Oil, Oil Everywhere! Paul Thomas Anderson Goes to the Old West for a Gusher Evoking New Greed
There Will Be Blood, starring Daniel Day-Lewis as an oil tycoon, soberly examines the origins of our nation’s corruption. Where’d the flying frogs go?
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At the Movies
THERE WILL BE BLOOD
Running Time 158 minutes
Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano
Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, from his own screenplay, is based on the 1927 novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair, the muckraking writer and anti-capitalist activist. The film’s narrative seems very slow getting started as it examines in painstaking detail the primitive and dangerous processes, first of silver mining in Silver City, N.M., and then of oil extraction near the end of the 19th century, in Little Boston, a rural enclave near what is now Los Angeles.
The film’s protagonist, Daniel Day-Lewis’s Daniel Plainview, makes a hardscrabble living as a silver miner until a down-at-the-heels young man from California, Paul Dano’s Paul Sunday, makes him an offer. For $500, Sunday will tell Plainview the location of his family’s goat ranch in California, where the oil leaks out of the ground. Plainview demonstrates right from the outset that he is a tough, wily, always suspicious negotiator as he explains to Sunday that there are many places where oil rises to the surface, but very few with much oil underneath. Still, he accepts the deal, and drives off to New Boston in one of the first just-invented automobiles, which are going to revolutionize the oil industry until oil becomes the global monstrosity that plagues our foreign policy to this day.
After all, why else would two-time Oscar-nominee Mr. Anderson undertake to adapt an 80-year-old little-known Sinclair novel for a high-budget production starring Oscar winner Mr. Day-Lewis? His character is said to be based on the real-life Edward Doheny, an oil tycoon of the period. Yet very little in the movie is revealed about Plainview’s earlier life, which has left him with a little son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier). His past life is something Plainview refuses to talk about, and no one in the film, least of all the women, ever gets close enough to him to break his vow of secrecy. Indeed, throughout, Plainview remains a fascinating, often inscrutable presence, but ultimately a morally repulsive figure. Is it capitalism or oil or the American Way of Life that makes him so reprehensible? Again, Mr. Anderson gives us few clues about the inner man, and only Mr. Day-Lewis’ resourcefulness as an actor keeps us intrigued about his possible motives, or is “motive” too old-fashioned a word for this brave new world?
Oil, with the environmental havoc it wreaks on the soil and on communities, is not the only villain of the piece. Revivalist religion takes a few whacks as well, as by the end the antics of Paul Sunday’s twin brother, Eli (also played by Paul Dano), gets more than a few laughs. Eli makes it a condition of Plainview’s purchase of his father’s ranch that a Baptist church be built on the property with some of the oil profits. Plainview cynically agrees to Eli’s overbearing importuning, but one senses from the beginning a final settling of accounts between these two supreme egotists.
Oh, yes, along the way, Plainview’s son is rendered deaf by an accident near the oil derrick, and Plainview blithely abandons the now handicapped child on a departing train. They are eventually but bitterly reunited, and the emotional scars linger through both their lives.
There are a few seemingly decent people Plainview encounters along his rugged path of ruthless self-enhancement, but they serve only to illuminate his capacity for a mysterious malignancy. Not exactly mysterious, for at one point he comes right out and says that he has never liked people.
As it happens, I have enjoyed all of Mr. Anderson’s previous four films—Hard Eight (1996), Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999) and Punch-Drunk Love (2002). I have always appreciated, particularly, the flair he showed in his casting, and in his ability to extract all the eccentricities of his characters from the performers playing them. But I have never before seen an Anderson film with a lead character exuding so few sympathetic vibes to the audience, even when the atmosphere was unpleasant and even unsavory.
Nonetheless, There Will Be Blood remains an impressive achievement in its confident expertness in rendering the simulated realities of a bygone time and place, largely with an inspired use of regional amateur actors and extras with all the right moves and sounds. In this moviegoing year of unrestrained morbidity and malfeasance, There Will Be Blood fits in very nicely with all the prevailing paranoia on and off the screen.
It is inconceiveable to me that Tom Hanks has one more Oscar than Daniel Day Lewis, the finest actor of his generation. Maybe this is his year.
Factual Corrections (with minor spoilers):
1. H.W. is not Plainview's son, he's the son of a colleague we see killed on the job in the first ten minutes of the film. Plainview unofficially adopts H.W.
And although Plainview uses the boy to further his own business interests by promoting his image as a family man running a family business, he clearly has genuine affection for H.W.
