Tag Archives: Paul Thomas Anderson

Fathers and Sons Part 2: There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood is the story of at least three pairs of fathers and sons. There is oil man Daniel Plainview and his adopted son H.W.. Opposite them are poor Abel Sunday and his preacher son Eli. The strangest pair is Daniel and Eli, between whom an abusive father/son dynamic develops throughout the film.

Daniel and H.W. Plainview

As with all good beginnings, the opening scene of There Will Be Blood perfectly encapsulates the character of its protagonist, Daniel Plainview. Daniel chisels for ore in a mine shaft. A brief shot of him huddled by his camp fire emphasizes his utter solitude. He lights some dynamite and climbs out of the shaft. After the dynamite goes off, he descends back down the shaft. One of the rungs of his ladder breaks, however, and Daniel falls down the shaft, breaking his leg. Through sheer force of will, Daniel hauls himself out of the shaft with the help of a rope. He then drags himself on his back to the nearest town where he can sell the ore he has found.

Just a few short shots convey Daniel’s greed, ambition, determination, and isolation. His broken leg reflects the injuries that he inflicts on himself in his greedy pursuit of wealth. His dragging himself back to town signifies his unflappable will that never relents in the face of opposition. His being alone reveals the isolation that results from these traits. Daniel’s greed and isolation feed each other, as he admits, “I want to earn enough money that I can get away from everyone.”

Daniel Plainview has no wife, yet he has a son. He inherits his boy, H.W., when the boy’s father, one of Daniel’s workers, dies while digging for oil. After H.W.’s father dies, Daniel is shown staring in consternation at the helpless baby. One might assume that Daniel raises H.W. as his own son out of compassion or benevolence. As the film unfolds, however, it becomes increasingly clear that Daniel is not an altruistic person. Daniel wants a young man to shape in his own image. He realizes that having a young boy at one’s side makes a salesman’s life much easier. In his first speech in the film, when Daniel makes a sales pitch to a rowdy group of villagers, he introduces “my son and my partner, H.W. Plainview.” When he introduces himself to the people of Little Boston, most of whose land he has recently acquired, he says, “I work side by side with my wonderful son, H.W,” and goes on to emphasize the value of family.

The people Daniel seeks to swindle–the towns folk whose land he wants to buy–find a single man much more predatory than a widower with a young son. Referring to H.W., a rival in the oil business tells Daniel that “Life must be easy when you’ve got such a cute face to carry around with you.” A single father raising his boy on his own is a far more noble figure than a profiteering bachelor. The same man even jokes with H.W. about his share in his father’s business: “I’ll be your lawyer if you need to draw up some contracts. Make sure you don’t get swindled, boy. Get half of what your dad’s makin’.” Daniel accepts the obligation of raising H.W. with an eye to the long-term payoff. Adopting H.W. is not an act of charity, but an investment. When he is asked about his wife, Daniel readily replies, “She died at childbirth . . . It’s just me and my son now.” What Daniel seems to enjoy most about H.W. is having a sidekick, a younger version of himself to share his scheming. Daniel cannot abide those who oppose him, however, and as a schism develops between father and son, Daniel’s apparent affection for H.W. turns to spite.

Early in the film, Daniel obviously enjoys teaching H.W. about the oil business. Yet, once H.W. is cut off from Daniel’s commanding voice, their relationship fractures. Too close to the derrick when it first erupts with oil, H.W. loses his hearing. As H.W. realizes “I can’t hear my voice,” the geyser of oil catches fire. Despite the protests of the terrified H.W.–“Don’t leave me”–Daniel leaves his son to deal with the burning oil. Yet, no one is in immediate danger from the fiery plume. In fact, when Daniel leaves H.W. all he does is give a few orders, and then watches the fountain of burning oil with glee. He triumphantly exclaims, “There’s a whole ocean of oil under our feet, and no one can get at it except for me.” The infernal image of the flaming jet of oil seems to embody Daniel’s insatiable envy, always burning with the desire for more. As they watch the oil burn, Daniel’s right hand man, Fletcher Hamilton, asks if H.W. is okay. Daniel replies, “No he isn’t,” without a trace of tenderness in his voice. Fletcher immediately rushes off to check on H.W.; Daniel remains fixated on the geyser of oil, and all the wealth it will bring him.

