It's amazing the difference two years can make. Two years ago I watched my favorite film of 2007, There Will Be Blood, for only the third time, and the first time not in a movie theater. I'm not sure if it was the first viewing on the smaller screen that made the difference, but I remember my third viewing feeling like somewhat of an anticlimax after a layoff of a dozen years.
Last night, I just sat there thoroughly enthralled by the movie. (Only four left until I've rewatched all 26 of my previous #1s.)
There are so many themes to think about in There Will Be Blood -- capitalism, greed, family, religion, even sociopathy -- but last night I was focused on something else: the extreme loathing that exists between Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, and Eli Sunday, played by Paul Dano.
These two men have nothing but dislike for each other from their first moments together on screen. Crucially, though, it's not just a negative chemistry between the actors -- Dano is giving us two different characters with Paul, the brother we meet first and only once, and Eli, the brother who is Plainview's most regular antagonist throughout the movie. (And "antagonist" is really the right word here, as these two intentionally antagonize each other at every opportunity they get. Debate as much as you want about which one is worse, but Eli gets the title "antagonist" because this is clearly Plainview's story, making him the protagonist.)
In Paul, Plainview sees an able rival -- one who pisses him off because he doesn't fall for Plainview's tricks when Paul comes to offer him information on where to drill in exchange for a $500 payout, but all the smarter for that stubbornness. In Paul he sees someone like himself. Paul is intelligent and he knows exactly what cards to play at what time, just like Plainview himself. And he's also only in it for his own gain, just like Plainview.
Eli is equally venal in his way but he hides it behind a veil of religious righteousness, which disgusts Plainview. The difference here is that Plainview rarely engages in outright lies; he omits certain details, and engages in half-truths, like telling the Sunday family he is camping on their property to hunt quail. In a way that is a full lie, but in spirit it is more like not telling the whole story. And as evidence of some sort of core honesty in his business dealings, Daniel admits pretty readily that he knows about the oil on the Sunday property and is interested in it when Eli cross-examines him. He doesn't have elaborate stories at the ready that won't hold up to scrutiny. Rather, he presents simple lies ("my wife died in childbirth") and then when someone wants to pump him for more details, he says things like "I don't want to talk about those things." It's as though the necessary price for shrewd business is these minor fabrications, but he stops short of spinning yarns he can't control.
To Plainview, Eli is a constant, consistent liar in his revival-style religious performances and his claim that he can drive the spirit out of people, heal their sicknesses, etc. This is a much more harmful form of getting ahead, Plainview seems to believe, as it requires people to believe a protracted lie that just keeps getting more and more complicated. The lie itself is the thing, rather than the means to the thing -- even if both characters are, at their core, seeking financial enrichment.
To Eli, Plainview is an obstacle because he will not submit to any part of Eli's will, and in fact, openly despises him. Neither is he a potential convert, as someone like Daniel Plainview will never choose to believe in a higher power. In fact, the despising by Plainview is even more pernicious to Eli, in the sense that it is both open and veiled in politeness at the same time. When Eli approaches Plainview about his plan to bless the opening of the drilling -- a plan that twice makes mention of Plainview saying his name, a gratification of Eli's ego -- Plainview appears to agree to it with simple affirmations like "That'll be fine." Of course, when the time actually comes, he leaves Eli as just another face in the crowd while bestowing the ceremonial honor on his little sister -- a "daughter of these fair hills," an intentional and perverse bastardization of the very phrase Eli wanted Plainview to use for him.
It's on. And Daniel has the upper hand most of the time. When Eli has the audacity to storm up to Plainview to check on the status of his family's enrichment, Plainview slaps the shit out of him and ends up pushing his face down into the mud, in a humiliating sequence that highlights one person's total domination of the other. Tellingly, to further underscore the similarity between them, Eli then delivers the same sort of humiliating beatdown to his own father -- calling him "you stupid man" -- while still caked in the very mud Plainview despoiled him with.
Of course Eli gets his revenge. He gets the upper hand later on when Plainview needs the cooperation of old man Bandy, the only homestead in the area that did not sell to him, whose property is crucial to erecting the pipeline that will finalize Plainview's fortune. Bandy is a religious man, and he requests that Plainview repent his sins in the church. In gleeful relish of his position of power, Eli makes Plainview praise god and admit in loud tones that he has abandoned his son. Because he just can't help the chance to exact some physical vengeance on Plainview, he slaps him a half dozen times as well -- any more than that probably would have raised too many eyebrows in his congregation.
At that time, Plainview never gets the advantage back over Eli. Eli leaves on a mission and gets to depart town with a haughty look on his face, while Plainview looks away hurriedly. Eli would have "won," as it were.
But then in 1927, more than 15 years after these events, Eli finds himself needing to work with an alcoholic and spiritually broken version of Plainview -- who doesn't awaken from that bowling alley floor when Eli screams to him that a fire is consuming the building, only when he softly announces who is standing above him, an unresolved foe from the distant past. Sensing his own advantage in this scenario, Plainview turns the tables on Eli one last time, forcing him to shout "I am a false prophet and God is a superstition," then delivering his epic final smackdown about "DRAINAGE!!!," which finishes with the classic milkshake line.
It's hard to say who ultimately wins in the end -- it seems they both destroy each other. Plainview literally beats Eli to death with a bowling pin, but you sense this is one murder he isn't going to be able to cover up. When his manservant witnesses the aftermath of the murder, you don't get the sense that Plainview is going to try one more murder and get away with it all. He says, meaningfully, "I'm finished." It's in the sing-songy voice that would usually be used in a context where you are asking someone to remove the empty plate of food in front of you, but we all know what it really means.
The looks on the faces of these actors as they deal with each other are priceless. Although Day-Lewis is the GOAT here and he outshines Dano in almost every aspect, the subtle crumpling of Eli's face whenever he realizes Plainview has shat upon him is the ultimate expression of this film's loathing. Even though it is Plainview who loathes as a hobby, and loathes many more people in this film that Eli loathes, Dano might be the best at it.
As I was watching Day-Lewis here, I was reminded again of the sort of mafia boss who chills us to the core in the best gangster movies -- or maybe, in a more modern example, someone like Homelander in The Boys. His power and his capacity for holding a grudge are limitless. Just witness his eternal grudge against the oil company man who once dares to suggest that selling out to them and becoming a millionaire would allow him to spend more time with his son. He tells this man he will sneak into his house at night and slit his throat, and renews the threat during an otherwise innocuous interaction years later, when all this man wants to do is play nice.
Still, the movie's scariest scene might belong to Eli as he rages against and beats his own father. He loathes the weakness and frailty of that old man more than he ever loathes Plainview.
Interestingly, Dano wasn't even supposed to play this part originally -- apparently, the actor cast to play Eli got freaked out by Day-Lewis' method acting and he left the movie. Dano was only supposed to play Paul. Imagine how much weaker this film would be if Dano had been in that one scene and then left the movie. (To say nothing of how it amplifies the differences between these two brothers to have them played by the same actor.)
Given how incredible this film is at showing rather than telling -- I mean, this is a movie that has no dialogue for its first 14 minutes -- it surprised me a bit last night that Paul Thomas Anderson felt the need to put such a fine point on things that were conveyed wordlessly. If not for the juicy way Day-Lewis delivers this speech -- hell, every speech or line he has in the whole movie -- it might seem entirely superfluous:
"I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people. There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking."
There Will Be Blood demonstrates this from beginning to end, and it never stops being fascinating.
