Father and Son[s]: Daniel Plainview, Patriarch

I open with the customary caveat that spoilers follow.

When I first saw the earliest trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, knowing very little about the film other than that it was adapted from an Upton Sinclair novel and that Daniel Day-Lewis was playing a turn-of-the-century oil man, I took the film to be largely about the contentious relationship between Day-Lewis’s character and said character’s son. And while I did not recognize the child actor playing the son, I did of course recognize actor Paul Dano, and I assumed that he was playing the son as a late teen/young man.

I was wrong, of course. But I was also right, in a sense.

The first son, is, of course, little H.W., played by Dillon Freasier in a performance of remarkable deftness, intelligence, and ease. We first see H.W. as an infant, and it’s pretty clear that the child really belongs to one of Plainview’s early drilling partners, a man who is killed by a falling bit in an accident, after which Plainview adopts the boy. Plainview’s inexperience with parenting is underscored with a rather funny and poignant—tender, you might say—bit wherein Plainview, befuddled by the crying baby, dabs some whisky (or some such spirit; Plainview is already a regular, if not heavy, drinker by this point) onto the nipple of the baby’s bottle before refeeding him with it. As Daniel Day-Lewis plays the scene, we see this is not some cynical calculation on Plainview’s part; he’s genuinely confused, and concerned, and seems to want to alleviate the child’s suffering. This is in marked contrast to later in the film, in which he pours a hefty portion of a spirit into a quarter glass of milk, and pretty much (and pretty spitefully) rams it down the now-deaf H.W.’s throat, so as to knock him out and have a better opportunity to get to know his newly-discovered kin, Henry (Kevin J. O’Connor). But this H.W. is a creature unknown to Plainview, as we’ll see.

Despite the fact that Plainview uses the ten-year-old-or-so H.W. as a kind of prop when seeking oil leases, announcing himself as a “family man” and introducing H.W. as his son and "partner," I don’t believe their relationship is counterfeit or that Plainview’s frequently expressed affection for H.W. is feigned. Their intimacy is signaled in many bits, including one wherein H.W. cuts Plainview’s hair (there’s a similar scene in Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, with Mathieu Amalric shaving Max von Sydow). (UPDATE: Enough commenters coming fresh from a screening have reported this bit to not appear in the film; the stills from this deleted scene are being provided by the studio, and mixed with my own faulty memory. While the haircutting bit doesn't apply, I believe my point still holds.) Plainview allows H.W. to sit in on meetings, and is not coy about letting H.W. in on some of his less-than-ethical business practices. “We’ll offer them quail prices,” he tells H.W. about his plan to obtain the oil-rich land belonging to the Sunday family, whose farm Plainview and H.W. have camped out on, on the pretext that they’re hunting the aforementioned bird. When he says this, he is not overly smug, or moustache-twirlingly avaricious; he’s doing what makes sense, and imparting to H.W. that this way of doing business makes sense. Note also that he says, “we’ll offer.”

And Plainview, with H.W. at his side, does offer Abel Sunday quail prices...and Abel quails that Plainview was sent by God. But Eli Sunday, the twin brother of Paul Sunday (Abel’s putatively prodigal son, who told Plainview of the oil, and who is completely absent from the movie after his first appearance in Plainview’s office), queers the deal. The young self-styled preacher knows what Plainview is after, knows it’s worth more than Plainview’s offering, and wants not only more than what Plainview’s offering but more beyond that—this church thing of his. Look at the rage Day-Lewis’ Plainview tries to contain when Eli reaches out to touch his arm. He has never been defied like this before, and in his mind, he knows he has an enemy for life, one he will try to deal with by various methods—the first being outright, contemptuous dismissal (as when Plainview pointedly snubs Eli at the dedication of the first well, which Eli had wished to “bless”). What Plainview does not know, at this point, is that he has just gotten himself a second son.