Daniel quickly becomes frustrated that H.W. can no longer understand him. “Can you hear me? Can you hear me in there?” Daniel says. Because he cannot explain to H.W. what is happening, he has to wrestle with him so that a doctor can examine the boy’s ears. H.W.’s deafness is the true test of Daniel’s feelings toward his adopted son. His impatience and lack of empathy reveal that his affection for H.W. only lasts as long as H.W. is useful and submissive to him. He tells H.W., “I can’t stay here with you all day. I have to take care of our business.” In a scene parallel to an earlier one in which Daniel dips the baby H.W.’s bottle in whiskey to quiet him, Daniel forces H.W. to drink milk mixed with whiskey, so that he will sleep. H.W. clearly does not want to drink it, but Daniel forces him to do so, holding the bottom of the glass.

When Henry suddenly appears, claiming to be Daniel’s half-brother, H.W. realizes that he is not the man he claims to be, but Daniel does not. Perhaps Daniel accepts Henry’s story because he is so accustomed to lying, to bending the truth as he wishes, that he can no longer discern between truth and falsehood. Or, perhaps, he is so glad to have a new junior partner to replace the now useless H.W. that he relaxes his suspicion. Henry’s arrival perfectly coincides with H.W.’s deafness. Daniel is glad to take Henry under his wing because the man is a lesser version of himself. He relies on Daniel fully, and thus Daniel is not threatened by him. H.W. cannot tell his father that Henry is an imposter, so he shows him symbolically by creating a trail of oil to Henry’s bed and lighting it on fire. Daniel does not perceive the meaning in H.W.’s sign-act, however, and soon puts him on a train to a school for the deaf. Daniel boards the train, but leaves before it departs. When the train rolls out of the station and H.W. realizes that his father has abandoned him, he calls out to him. Daniel walks away, deaf to his son’s plaintive cries. Henry now fully replaces H.W. as Daniel’s sidekick.

Even after H.W. returns, the rift between father and son remains. Daniel embraces him, but H.W. hits his father several times, clearly still angry at being sent away without explanation. Daniel makes no effort to learn sign language. He simply wants his son to be fixed, and grows increasingly impatient with H.W.. Mary Sunday, however, learns sign language eagerly from H.W.’s tutor. When they grow up, H.W. and Mary are married. While Daniel, like many hearing people, stigmatizes his son’s deafness, Mary embraces it.

As the film nears its end, the adult H.W. visits his father. Daniel has descended into decadence. He lives in a luxurious home, shooting at household objects with his pistol out of some combination of rage and boredom.

H.W. sits across from his father. He says, “This is very hard for me to say, but I will tell you first: I love you very much. I have learned to love what I do because of you. I am leaving here. I’m going to Mexico. I am taking Mary and I am going to Mexico . . . It will only be for a time. For me to do my own drilling and to start my own company.” Daniel responds to H.W.’s honest, loving sincerity with scorn. Instead of recognizing his son’s legitimate desire to go out on his own, he says, “This makes you my competitor.” Earlier, in a rare moment of self-understanding, Daniel admits to Henry: “I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.”

This sense of competition, that life is a zero-sum game in which there can only be one winner and no cooperation between allies or true friendship rules Daniel’s life. It is the result of his boundless ambition. This animosity toward others allows Daniel only two possible relations with other people: enemy or subordinate. His enemies, such as Eli, he treats with contempt. He is only capable of showing affection toward those who remain utterly subordinate to him. Therefore, when H.W. announces his desire to go out on his own, he irrevocably moves from the category of subordinate to that of enemy in Daniel’s mind. Although the film does not reveal the events between this scene in 1927 and the earlier parts of the film taking place in 1911, it is clear that the relationship between Daniel and H.W. has deteriorated in the intervening years.

Whereas H.W. “would rather keep you as my father than my partner,” Daniel refuses to even remain H.W.’s father. Daniel maliciously disowns H.W., saying “You’re not my son” and “You’re an orphan.” Daniel projects himself onto H.W.: “I should have seen this coming. I should have known that under this all these past years you’ve been building your hate for me piece by piece. I don’t even know who you are because you have none of me in you. You’re someone else’s. This anger, your maliciousness, backwards dealings with me. You’re an orphan from a basket in the middle of the desert, and I took you for no other reason than because I needed a sweet face to buy land.” Here Daniel admits what the film has already suggested: he adopted H.W. out of opportunism rather than charity. Daniel’s words, though directed at H.W., are an accurate assessment of his own character–he is angry, malicious, and double-dealing. He is a creature of spite and envy with no loyalty even to H.W.. While Daniel accuses H.W. of being hateful, it is Daniel who builds up his hate piece by piece until it is an impenetrable fortification. Earlier, he admits to Henry that “I’ve built up my hatreds over the years little by little.”

