I have a competition in me, I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.
-Daniel Plainview
We begin with the the opening scene of There Will Be Blood: The camera slowly rises from the desert ground with the music dragging along and rumbling towards a brilliant opus as the scene fixes on a small mountain range. The music soars with a dramatic flair that calls to mind the oft-emulated “Also Sprach Zarathustra” from 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the opening to 2001, the aforementioned song bursts forth as apes discover a monolith in their midst that signifies the next step in their evolution: the use of force. The discovery of weapons unfolds – a bone becomes a club one ape uses to beat another to death in an act of dominance. Now fast forward to the opening of Blood, where Johnny Greenwood’s score mimics “Zarathustra” as the lands of California are revealed –lands that hide a resource that will signal the next major step in industrialization and wealth.
Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), filthy and poor, is underneath the ground in a hole digging away at the earth to discover wealth. After an injury looking for silver, he turns his attention to oil, which he soon enough discovers. As he and his crew eventually hit oil, a man is killed in an accident that’s almost characterized as the necessary collateral to the discovery of the oil Plainview so desperately seeks. The parallels here between Blood and 2001 are striking. As in the latter, the opening sequence in the former ends with the discovery of a club of sorts and the death of an ape (careful attention will draw out other parallels I’ll leave out here).
Perhaps the most noticeable thing about There Will Be Blood is the raw intensity of the film and its characters. Plainview is an “oil man” who discovers black gold and sets about conquering the covered riches that lie beneath the quiet town of Little Boston. This little town in the plains of California is home to Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), the highly charismatic and influential (albeit greedy) pastor/healer of the Church of the Third Revelation – a name that implies Eli’s hubris. Inevitably, the two characters clash in vying attempts at power and serve as the primary vehicle for the plot – which revolves around Plainview’s character- to move along to its inevitably bloody conclusion.
It might be supposed that Eli’s mistake is making a deal with Plainview in the first place, a sort of deal with the devil. But, contrary to what might be expected, it is Eli’s hubris that is the mechanism behind a Faustian bargain with the church. A wolf himself, Eli dons sheep’s clothing and pretends to lead a flock, gathering greater acclaim and wealth for himself all along the way. But underneath the wolf’s skin is a man just as wickedly greedy as Plainview, though lacking the means and bravado to live out his true nature more ostentatiously. He chides his father Abraham for being weak and stupid, but he foolishly ties his fortunes to a stronger man, Plainview, and tries to control him by controlling the masses. The “bargain” is with Eli’s front, a man of the cloth who can know no violence.
The story is carried along in the constant friction between Plainview and Sunday; if Plainview isn’t snubbing the bombastic pastor to bless the oil derrick, Sunday is using his pulpit and influence to control those living on Plainview’s coveted land. The back and forth exercises of power grow steadily more overt and grand. After an accident that leaves H. W. deaf, Plainview slaps Sunday around and ‘baptizes’ him in the oily mud after his suggestion that this tragedy could have been avoided if he had been allowed to bless the derrick. Plainview resents Sunday for his charade because the supposed healer cannot cure his deaf son, whom he sent to boarding school far away. The oilman is a thoroughly greedy and opportunistic student of humanity, so he is quick to recognize his own kind –a facet that perhaps fuels his hatred for Sunday all the more. Eventually, Sunday finds himself with the upper hand when Plainview has to appease a member of Eli’s flock so that he can build an oil pipeline over his property.
To get what he needs, Daniel is forced to play along with Eli’s act, repent, beg for “the blood,” and be baptized in the Church of the Third Revelation. Daniel’s contorted expression suppresses his words as he is forced down to his knees and Eli teases a stronger confession of sin out of him, all the while slapping the devil out of Plainview. “I abandoned my child! I abandoned my boy!” he cries. Is this genuine conviction of sin or prideful resentment? On one hand, Daniel’s disposition soured after he left his son on the train. On the other, Daniel’s hushed words after his baptism leave Eli with a horrified look, likely promising retribution. Perhaps it is a little bit of both, Daniel does contritely send for his son but we are never left with the impression that it is anyone’s blood but Eli’s that Daniel seeks.