All father/son relationships, no matter how initially idyllic, turn at some point. Whether or not you buy the “kill the father” formulations of Freud or who you will, I think we all understand that the first way any child goes about establishing his or her own identity is by breaking away from the most beloved parent. We never get to see the break(s) in the relationship between H.W. and Plainview that would have been inevitable as H.W. approached adolescence and then manhood; events intervene to force the rupture. Namely, the discovery of a gusher that tells Plainview that Little Boston (this is the town of the Sundays’ ranch, the territory Plainview has most of under his belt) is going to make him a very rich man. The “blowing” of this gusher causes H.W.’s deafness (conveyed in one of the few portions of the movie which adopt the subjective point of view, e.g. the dropping out of the soundtrack as Plainview rescues the boy and carries him to safety), and renders him alien to Plainview. H.W. has been the only person Plainview has ever really confided in. Now he can’t communicate with him. Plainview’s exchange with his right hand man Fletcher Hamilton (Cieran Hinds) is telling in a number of ways. “Is H.W. okay?” Fletcher asks. “No, he’s not okay,” Plainview says. Soon, he looks again at Fletcher. “What are you so miserable about? We’ve got an ocean of oil under our feet…and only I can get at it!” Note the use of the first person singular here. Of course it suggests Plainview’s selfishness, callousness…but it also suggests a sundered partnership. Had H.W. been standing with Plainview and Fletcher, uninjured and whole, Plainview would have been speaking to H.W., and he would have said “we.”

And so for a time Plainview is beset by two unruly sons. Eli strides past the growing lake of oil to demand from Plainview the money promised for his church, and Plainview slaps the tar out of him…and also, after a fashion, anoints him in oil. The man claiming to be Plainview’s brother shows up, and provides Plainview with some moments of respite; it is at this point that Plainview “explains” himself, his dislike of “people.” The coming-off-the-rails stuff that follows will seem rushed to only those who haven’t been paying attention. Remember the swabbing of the baby bottle with whiskey. Recall that after the first well accident in Little Boston, Plainview has to be roused out of his sleep in the middle of the night…and that he’s sleeping in a heap on the floor. Plainview’s alcoholism points up that, his triumphs in the real world aside, his interiority has been inhabiting a world of its own making for quite some time.

Eli acts out and gets swatted; H.W. acts out, setting fire to Plainview’s cabin, but Plainview doesn’t hit H.W.. I don’t believe he can. That’s too intimate, and the intimacy is gone, at least from his end. He instead sends H.W. away. After which he is forced to endure humiliation in the form of salvation at the hands of Eli. And then when H.W. returns, sign-language teacher in tow, almost the first thing H.W. does is slap Plainview. This is why I reject the idea that all the movie's finale amounts to is some kind of "revenge" or "reversal': All these echoed actions and intimations of violence (note, Plainview’s promise to come to that Standard Oil man’s house in the middle of the night and cut his throat is solicited via Plainview’s inference that the Standard Oil man is criticizing how Plainview is taking care of the now-deaf H.W.) are corners in a labyrinth that eventually lead to the monster at its center, the bowling-pin wielding Plainview who, almost two decades after the main action of the film, destroys Eli Sunday after dispatching and disparaging H.W.

Is it true, as the whiskey-sweating Plainview declaims, that he never felt a thing for H.W.? (The adult incarnation of H.W. here is played by Russell Harvard.) Well, clearly, no. Because in another notable divergence from a largely objective and linear point of view, during this awful business Anderson cuts to some shots of Plainview and H.W. affectionately rough-housing in the presence of Mary Sunday, who Plainview rather ostentatiously “saved” from the abuses of father Abel, and who eventually marries H.W. These are real moments. Plainview is deceiving as he purges. All that is left to him, after H.W. departs, is annihilation. So it’s lucky for Plainview when the ruined but still breathing Eli Sunday shows up.

My friend Filmbrain has evoked Stanley Kubrick’s 2001:A Space Odyssey in discussing Blood, and specifically this primitive character apropos Plainview’s treatment of Sunday. I agree with him. But with all the talk of “drainage” and ingestation ("I drink it up!") in Plainview’s faux-pedagogical rant at Eli, I see ties to another famous image, an image replete with grotesquerie, horror, and very black humor…

This Goya painting is, of course, Saturn Devouring One of His Sons.

APPENDICES

1.

The first line of Repetition, by Alain Robbe-Grillet (translated by Richard Howard): "Here, then, I repeat, and I sum up."

The book's last lines: "In fact there would be someone, both different and the same, the destroyer and the keeper of order, the narrating presence and the traveler...elegant solution to the never-to-be solved problem: who is speaking here, now? The old words always already spoken repeat themselves, always telling the same sroty from age to age, repeated once again, and always new...."

See also the passage from Nick Tosches' Where Dead Voices Gather which serves as "the quote" for the great website If Charlie Parker Was A Gunslinger There'd Be A Whole Lot Of Dead Copycats.