Daniel Plainview vs Eli Sunday

The relationship between Daniel and H.W. is contrasted with that between Abel Sunday and his son Eli. Daniel is domineering, controlling, and ruthless; Abel is weak-willed, foolish, and impotent. Daniel always speaks firmly; Abel has a perpetual quiver in his voice. Daniel controls H.W. for most of the film, but Abel cannot rule Eli.

After being humiliated by Daniel, Eli finds someone weaker than himself–his father–to humiliate. Still covered in the mud through which Daniel dragged him, at the dinner table, Eli calls his father lazy and stupid, mocking him for being swindled by Daniel and letting him “walk all over us.” Eli tells Abel, “Do you think God is going to come down here and save you for being stupid? He doesn’t save stupid people, Abel.” He then crawls across the table to assault Abel, who can only cower helplessly. Eli forces his father to the ground, berating him for being gullible and allowing Daniel to buy their land. Abel begs Eli to stop, but Eli covers his father’s mouth with his hands. In this scene, Eli actually imitates Daniel. As Daniel humiliates him, so he humiliates his own father. Daniel has become Eli’s role model and father figure, albeit an abusive one.

Daniel and Eli are more alike than either would care to admit. Each tries to manipulate others to gain the greatest advantage for himself. Daniel is simply better at it than Eli. While Daniel uses his expertise in drilling for oil to get rich, Eli uses his rhetorical ability to gain power as a preacher. His church is called the Church of the Third Revelation because he has crafted the persona of a prophet; his words ostensibly come directly from the Holy Spirit to reveal truths not found even in the scriptures. Eli speaks of the “new spirit” inside of him, and purports to cast an arthritis-causing demon or “ghost” out of an old woman. He softly chants, “Get out of here, ghost,” over and over, his voice gradually growing louder and his gestures more exaggerated. At the crescendo, Eli pantomimes throwing the evil spirit out of the door of the church, and triumphantly announces its departure. He then dances with the old woman to the adoration of his congregation. Daniel’s commentary–that the exorcism was “one goddamn hell of a show”–is apt.

Daniel and Eli alike use their words–and a pliable relationship with the truth-to cajole and coerce others into doing as they want. As Eli uses religious language to control his congregants, so Daniel uses the language of commerce to manipulate the people of Little Boston. Daniel, too, uses Christian rhetoric to manipulate the pious people of Little Boston, frequently referring to God’s blessings in his public speeches. When Eli’s brother Paul asks Daniel what church he belongs to, he says, “I enjoy all faiths. I don’t belong to one church in particular–I like them all–I like everything.” To like all faiths is to follow none of them. Daniel believes in nothing but his own self-interest. He will adopt whatever jargon or buzz words necessary to ingratiate himself to those around him. He could fake devotion to any religion. If Daniel adopts Christian language to please those around him, then so does Eli. The film’s ending reveals his devotion to God to be no less of a charade than Daniel’s.

The power struggle between Daniel and Eli begins as Daniel negotiates the purchase of the Sundays’ land from Eli’s father, Abel. While Abel acquiesces to whatever Daniel suggests, Eli seeks to get more money for their land. Abel has no idea what a fair price for his land would be, but Eli knows the market value–$6 an acre. Abel does not realize that Daniel is fleecing him, but Eli does. Eli wants $10,000 for his church, though more to enhance his personal prestige than out of piety. Daniel offers $5,000. Daniel speaks to Abel coaxingly, but his tone grows spiteful when he addresses the interloping Eli, who is costing him money. Abel believes that God has sent Daniel to them, and that his offer of $3,700 for their land is a gift of Providence. Daniel plays off of Abel’s feelings, claiming that “the good Lord’s guidance” brought him to the Sunday ranch.

Their rivalry continues as Eli seeks to make converts of Daniel’s workers. Eli wants to bless the first oil well in Little Boston. Daniel agrees in order to appease Eli. During the ceremony, however, Daniel does not call upon Eli to bless the well, which he names after Eli’s sister, Mary. Eli asks Daniel to introduce him as a “proud son of these hills,” and Daniel mocks Eli by referring to his sister as a “proud daughter of these hills.” Daniel finishes with “God bless these honest labors of ours,” and sends H.W. to start the drill.