Several years pass by and the final scene of the film allows us to see an old and miserably rich, yet lonely, Plainview come face to face with his destiny. His son H. W., now grown and married to Sunday’s little sister, wants to strike out on his own and refuses to follow Plainview’s steps. Daniel vehemently disowns him, revealing the truth that he was an orphan, a “bastard in a basket.” He tells him that it’s clear he never was his son because H. W. has none of Daniel in him. The film’s relentless focus on the domination of nature does not let up even here, we’re left with the impression that, for H. W., nature trumps nurture. Being raised in the shadow of Daniel isn’t enough to turn this boy into the same monster he loves so dearly. Apparently, Daniel’s early ‘baptism’ of H. W. with oil as a child never stuck.
But it is not long before Daniel’s other son he baptized, an older and just as miserable Sunday, comes to visit Plainview in his basement bowling alley. Here the tables have suddenly turned from what we last saw between the two men and it is Sunday who needs the gospel that only Plainview has to offer: mammon. Poor investments and the onset of the depression have left Sunday’s empire less than sufficient, so he offers to sell Daniel the land over which he built a pipeline many years earlier. Plainview takes full advantage of the situation, eliciting a renunciation of God and confession of chicanery from Sunday. He then tells him – in the infamous “milkshake” scene – that he’s already sapped the land of its oil by drilling the lands surrounding the property. Plainview proceeds to impressively tear Sunday down with the crudest insults and then, drunk with liquor, hatred, and power, Plainview maniacally chases him down. Sunday screams and tries to avoid him, but Plainview grabs a bowling pin – but a polished club – and beats Sunday’s head into a bloody pulp. The use of force has come full circle. No longer has he wasted his time slapping the boy about, he simply has done what his ancestors did so long ago. With the lifeless body of Sunday on the floor next to him, Plainview sits back and barks out, “I’m finished.” And with that, the film, and the rivalry between Plainview and Sunday, ends.
In this film, Plainview both is and is not a sinner rebelling against God, doing what any of us would do if left to our own devices. But Eli is this too, he simply knows how to fake it. Both the church and the oil fields are different tools to achieve the same end: dominance. And the dominance spoken of here is that of nature, which prevails in the cases of Daniel, Eli, and even poor H. W. More to the forefront of this spectacle, Plainview and Sunday are nothing but apes with suits. Blood’s view of depravity is more accurately a view of the meaningless existence implied by naturalism: we are nothing but more evolved apes, in our own tribes, discovering new and improved clubs with which to subjugate one another. If and when these new clubs fail, we can always revert to the tried and true original, like Plainview does in the final scene – the climax where Anderson presents us with the final manifestation of Plainview’s nature. Throughout the film, there is never any hint of hope or purpose in what seem to be horrid accidents, fueled only by the greed that compels Plainview to dig. There is no great hand of providence, no compassionate governor of the universe, no justice, only the monstrous Schopenhauerian Will around the corner, whose voice is heard with every dissonant note of Greenwood’s tense score. Such a philosophy is truly terrifying, stripping the world of any true purpose and sustaining itself on Plainview’s virtues.
It does not really matter what Anderson meant to say with this film, Plainview can profitably be compared to the human at large, to America, or the global economy. But what we must question is the sustainability of this philosophy, for it is the very philosophy behind the “beast” and “harlot” of which John speaks in his Apocalypse. It must be resisted, and at least from the very beginnings of the Christian church, we have been told that the way of Jesus necessarily runs against this philosophy by virtue of what it is: antichristian. There are lessons here about the effects of capitalism driven by the wills of fallen men, but there is also a ‘revelation’ itself about the endgame of such a philosophy. The question is whether or not we’re listening. Regardless, we can agree with Daniel on one thing, as he tells Eli after seeing his charade for the first time, “Well, that was one goddam helluva show.”
topological metaphors to refer to salvation. For example, consider the Pauline phrase “in Christ,” which typically uses the preposition ἐν in a spherical sense (cf. Col 1:16, 4, 14, 19; 2:6, 7, 9; etc.). Furthermore, Paul tells us that we are “seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:6). The author of Hebrews similarly has all sorts of spatial reference with regards to Christ and believers. Needless to say, this is an easily overlooked aspect of New Testament theology. But we shouldn’t overlook this imagery, the spatial and topological language plays a key role in shaping our imaginative conception of what life in union with Christ is. More on that perhaps some other time.