2.
Lou Reed, with drummer Fred Maher, bassist Fernando Saunders, and the late, great guitarist Robert Quine: "Kill Your Sons."

3.
I understand this post lacks in the cheap laughs department (at least I think/hope it does). Here's something, I guess...

Comments

[Sam Adams]

In Plainview's climactic rant, he evokes the figure of the barely seen Paul Sunday, using his purported success as a tool to further Eli's humiliation. But a close listen seems to reveal that Plainview is fabricating as he goes, grafting traits from both HW and himself (and maybe even his faux brother, Henry) onto Paul. (Plainview says Paul's wells are producing at "five thousand dollars a week," exactly the same figure Plainview claims for his own wells in his first monologue.) Having proven unable to connect on any lasting basis with his surrogate sons and brothers -- and, of course, lacking even the hint of any sexual or romantic connections -- he finally invents his own heir as he invented himself.

[Glenn Kenny]

Indeed, Sam. Your idea of Plainview FABRICATING a "good son" in the person of Paul (who's not quite a prodigal, in that he never returns) is right on.

[don lewis]

Good post, GK...and good thoughts, Sam. But I thought the film had some serious kabbalist influences in the fil....oh,wait. My bad.

Seriously though....great stuff, but this is only a start, right? I mean...was there "really" a Paul or was it Eli pretending to be someone else? Or better....Eli as his messianic self couldn't possibly encourage Daniel to come pillage his town so he took on the personae of Paul in order to sell out with a clear conscience.

I also loved how simple the whole storyline is. In Daniels mind and in our minds looking through him, he's absolutely right in every decision and move he makes throughout. It may not be morally correct, but it's right to him. I just hope people don't try to boil this down as a heaby handed commentary on oil and big business....or kabbalists.

[khurram merza]

good review glenn kenny...

is this movie an accurate accounting of father/son relationship..vis a vis w/ur father or son (if thats not taboo). at least thats what it made me think of; regarding my father.....

and how does it compare w/the father/son aspect of ed tom and lewellen in NCFOM....

and thus r these 2 movies comparable?

doesnt daniel day lewis overwhelm the movie w/his acting..similar to the scorsese film about 1800s gangs of NY? or my left foot?

don lewis..
ask madonna or mleafer...kabbalah is everywhere. HA!

[khurram merza]

gk.. saturn devouring one of his sons..very apt, startling!

[George Wishart]

Paul and Eli Sunday are two separate people. That is a fact, Don. PTA has said that numerous times.

[Mike De Luca]

Without the rigidity of the business model that he has substituted for the framework of a normal life, his connection to H.W. simply can no longer function. Saw the film for the first time last night. "Barry Lyndon" sprawl with darkly comic punchline, sucked my brains out. Now I know your feelings on the Oscars, Glenn, but it would be rather cruel for Jonny Greenwood to be denied a nomination for his unnerving Ligeti-like strains based on his appropriation of previously-composed material from his "Popcorn Superhet Receiver", etc. And Dano...who knew he could be so oily? "You stupid old man!" And the bowling alley scene definitely furthers Kubrick comparisons, as it evokes the Peter Sellers-James Mason ping-pong confrontation from "Lolita". And the last scene between Plainview and Henry reminds me of something out of a Grimm fairy tale, I'm not sure why. But because of Anderson and Lewis, Daniel Plainview, the monster, will endure.

[jlichman]

just write your book now. and fill it with LOL-There Will Be Blood photos.

[Joel]

Although I totally got your back on the NCFOM ending, I'm definitely not buying Anderson's big finish. This is still a brilliant film, but set-up for his confrontation with Eli was half-baked, and the only sense that time has really passed was in Day-Lewis's performance. Dano made little or no changes to his character. And there was no provocation on his character's part, not even a little one that would have earned such a deliriously asymmetrical response from Plainview. The dialogue in that seen seemed like a first draft. I was actually embarrassed by the lines that Plainview had Eli recite. Did they have to be so on-the-nose? ("God is a superstition"?) In all, I would have liked another 15-20 minutes in the 1927 section, some scenes with Eli alone, showing us how he squandered his church with speculation. The connection between the two men would have been made with more clarity. Still a great film. But not an ending worth defending. Also, I think that Paul has a more prominent role in the novel, but I only flipped through it in the store instead of actually reading it.

