Film Score: Jonny Greenwood Cinematography: Robert Elswit
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Dillon Freasier, Paul Dano and Ciarán Hinds
Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against unlikeable characters. James M. Cain made a career out of those characters and he is one of my favorite writers. But one thing Cain always had was a plot, and the combination was potent. Left with nothing but Daniel Day-Lewis’s early twentieth-century lone-wolf robber baron was a little tough to take, and not entirely because of the character. The most dominating character in the film is actually played by Jonny Greenwood: the score. From the moment the film begins to the final frame, the score is an unrelenting wall of dissonance and tension. Daniel Plainview is almost warm and cuddly in comparison to the soundtrack. It’s a large part of the film and one that can’t be ignored in the final analysis.
The story is a simple one, of one man’s relentless pursuit of success for the sake of success. Nothing shows that more than Plainview pulling himself out of a mineshaft with a broken leg and crawling to the nearest town to be paid his three dollars for the gold ore he could haul out with him, before ever thinking about going to the doctor. The only other character to rival Plainview onscreen, and in the story, is the young evangelist Eli, played by Paul Dano. The contest of wills between the two men occupies the central part of the story. Surrounding that is the inconsequential, in comparison, relationship of Plainview to the orphaned boy he takes on as his own son.
The sense of realism in the film, especially in the character of Daniel Plainview, almost works against it. If you mute the sound it looks like something filmed on the Australian Outback. We almost expect to see Ned Kelly riding up with his gang. What we actually have, is Plainview, and he is not a dynamic character. He is the same in 1898 as he is in 1927, and we never know what he is thinking except in two instances. The first comes when he asks the negotiator for Standard Oil, who wants to buy Plainview’s oil fields, what he would do with his life if he sold the land, the implication being that he has no life outside of his business. The second moment comes with the man pretending to be his brother, and Plainview tells him candidly that he hates people, all of them. (And I don’t buy Roger Ebert’s contention that he hates himself by extension.) So it is left to the score, then, to fill in his emotions for us, the raw hatred of having to deal with people on a day to day basis continually grinding in our ears for two and a half hours. By the end, we know Daniel Plainview.
There Will Be Blood is not a great film, but it is a powerful one. Of that there can be no doubt. But there is far more to analyze than can be done here. The central conflict between Plainview and Eli is the driving force in the piece. The relationship with his son is lost once he disowns him, and it is only Eli who is left. By the end of the film, then, when that conflict is ultimately resolved, he utters the final words to his valet: “I’m finished.” What he is finished with, at last, is humanity, having destroyed his relationship with every person who was close to him in any way. Is the ending the dissipation of Plainview, the inevitable descent into the abyss? Far from it; it is instead, the attainment of all he had attempted, and the reward of freedom from human entanglement. And that, is powerful stuff indeed.
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