Meticulous, intense, huge, intimate, bleak, enigmatic. These are just a handful of the words that dance in my mind as I reflect on There Will Be Blood. PT Anderson picks right up where he left off in Magnolia, both with intensity and depth of characters. While I recently wrote some about The American Dream as it relates to The Wire, PT Anderson attacks the concept in a very different way than David Simon. If The Wire is asking whether or not America can afford the American Dream, There Will Be Blood is asking whether we, as individuals, can afford it. Can our souls afford our “prosperity”? Can it really provide the happiness (or even peace) we so desperately seek? Is The American Dream simply self-centeredness, mixed with self-reliance, cloaked in patriotism? Does that ever satisfy us? This film takes us deep inside what it means to grab onto that dream with hands covered in blood, dirt, and oil.
The film's main character, Daniel Plainview, captures so much of the sentiments of the film during his sole honest conversation with his newly found brother saying, “When I look at people, I just don’t see much to like…..I’ve built up my hatred for them brick by brick.” And while shades of Into The Wild can be seen in Plainview’s distaste for people, we are only left to wonder what has made this man the way he is. If Chris’s (Into The Wild) solitary journey towards Alaska is a monologue for why we need companionship, this movie serves as a sterling picture of what a solitary life looks like lived in the midst of people.
Paul Dano plays the charlatan preacher very well, but is really dwarfed by the enormity of Daniel Day Lewis. Yet with Lewis’s character being such an awful person throughout the film, we find ourselves strangely taking sides with him in the midst of the continuing conflicts between the two showmen. Why is it somehow easier to have disdain for a false prophet than a greedy oilman? CS Lewis once wrote that of all bad men, religious bad men were the worst, and this feels very true towards the end of the film. If nothing else, Plainview is committed to who he is. While Chris’s character in Into The Wild struggles with whether or not he needs people, Plainview suffers no such affliction. Contrary to John Donne’s statement, Plainview does think he is an island. And if he isn’t, he will claw his fortune out of the earth and make himself island, or die trying.
In the end, we are left to wonder, what does Daniel Plainview really want? Is it money? Power? Control ? An odd company of misery? The odd component of the film is that in the end, Plainview is still somewhat of an enigma to us, and we are never quite sure of his motives. While few of us can really relate to the particulars of Plainview’s life, it is impossible not to ask yourself throughout the film, ‘What am I after?’ Will it satisfy me? What is a life well lived? Why do I do what I do? When do I give up on something more? We are left to ponder whether or not Plainview has ever asked these questions, or possibly he has but has come up with different answers than we would. Or maybe he has given up on them entirely, and this is where he is left.
In this Oscar season, the film is a must see, and is one of the darkest, dystopian tales this side of Citizen Kane.
