There will be blood. And by the end of the final scene, it is unmistakably clear what the film’s title was setting you up for. As you can probably guess, blood is one of this movie’s central themes, flowing like a stream of crude oil through the dark soul of our villain-protagonist, Daniel Plainview. Indeed, the finale scene invites you to draw parallels to scenes throughout the movie in which Plainview hacks voraciously at the earth to draw out the precious liquid. Like a drug addict, he needs his fixes of anything — oil or blood — to satisfy a compulsive thirst for victory.
Victory isn’t just limited to claiming supremacy as the keenest or wealthiest oil man. Plainview needs the moral victory too. Any obstacles are met with his full fury. Thus when a Standard Oil representative offers to buy him out, Plainview comes down on him with a threat to personally cut his throat in the middle of the night (freaking the bejezus out of him). He also completely circumvents Standard Oil and its railroad monopoly by (impractically) building a pipeline to the sea. There’s also the pesky little problem of Eli, the town’s charismatic teenage miracle preacher, who purports to hold moral sway over the town. In one darkly hilarious sequence, Eli publicly berates Plainview to confess himself a sinner until he does so, humiliatingly. Well, such a moment won’t be forgotten by our main man before the story ends.
In light of this guy’s depressingly sordid characteristics, is there any hope for him? P.T. Anderson has always been interested in exploring the redemptive power of blood relations, particularly father-son bonds. In this movie, Daniel Plainview comes close to showing worthy human qualities towards people he considers family — only to be enraged to find out his brother isn’t really his brother, or his adopted son wants to go off and start his own business. Perhaps this movie isn’t a story of moral absolution. Instead of through blood relations, Plainview’s ultimate redemption comes through bloody victory.
Other Thought: Leaving the theater after the movie, you have that sorta-unsettled feeling you get when you’ve just seen something disturbing. I think that disturbing thing in this case is Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance. Meaning the reason this movie felt so visceral had a lot to do with the fact that he was in it, and he essentially made the character of Daniel Plainview what it was — like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. So all that talk that’s going on about him and the Best Actor Oscar — no question, totally deserved. I know I pretty much didn’t talk about any of the other characters at all, but that’s not to their discredit. He was just clearly the heart and soul of it all.