[Hotspur]

In the cheap laughs department, and since we're discussing the miraculously conceived progeny of Daniel Plainview, how about this?

http://windinthetrees.wordpress.com/2008/01/01/movie-poster-of-the-year

[Alison]

I really liked this analysis of the ending, Glenn. I also felt that in his act of severing his relationship with H.W., Daniel lets him off the hook. With all the emphasis made on blood relations, the information that H.W. isn't actually related to Daniel might be seen as something of a relief to the character (in part, causing the line "I'm glad that I have none of you in me" to be spoken by H.W.). Obviously, the scene is more complicated than that, but I do think that's part of it (Daniel is also severing his own connection to what used to be "good" about him).

I also think the ending warrants an examination in relation to its setting - the film, in the 1927 section, has shifted to the leisure sphere, whereas every other section is almost entirely in the work sphere. Daniel can't handle life in the leisure sphere, and I think the film also works as an examination of what happens when the expectations of work in the relation to his life shift.

[Filmbrain]

Very nice piece, Glenn. I've thought quite a bit about the relationship between fathers and sons in the film, yet I'd not come up with anything concrete. This is certainly food for thought.

I see the final scene as an interesting parallel to the scene where Eli attacks his father -- both are classic bits of Freudian transference.

I wonder how much time is meant to have elapsed between H.W.'s exit and the bowling alley sequence. Is it the same day? Later that day? Weeks later?

Thanks for the shout-out as well.

[Tim]

I've seen the film twice now and neither time included the sequence with HW cutting Daniel's hair, mentioned in the above post. The only reason I'm familiar with it at all is because of the advertisement for the advanced screenings right before New Year's, where the scene seemed to be played in full. Is my theatre cutting it off the end of the reel, or is it just not in the final cut?

[Steve]

I didn't see it either, Tim.

Anyone else reading this stuff avidly, but feeling paralyzed at the mouth (or fingers) without a second viewing?

[Glenn Kenny]

I've seen the film twice as well, and I seem to recall the haircut shot as a dialogue-free one in the midst of the quail-hunting interlude...but admit that my memory could be playing tricks on me and I was attracted by the stil and the affinities it offered to the "Diving Bell" sequence. That said, even if the haircutting hot is not in the film, I still hold to my reading of the Plainview/H.W. relationship up until the point H.W. is stricken deaf.

[Craig P]

This was great to read, Glenn, after I finally saw the film last night - and already decided I need to see it again (though I'm not sure I'm quite ready to go through the ringer again so soon). Still trying to formulate my own opinions, and tried to make a start at that on my own blog, but I have what may be a stupid question...

Is everyone positive that Paul even exists? For a time I was actually feeling like he/Eli Sunday were twins in personality but one in physicality - some sort of multi-personality thing, especially in the oddball jealous way Eli behaved when Paul was brought up, and his battles with his own emotional demons. This could be a completely incorrect reading of it (and logistically there may be no way) but this was a sense I had, anyway. Any thoughts?

Great read here, thanks.

[Craig P]

I don't recall the haircutting scene at all, and just saw it last night, but do think Glenn's point still holds...

[sam]

Thanks for the great discussion, as always!

As far as the flashbacks with HW and Daniel at the end, I saw something else besides good ol' rough-housing. I saw a glint of disdain in Daniel's eyes when HW wanted to play, and when he shoved HW's head it carried a little more umph! Anybody else get that? Maybe since his cruelty towards his son was so fresh in my mind...

[Craig P]

Ah, never mind, didn't see George's post above. Well, I like my imagined interpretation, anyway. ;-)

[Peter Debruge]

I'm joining the TWBB conversation on this blog rather late, and given all the brains in the room, I'm sure someone's already raised the point of the title, but as I read it, "Blood" refers not to the act of violence in the final scene, but "family" or "kin." That's certainly reflected in the way he opens up to the false brother, the only person he believes to be genuine "blood" -- and the extreme way he deals with that deception later on.

Just as important as H.W. and Eli as non-biological sons is the discussion of fathers (I don't buy the idea that Eli becomes a second son, btw, for reasons I'll get into below). We never seen Daniel Plainview's father, but it seems quite evident to me that his relationship to his own father seems largely responsible for the way he deals with others (although I don't think the movie stoops to pop philosophy in explaining the reasons for Plainview's antisocial temperament).