The contest of wills between Daniel and Eli escalates to physical violence when Eli tries to hold Daniel to his promise to give $5,000 to the Church of the Third Revelation. Eli asks for the money; Daniel slaps him in the face several times. Daniel continues to hit Eli, taunting him about claiming to be a “healer and a vessel for the Holy Spirit.” Eli’s voice becomes shrill as he continues to demand the money. Eli crawls away, but Daniel drags him by the hair into a pool of mud. Daniel pushes Eli down into the mud. He straddles the shrieking Eli and covers his face and hair with mud. He says, “I’m gonna bury you underground, Eli.”

Eli gains a victory over Daniel, however, when Daniel’s ambition to build an oil pipeline forces him to acquiesce to Mr. Bandy’s desire for him to be “washed in the blood of Jesus Christ.” Since Bandy owns the land on which Daniel needs to build his pipeline, he is forced to endure humiliation at Eli’s hands. Bandy will only let Daniel use his land if he is baptized by Eli at the Church of the Third Revelation. Despite offering first $3,000 and then $5,000, Daniel cannot negotiate with Bandy. He insists that Daniel be baptized by Eli.

This scene is a performance for Daniel and Eli alike: Daniel performs a false contrition; Eli performs the role of the charismatic preacher. Eli makes Daniel get on his knees before the church, and hits him repeatedly to expel Satan from his body. Eli forces an obviously furious Daniel to admit that he is a sinner, and to beg for the saving blood of Jesus–“I want the blood. Give me the blood, Eli.” Eli makes Daniel admit that he has abandoned his son. Something cracks in Daniel a bit when he confesses that he has abandoned his son. This is one of the few moments in the film during which Daniel expresses a hint of remorse. Three times he yells loudly that he has abandoned his son. For an instant, the power of the ritual seems to draw Daniel into a genuine confession of sin. Eli drags Daniel’s conversion on as long as he can, continuing to slap him to drive out the devil. He clearly relishes his moment of triumph over Daniel. After they pour water over Daniel to baptize him, Daniel mutters, “That’s a pipeline.”

Their final confrontation comes years later in the film’s final and most chilling scene. Eli leaves Little Boston, achieves some measure of success only to apparently lose all of his investments when God “failed” to warn him of a “panic in the economy,” and returns to Daniel desperate for money. Eli has been working in radio. He is more worldly now, dressed in a suit, with a gaudy cross around his neck. He pours himself a drink, though he condemned the evils of alcohol when he was younger. Mr. Bandy has died, and Eli seeks to negotiate the sale of Bandy’s land to Daniel. Eli thinks Bandy’s thousand acres will be tempting to Daniel. Daniel uses the opportunity to humiliate Eli one final time. He demands that Eli admit that he is a “false prophet and that God is a superstition.” Moreover, Daniel wants Eli to say it with the theatrical voice he uses in his sermons. He prompts Eli to say it over and over again, each time with more zeal. Eli speaks to the empty bowling alley in Daniel’s mansion as if he were preaching to his congregation. Daniel then reveals to Eli that the oil from Bandy’s land has already drained into the surrounding areas, which Daniel has long owned. This is Daniel at his purest–rejoicing in the humiliation of one weaker than himself. His last trump played, Eli seeks Daniel’s pity. Daniel exults, “Did you think your song and dance and superstition would help you, Eli? I am the Third Revelation!” Eli begs for Daniel’s forgiveness, but Daniel will not be deterred. Daniel relishes his final victory over Eli, mocking him relentlessly before beating him to death with a bowling pin. In this final scene, Eli is not only unmasked as a false prophet, but as a failed imitator of Daniel. He is a lesser version of Daniel, who seeks the same control over others through rhetoric and deceit, but lacks Daniel’s skill. Just before Daniel murders him, Eli declares the he and Daniel are old friends and even brothers–father and son is more like it.

The last two scenes–Daniel’s disowning of H.W. and his murder of Eli–essentially parallel each other. Neither H.W. nor Eli is Daniel’s son by blood, but each has stood in that relationship to him, and he has betrayed them both. H.W. and Eli each imitate different aspects of Daniel’s life: H.W. goes into the oil business, while Eli emulates Daniel’s penchant for deception. Yet, H.W. understands and rejects that which is evil in his father, whereas Eli does not.