Episode review
There Will Be Blood (2007) Review
The short version
Chris thinks There Will Be Blood is about as good a movie as anyone can make. I know it's great, and I still rated it lower, for a reason that has nothing to do with the filmmaking: there's a lot of Daniel Plainview in me, and watching it depresses me.
That split is the whole episode in miniature. This is a movie that works on craft alone and also asks you something uncomfortable about yourself.
A heartwarming small business success story
Here's how we pitched it on the show. There Will Be Blood is a heartwarming small business success story about a man who achieves the American dream and discovers that unlimited wealth does absolutely nothing for your personality. Daniel Day-Lewis starts with a pickaxe and a dream and gradually becomes the human embodiment of a hostile takeover. His rival, Paul Dano's Eli Sunday, is locked with him in a competition to see who can be the most insufferable person in California. It ends with Daniel getting everything he ever wanted, living alone in a mansion, and settling theological disputes with sporting equipment.
It's a joke, and it's also an accurate plot summary.
Fifteen minutes without a word
Chris's favorite scene is the opening. There's no dialogue for roughly the first fifteen minutes, just wind, landscape, digging, and a man alone at the edge of the frontier in 1898. One shot of Plainview drinking by a fire with a storm rolling in tells you everything about him before he ever opens his mouth.
Then he breaks his leg in a mine shaft and, as far as the movie lets you assume, drags himself back to town. From there it walks you through every step of his rise, from silver to oil to mogul, and the pacing never lets up.
Polite seriousness
The phrase we landed on for how Plainview operates is polite seriousness. He has no time for anyone who wastes his, but he keeps a thin layer of early 1900s manners over it. When someone irritates him he doesn't explode. He gives this small, tight smile, and you can see the mask straining.
The best example is his line to Paul Sunday: if I travel all the way up there and find you've been lying to me, I'm going to take back more than just my money. Is that all right with you? He says it like he's confirming a delivery date.
That's also why the lie about his dead wife works on two levels. Yes, it's a grift, a family man story to get the land cheaper. But it's also a man who can't explain to normal people that he doesn't care about normal things. The truth would scare them off, so he tells them what they want to hear.
Two liars, one handshake
The first time Daniel meets Eli, he slaps Eli's hand into a shake and rips it away when Eli tries to pull him into a prayer. The way we see it, it's two liars recognizing each other instantly. Both are running a gimmick. Daniel's is the quail-hunting family man, and it only lasts until the oil comes up. Eli's gimmick is his entire life.
The difference is that Daniel projects strength and Eli projects a performance. Daniel sees right through him at the dinner table, where Eli asks for $10,000 for his church and gets a long stare and "That's good. That's a good one." That line has been quoted at more than one bar.
Is Eli actually the good guy?
It's easy to read this as greed against faith. We don't buy it. Eli wants money too. He admires Daniel's house, loses everything in the crash, and comes crawling back. When he finally denounces his faith in the bowling alley, we think he means it: he's a smart guy who found a way to live comfortably off people's belief, without the strength to take anything by force. Think televangelists with private jets.
That's why Daniel never pays him the $5,000. There was never a contract, and in Daniel's eyes a liar who isn't strong enough to take it doesn't deserve it.
"I have a competition in me"
The speech to his fake brother Henry is where the movie tells you what drives Plainview, and it isn't money. He doesn't want anyone else to succeed. He wants to earn enough to get away from everyone. It's the same answer you get from a lot of rich guys when someone asks how much is enough: it was never about the money, it's about winning.
This is the part of him I recognize, and it's why the movie gets to me. We spent a lot of time on where it comes from. The photograph in Henry's journal, and Daniel saying that seeing the old house by the lake again would make him sick, point to a childhood that gave him nothing. Killing Henry, the last family he had, is the moment he gives up on people for good.
The only warmth he shows is toward kids, H.W. and Mary. We went back and forth on whether "your daddy doesn't hit you anymore" is real tenderness or just his contempt for religion. Where we landed: kids are the one thing in his world that hasn't been ruined by lying yet.
The moments people argue about
- What Daniel whispers after the baptism. Eli's face goes from scared, to a smile, to worried the second Daniel turns away. The movie never tells you what was said, and we love it for that.
- Why H.W. sets the fire. Our guess is he'd worked out that Henry was a fraud.
- "You're my competition now." Daniel's answer to his son wanting to go start his own business in Mexico. Listen for the growl in Day-Lewis's voice in that exchange.
- The flashback before the bowling alley. Daniel and H.W. goofing around with Mary at the derrick, cut straight to Daniel passed out on the lane. It plays almost like a dream, and it's the part that got to me the most.
Why Chris gives it a 9.3
The cinematography, which he held back from gushing about the whole episode. The wardrobe and set design. Jonny Greenwood's score, his first with Paul Thomas Anderson. The acting. Pacing about as good as it gets. He also likes how the quiet, mundane world of the early 1900s makes the violent, emotional moments hit that much harder. For the record, his highest rating ever is a 9.5.
Why I give it an 8
Not for anything the movie does wrong. It's too personal for me and too depressing. That flashback shows a man who could have gone another way, and he ends up alone, miserable, murdering a guy in his own bowling alley.
What I love is that it refuses to spell out its point. There's no clean good guy and bad guy, and people online still ask what it was about. My answer: mental illness, the drive to win, capitalism and the robber barons, and the insanity of never being a normal person. Like No Country for Old Men, which was shot right next door, you walk out having to think about it.
Behind the scenes
A few things we dug up for the episode:
- It was shot in Marfa, Texas, next to No Country for Old Men. A pyrotechnics test on the derrick sent smoke into the Coens' shot and pushed their filming to the next day.
- Paul Dano was cast in a small role, then given Eli after Paul Thomas Anderson saw him work. From what we read, he had four days to prepare. Day-Lewis had a year.
- During editing, the crew reportedly ate steak and drank straight vodka every Wednesday to stay in Plainview's head.
- The gusher fire was reportedly captured in one take.
- The Little Boston speech is said to have been improvised.
Listen to the full episode
Sixty-five minutes on There Will Be Blood, from the opening silence to the bowling alley.
Also on the show: Inherent Vice, One Battle After Another, and The Assassination of Jesse James. Every episode is on the Regular or Menthol homepage.