2. Plainview is already an oilman by the time Paul Sunday shows up.
3. Plainview 'abandons H.W. on a train' only in a manner of speaking. It would be more accurate to say that he sends H.W., accompanied by an employee, away to boarding school, presumably for the deaf.
4. No motives? We are given plenty of hints as to what drives Plainview, and the film is much stronger for not stating his motives overtly. The best thing about the film, for me, is how clearly it illustrates, like Citizen Kane, the link between personal history and its shaping of personality, and how these things then shape businesses, churches, a community, the wider region and finally the national economy, while never being too didactic.
After the setup, the film becomes, more than anything else, another of Anderson's explorations of fractured father and son relationships (Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia). When critics review films like this, it seems that they are comfortable explaining the obvious and fairly academic socio-political allegories, but avoid any analysis of the real emotional core of the film.
"Prevailing paranoia"? What's there to be paranoid about? It's all really happening...on and off the screen!
I am very excited to see this movie.
"Is it capitalism or oil or the American Way of Life that makes him so reprehensible?" Perhaps it is the fact that Plainview is a swindler and a murderer? However, I get the impression that the act of swindling is considered, by the author of this review, inherent to the "American Way of Life". Pretty sad. Also, I don't see "oil" as a "villain"; I don't see a corollary between this story and our current foreign policy, as it relates to oil; and H.W. was not abandoned by Plainview, he was sent to a school for the deaf after Plainview realized H.W. needed an education and he could not help him. There was no cold indifference to H.W. - beyond that, there was a great deal of love between the two characters, as Plainview was visibly deteriorating when the relationship between he and his son had met this barrier. I also I think it's interesting to note that Plainview never hit his son. There is a complicated emotional side to Plainview that I think this review misses.
Sarris really phoned this one in...
I haven't seen this latest film, yet, but am more than an avid fan of Anderson's films. What reviewers, unfortunately, miss completely from their analysis of his work is an understanding of his father, or at least his father's public personae, which I believe is reflected substantially in Anderson's film work. Ernie Anderson is usually credited, in castoff language attached to his son's bios, as a horror movie host known as Ghoulardi. Dad Anderson was far more than that. He rivaled Mad Magazine in the fun he poked at cultural icons and faux social propriety. His wit and humor were biting, incisive, unbridled, extremely cynical at their core. He allowed his fans to step outside of our culture, to analyze society from a critical viewpoint, often requiring us to make fun of ourselves. We were stripped bare of our assumptions about what is important, what is true, what is right, and most of all about who we really are. I can only imagine how the son of such a man sees the world, and I crave each and every film of Anderson's as if finding a well in the middle of the desert. And as if finding his father, still alive, still the social critic in the guise of a ghostly ghoul with a sinister yet engaging smile. I don't want to leave, but must find my way home. I have to watch Anderson's films repeatedly, as they never look or feel the same twice. Magnolia was psychologically draining, but a must repeat, much as one must return to one's therapist regularly. Bravo Anderson.
To the reviewer...Paul and Eli are the same person(not twin brothers). It's not like it was meant to be a secret. Great observation skills.
Anonymous above: They ARE twin brothers, not the same person. It is stated more than once in the movie. Just because Paul only shows up once in the movie doesn't mean he doesn't actually exist. Good observational skills.
I even saw Paul Dano recently speaking about playing twin brothers in this movie. About how originally PTA was to cast another actor to play the brother but then decided to have Dano play both parts and make them twins. Nice observational skills indeed. What were smoking Anon #1?
Saw Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood" at a midnight screening/sneak preview in Seattle over a week ago and it remains my 2nd favorite film of 2007 (behind "Juno"). Tough, raw, unnerving and not without difficulties, this is a blackly comic horror film to behold and cherish, with a Day-Lewis performance that knocks your socks off (aptly represented by his mid-film monologue about his hatreds and misanthropy - brilliant!)... A great film!
re: the twins. PT Anderson leaves this somewhat ambiguous intentionally i think, so that you can read it either way. There are inconsistencies in Eli's character that led me to believe they were the same person.
in the final script (not shooting script) Paul tells Plainview in their first scene that he wants the money so he can leave for good. PTA leaves this out of the final movie. in the script there is no jab at eli about paul's success, but in the bowling alley, PTA added that in. that wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that the details of paul's success are a replication of plainview's success in the opening scene (2,000 barrels a day, producing $5,000 a week). it's obviously a lie intended to get under Eli's skin.
also, Paul asks Plainview if he's a man of the church in the beginning, but Eli later says he has tried (unsuccessfully) to save his brother Paul. Why would Paul ask this question then?
