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THERE WILL BE BLOOD
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Kevin J. O’Connor. Opens Fri, Jan 18.
4 1/2 Stars

What you’ve heard is true: Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood is a very, very good movie. Even if you don’t think this journey deep inside the blackening heart of turn-of-the-century oilman Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is the best film in Anderson’s oeuvre, you can’t deny that it’s the most controlled, the most austere, the least film-bratty and self-indulgent. With the unusual, dissonant orchestral score by Jonny Greenwood, Robert Elswit’s resourceful cinematography, and the towering central performance by Daniel Day-Lewis, it’s a Paul Thomas Anderson movie for people who hate Paul Thomas Anderson movies.

But one aspect of There Will Be Blood has starkly divided critics: the final scene, in which Plainview has a violent confrontation with Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), the young preacher who has been a thorn in Plainview’s side throughout the film. And so, instead of adding to the gusher of superlatives the film has already inspired, SEE editors Paul Matwychuk and Matthew Halliday got together after a screening of There Will Be Blood to compare their reactions to the ending. 

You read that right: this article will be discussing the final scene of this movie in great detail. So DO NOT READ THIS ARTICLE until you have already seen There Will Be Blood. 

Here’s our discussion.

Paul Matwychuk: Considering all the controversy surrounding the ending of this movie, I have to say, I was a little surprised by how not-completely-insane it turned out to be. I had read enough ahead of time to know that the film ended with Daniel Day-Lewis beating up Paul Dano in a bowling alley, but the way people were talking, I was expecting some kind of 10-minute long brawl—I was expecting the second coming of the alley fight from They Live.

Matthew Halliday: I guess I can understand where people would find it a little over-the-top and even comic—people were certainly laughing in the theatre where we saw it. But what happens seems in keeping with the character of Daniel Plainview and in keeping with the rest of the film.

PM: I’ve read a few critics who say there were really thrown out of the movie by the radical tone shift at the end—it bothered some of them so much that they even took it off their top 10 lists. But I’m not sure where they’re coming from; to me, it feels perfectly consistent with this escalating war of humiliations that these characters wage throughout the film. Maybe it’s more a function of the way Day-Lewis’ performance, which has been so centred and contained for most of the movie, suddenly goes way off the leash. He literally drools at one point.

MH: Well, he was drunk and he was just waking up, you know. Cut him some slack. [Laughs.] It’s interesting: the scene earlier, when Eli humiliates Plainview while baptizing him, is the only other moment where we really see Plainview doesn’t seem in complete mastery of the situation. And in that scene, he’s such a pathetic figure, but this perverse, misanthropic dignity still comes through. You just know he’s not going to let this stand. He’ll get his revenge, somehow, someday. The bowling alley scene is, I suppose, his revenge for his earlier humiliation at the baptism.

PM: It’s fascinating, because it’s not enough for these two guys just to get what they want; they have to rub the other person’s nose in their victory. They’ve got to grind their boot heel into their enemy’s face.

MH: They’re approaching their business from completely different points of view. Plainview is capitalism personified—he just wants to dig out the oil and make as much money as he can. Eli—at least in the beginning—is concerned with saving souls. Both Eli and Plainview are willing to sacrifice something that means a great deal to them for money, with Eli disavowing his religion and Plainview abandoning his deaf son. But Plainview’s actions don’t seem as hypocritical, because nothing matters to this guy as much as money—and besides, the kid isn’t really his son anyway. He’s not happy about doing it, but he’ll do it. For Eli to proclaim himself a false prophet just to save his own broke ass is far, far worse.

PM: Did you think Eli was the “false prophet” that Plainview forces him to confess to being? At first, I really thought he was a charlatan—I thought he was a sharp young guy who was using religion as a way of gaining power and influence in his community. But in that final scene, when the stock market crash has made all his investments worthless, he seems genuinely distraught at how God has apparently deserted him.

MH: Well, that’s why he’s a more complex character than Plainview. He’s religious, and he believes, but he also enjoys being a figure of stature. Look at the way Plainview denies him that pleasure when he blesses the well himself in front of the whole town, rather than letting Eli do it. Plainview is a straightforward capitalist—any so-called “dishonesty” he might commit is sort of beside the point. But at the end of the movie, Eli is willing to repudiate his God. Heavy.

PM: What did you think of Paul Dano’s performance? I’m kind of on the fence about it—in his big emotional scenes, his voice hits this strident, screechy pitch, almost as if he’s not completely in control of his performance the way Day-Lewis is. And Day-Lewis’ wrath has such power in that final scene—things seem to be building up to a real clash of the titans, but Dano seems pretty overmatched.

MH: But doesn’t Eli’s nebbishiness, and his youth, make the baptism scene even more humiliating for Plainview ? I don’t know: I think Dano is pretty compelling in those scenes where he’s chasing evil spirits out of his church. He’s possessed by a completely irrational religious fervour, and I don’t know if you’ve ever been to an evangelist congregation, but from what I’ve seen—granted, on TV—it doesn’t seem all that dissimilar.

PM: I know you’ve been rewatching all of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films in anticipation of this one. Did you notice any similarities between those movies and There Will Be Blood or any commonalities in theme?

MH: Not really—you could watch this entire movie and not realize you’re watching a Paul Thomas Anderson film. There are none of Anderson’s characteristic directorial flourishes, the fast pans or the quick, tight zooms. No cross-cutting between a huge cast of characters like in Boogie Nights or Magnolia. It’s been more than five years since his last movie, though, so who knows what he’s been up to in the meantime?

PM: It’s like the Coen Brothers with No Country for Old Men, where they didn’t use any familiar actors from their stock company. John C. Reilly is nowhere to be found here.

MH: Yeah, I think I probably should have been watching Daniel Day-Lewis’ old movies instead. This movie has more to do with Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York than anything in Boogie Nights.

PM: One thing this movie has in common with Anderson’s other films is the idea of an older professional taking an adoptive son under his wing—I’m thinking of Philip Baker Hall and John C. Reilly in Hard Eight or Burt Reynolds and Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights. And then the son often betrays or disappoints the father figure in some way, or breaks away from him.

MH: Yeah, and like Hard Eight and Magnolia, this one also has these scenes of hard-luck losers seeking advice or seeking redemption. Of course, in this one, there’s no redemption—everyone is scum.

PM: What did you make of the last line of the film: “I’m finished”? Does Plainview mean that he’s killed someone and so is probably going to be executed or hauled off to jail? Or does he mean he’s reached the end of some kind of mission now that he’s gotten rid of his lifelong rival?

MH: Could it have something to do with Plainview’s belief that God is a lie—a “superstition,” as he makes Eli say? Throughout the movie he’s confronted with obstacles to his drilling and business expansion, and it’s usually religious types who don’t want to sell their land to a heathen. Maybe killing Eli is the culmination of a battle he’s been waging his entire life, the last petty obstacle in his path done away with. Or maybe the meaning is more limited than that: his battle with Eli is ovfer, and he’s won. He’s beaten his head in with a bowling pin, for God’s sake! It’s over! I won!

PM: It’s certainly the first Paul Thomas Anderson movie where it ends and you go, “What? That’s it? It’s over already?”

MH: I know, it surprised me too. After two and a half hours, I still wanted more! Well, should we end on that note?

PM: Are we finished?

MH: I’m finished.