Consider the way he intervenes when he learns the elder Sunday is beating his daughter. The lesson there: Plainview believes physical abuse is NOT an appropriate way to deal with children (a clue to the issues he has with his own father perhaps?). That complicates your thesis about Eli becoming a second son, since Daniel lashes out against Eli in two extreme fits of violence (of course, there's miles of road between an ideal notion of parenting and actual practice, but Plainview seems to follow a rigorous moral code). And if my memory of the film serves, while Daniel tolerates his son's slaps when they are reunited, he never once raises a hand against H.W.

But I appreciate this essay since it attempts to offer a unifying explanation for a film that, for all its awesome power and psychological intensity, never seems entirely decided as to what it is ABOUT. What is Daniel raging AGAINST exactly: Religion? Hypocrisy, as embodied by Eli? The Man, as embodied by the tycoons who offend him so? His unseen parents? (I'm fine with the enigma being unanswered, by the way. The mystery of what unravels Daniel Plainview fascinates me more than the explanation.)

Knowing what we do after our first viewing, there's one shot that threw me the second time around: When Daniel is courting the townspeople about taking control of their oil claim, the camera drifts over his right shoulder and focuses on H.W. standing there listening (the audio may even drop out to accentuate the move, I can't quite recall). At any rate, the shot implies that we're experiencing the scene from H.W.'s perspective (although obviously not his point of view). Why is that?

[craig keller.]

I saw the film tonight. This is all interesting and astute, but essentially these same reflections, ruminations, could have been induced in a careful reader (watcher) from a read of a paper screenplay. That's my biggest problem with the film at this point -- there's no cinema. For me, it's a step backward from 'Punch-Drunk Love' and even 'Magnolia.' I still like PTA a -lot-, but here was 'The Petrified Forest.'

Also, I have a hard time understanding what the point is in "reconstructing milieux" -- i.e., making oil derricks that look real and really work, spending millions doing so, etc. -- when the milieux serve no aesthetic purpose other than drawing a mass-audience "into the diegesis [story-world]." Maybe it's just a difference in sensibility -- I don't see aesthetic as a container for "story-content" in and of itself. When the derrick explodes c. 1911, then crumbles in a "canny" (<-film-crit cliché) foreshadowing of 9/11 and the fall of the towers in the arch-capitalistic era, the same effect or idea could be gotten across with a Sharpie drawing an oil-derrick on a piece of construction paper. Maybe the pleasure of Hollywood-diegeses is just dead for me now, and that's why I'd rather Moullet and Monteiro and Welles's 'Macbeth' at this point.

Hélas pour moi!

craig.

[craig keller.]

As a P.S., as I've mentioned to some friends tonight already, David Denby should basically be fired for a comparison of the artistry of 'TWBB' to that of Griffith and Ford. He clearly has no handle on what MAKES GRIFFITH GRIFFTH and what MAKES FORD FORD. It's not fucking "stories well-told that just had a camera 'aimed' at them and set in a 'western'ish' milieu," "shown from optimally expositional [or is that expositionally optimal?] angles."

It's like these idiots comparing Raymond Bernard to Jean Renoir.

craig.

[Glenn Kenny]

Craig, I found the "reconstructing melieux" to be essential to what is cinematic about it—but then again, I percieved it more in terms of misdirection than allegory (e.g., I'm not one of the "foreshadowing of 9/11" crowd—ugh). And while I'm not one to call for anyone to be out of a job, I found Denby's comparison to Ford and Griffith to be kind of dubious myself. Not that I don't think "TWBB" is pretty great; I just think it has about as much to do with Ford and Griffith as, say, Wallace Stevens has to do with Wordsworth. (That's part of what I mean about midirection, though...)

[Dan Yeager]

I'm not quite sure what Craig is saying here - or trying to say.
"there's no cinema"?
I just got back a little while ago from seeing the movie - and I don't recall the "haircut" scene - but that's beside the point.
Naturally, I'm still digesting it all; it's quite a feast. I'd been enjoying the comments/analyses, but Craig's have brought me up short.
My brother-in-law, with whom I saw the movie, did say that he didn't think it measured up to "Magnolia". (Neither of us has seen PDL.)
With that as a starting point, Craig, do you care to respond?

[don lewis]

I'm sure many of you have seen this....but it's pretty much the best site I've seen in a while...just for the sound clip alone:
http://idrinkyourmilkshake.com/