My second impression: There Will Be Blood

|A Second Look|

There Will Be Blood

**Spoilers within. Read only if you’ve seen the film**

After my initial viewing of There Will Be Blood, I was obviously impressed by Daniel Day-Lewis’ (Academy Award) brilliant performance and the exceptional cinematography of Robert Elswit (Academy Award). Also, I thought Jonny Greenwood’s score was quite effective in setting the mood of the picture even if it tended to be superfluous and overwrought in some of the scenes where silence would have been the best option.

All in all, I thought it was a very good picture but not a great one. My main concern was the second half of the film, specifically the last thirty minutes of the picture. Much of the picture is an intense character study of Daniel Plainview. Day-Lewis plays a man who is fiercely competitive, vengeful, at times gentle, providing and caring, and greedy with an ever-present undercurrent of hatred for everyone. To put it bluntly, he is a misanthrope who manipulates people so that he can succeed and grow richer. Once his son goes deaf, Plainview ships him out of town and later admits that he used the boy to present a family façade so he could acquire land easier.

There Will Be Blood loses its focus once Plainview goes insane. Once this happens he changes from a fascinating man with a myriad of conflicting behaviors and attitudes to one akin to Day-Lewis’ character William Cutting in Gangs of New York. This is not to say that film or Day-Lewis’ performance in it is poor (they are excellent), but rather to identify where There Will Be Blood goes astray. I think once Plainview morphs into this one-dimensional grotesque the film stops being an exquisite character and devolves into a predictable tale.

This is illustrated by the drawn-out scenes in the Plainview mansion involving H.W. and lastly, Eli Sunday. The scene with his son shows us how far-reaching Plainview’s hatreds were over the last thirty years of his life:

”Bastard from a basket! Bastard from a basket!”

After Plainview disowns his adopted son I think it would have been best to quickly conclude the film. The film’s last and most bizarre scene should have met the cutting room floor (Although audiences would have surely missed the now famous milkshake line). The first time I saw the film I never dreamed it would end in a bowling alley in a mansion in 1927. Frankly, my guess was that there would be a tragic accident at an oil site that would take Plainview’s life. Instead, the final scene serves nothing more than to once again show the audience how much hatred and vengeance Plainview has pent up. We’ve already seen this in Plainview’s meetings with the Standard Oil representative and the falling out with his son. We’ve also seen Plainview’s misanthropic ways during the course of the film. Nevertheless, he tricks Eli into a confession in which the preacher admits to being a fraud and then Plainview chases him about the small bowling alley rolling bowling balls at him and then finally killing him with a bowling pin. In Plainview’s mind he has gotten revenge for the time at mass when he was forced to confess his sins to Eli.

I think Paul Thomas Anderson would have been wise to conclude There Will Be Blood on a more introspective note. Perhaps we could have seen an inkling of regret on the part of Plainview after H.W. leaves. Plainview could have recognized that the results of his struggles and wealth have brought him nothing more than a lonely mansion and an empty existence. Instead, Plainview is nothing more than a monster who is content on alienating himself from everyone.

I think those looking to plumb There Will Be Blood for deeper meaning will not find much more below the surface. Up until the last thirty minutes, the movie is primarily an intricate character study--examination of greed and hollowness that afflicts men who are never satisfied. Plainview keeps striving for more wealth to fill a hole in his life that can never be filled with money alone. Also, the film briefly touches upon the influence and the misuse of religion in society. Whereas Plainview used H.W. and his workers for his financial gain, Eli uses God and gullible townspeople to try to attain stature and wealth. Essentially, Eli is no better than Plainview and I will contend that he, if anyone, is the evil one in the picture.

Ultimately, I think There Will Be Blood will be known mostly for Day-Lewis’ tremendous performance. It is the type of film where an exceptional performance can overcome some of the film’s other shortcomings in structure and screenplay (although fans of 2001 will love the first twelve minutes of dialog-free cinema). For now There Will Be Blood is a very good but flawed film and only time will tell if it can attain greatness.