the feud fueled by oil. What’s interesting in the nature of Daniel’s character in relationship to the development of the motif of blood and oil is that his paternal instincts are able to transcend the bonds of blood, in that he cares for his son H. W. despite not being his biological father, but his affections are stilted by the bonds of oil, in that he disowns his son once H. W. becomes his competition in the oil business. In this way the blood and oil theme not only works as a scathing critique on modern capitalism but also as a development in the psychological trajectory of Daniel Plainview.

Finally, despite seeming like a sprawling and meandering tale TWBB is actually very tightly knit together. This becomes more obvious on repeated viewings. Anderson is a master of the visual details. In a scene late in the film that shows the development of H. W. and Mary’s relationship, H. W. leads Mary up some wooden steps to a platform from which they leap off. This shot of their literal leap off a platform as two children cuts immediately to their metaphorical matrimonial leap as adults. The scene is compact, communicates entirely on a visual level, and proves TWBB is great not only because of its stunning cinematography, its transcendent acting, and its epic theme, but because Anderson is a master of the details. It is a film I can’t wait to watch again, and will continue to watch as long as I have eyes to see.