It can be read both ways, but the original script did indeed have them clearly as two different people. i just think by omitting certain things, it made the scene where Eli first meets Plainview (when he is under the impression they are merely quail hunting) awfully confusing and awkward, when all he would have had to do is have Paul say he was leaving for good in the first scene with Plainview.
You guys see my point? Intentional ambiguity to offer up different ways of interpreting the characters and their true motives. We ask the same questions about Plainview and HW in the end: did he really love his son? or was he merely upset that he might have lost the ability to use him to win more business? that would be mighty cold, and it's not what i believe personally, but it's possible.
"bastard in a basket" as they say.
...ryan
I agree with invertebrae that the Sunday brothers' identity was left deliberately ambiguous and to me it made total psychological sense sense that Paul might have invented a religious alter-ego with a Biblical name in order to extort money from the community and I found Paul's determined negotiating style and his slimy manner so similar to Eli's that I think it is at least worth considering that they might be one and the same. Definitely a film to be seen several times for its many layers...
I, too, found the whole Eli/Paul thing confusing. When Eli introduces himself to Daniel and H.W. I immediately said to myself "is he pretending to be someone else now?" By never showing Eli and Paul together it leaves the viewer wondering what's going on. By the end of the film I was still confused if Eli and Paul were two seperate people or if Daniel knew Eli wasn't in his right mind and took advantage of Eli's mental illness.
Clearly, Daniel's character is all about using people to get what he wants, which is ultimate control and power. He clearly used H.W. to get the people on his side. As he says to the man he thought was his brother "I can't keep doing this alone......with these people". He needs H.W. to make folks think he's a family man. At times I felt he had affection for his adopted son, but, by the end, clearly H.W. was a mere pawn in Daniel's grand plan.
As always, Daniel Day-Lewis gives a terrific, Oscar worthy performance and deserves the accolades he receives.
I'm so glad to have found a place where the topic of Paul/Eli is being discussed. It's great to have other perspectives. I have nothing to add to that particular area. Regarding the relationship between Daniel and H.W. it seemed obvious to me that he did have sincere affection for his adopted son. Where he failed was in his ability to prioritize. His obsession with success overshadowed his ability to put the welfare of his son first. Yes, he used him to get ahead. He was unable to leave his precious oil long enough to personally go with his son to receive treatment. Like many fathers today, business first.
He seemed to demonstrate a fondness for Mary the young girl as well. Not an inappropriate fondness mind you, just a natural ability to show affection. It seemed in general he hated adults.
Not to be overlooked is the many ways "blood" was used symbolically as well as literally:
the blood of christ
oil as the blood of the earth
the loss of blood by those who were killed by the oil rig and those whose lives were taken by Daniel
Daniel's lack of "blood" relatives as well as his apparent though somewhat veiled happiness at the prospect having family.
seems to me that if hw were merely a tool, he would have been discarded before he became the adult who finally separates at the end.
I believe that Eli and Paul were the exact same person, but his name was actually Eli and he was pretending to be Paul. He did this so he could get Daniel Plainview to come to Little Boston, drill for oil, and give some of the oil money to the "church" ie give it to Eli. Eli made up Paul for his own personal benefit to bring in Daniel's oil business.
I think they are the same person also because at the end, when Daniel is telling Eli about "Paul's" success he merely repeats what his own business have done and are doing at Little Boston (Three Rigs all producing 2000 barrels a day, $5000 a week). Daniel also mentions that he paid Paul$10,000 cash in hand, remember this was what Eli had said he wanted for the land but Daniel refused. He's doing this to get under his skin and say, "look at what you could have had, you could have been Paul, you could have been a partner with me but you decided to hide behind your religious self and get money that way, you tried to swindle me with your trickery and 'beliefs' and you did fool the towns people but you didnt fool me, I saw right through it and I 'broke you and beat you' " I do agree it is hard to determine whether Paul and Eli are different people, but I really think that this ending shows they are the same person.
They are ***NOT*** the same person. Were you people asleep?
When Eli attacks his Father for selling the land so cheaply, he informs his father (whilst practically strangling him), that ***Paul*** had "sold the family out" and that The Father should have been more careful/suspect before selling the land so cheaply.
They are ***NOT*** the same person. Were you people asleep?
When Eli attacks his Father for selling the land so cheaply, he informs his father (whilst practically strangling him), that ***Paul*** had "sold the family out" and that The Father should have been more careful/suspect before selling the land so cheaply.
Same person.
Actually, I have it on very good authority that they are the same person yet different, both at the same time.