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

[noisewar]

I'm very gratified to read a film critic's analysis that really go to the core of this character study. I wanted to share my essay on the movie with you since I tried to detail line by line what you point out so clearly is all about blood relations:

http://my.opera.com/noisewar/blog/2008/01/28/therewillbeblood

[Joe]

Excellent essay. I couldn't agree with you more when you say that people who think Daniel's coming off the rails at the end doesn't work haven't been paying attention. When I first heard that some people were having that reaction I was shocked (and frankly, still am). The perfect ending to a perfect film. TWBB is truly deserving of its accolades (including NOT winning the Oscar, which tends to be the case with the best film of any given year).

[justin]

the relationship between daniel and hw is so intriguing to me and has been extremely hard for me to come to terms with since watching the film. i find it hard to believe that he didnt love hw but why exactly does he act so cruely to him in their final scene together? i just cant seem to accept the fact that he was so coldhearted as to only use the boy for furthering his business aspirations. and up until he goes deaf, i dont see any point in which daniel doesnt genuinely love the adopted hw as if he were his biological son. and when he is reunited with hw following the killing of the fake henry, he appears to be attempting to make up for abandoning hw on the bus and clearly feels guilty about doing so by his proclamations at the baptism. or at least thats how i saw it.

could someone please elaborate, this is driving me crazy. thanks.

[Sonora]

I think Daniel's feelings for HW are a mixed bag of paternal affection, age-inappropriate partnership, boss-subordinate relations and also seeing and using HW as a prop and a tool in his business dealings to ingratiate his way into his small-town audiences into thinking that he is a family man just like them.
But two events precipitate the loss of tenderness and paternal affection leaving only the undesirable feelings behind.
The first event: when HW goes deaf. His material value to his father declines because his father can no longer relate to him as a business partner and use him as a sounding board for his business ideas. Daniel has to become far more tenderly parental and nurturing than he ever was before in oder to take care of a deaf child. But his oil-fields are his true children that he nurtures and raises. And so Daniel is unwilling to shift his feelings of paternal love from his oil fields to his son. He feels immense guilt at abandoning the boy, but the guilt does not move him enough to actually want to nurture the child.
Second, HW gets a sign language teacher who can actually converse with him. Notice that Daniel does not learn sign language and is contemptuous of it. Daniel feels intense jealousy towards the sign language teacher/interpreter. Because this man can actually communicate with his son in a way that Daniel will not learn. Daniel will not learn sign language because he feels a sense of entitlement toward speech communication. Rather than seeing the son's deafness as a tragedy that primarily affects his frightened child, he sees the deafness as a defect that disappoints him. Since Daniel sees the boy as defective, he sees sign language as a way of making allowances for a pesky defect that ought to go away on its own if the boy had any strength of character. Daniel's conceit of himself is that he has a lot of mental strength that lets him triumph over anything that holds him back. And that conceit stands in the way of him making any real connections with people because Daniel has contempt for vulnerability.
He spews his contempt for his son's vulnerability at the end of the movie. But he clearly has lost any vestige of humanity by then and has become loathsome.
The loathsomeness comes over him because ultimately as human beings, we are all vulnerable to the vagaries of fate and time. And what makes someone great is not triumphing against anyone who stands in one's path in a ruthless, callous and unscrupulous way like Daniel. Daniel had only one restrictive and misanthropic definition for greatness.
He was a true embodiment of a Puritan and materialistic culture that saw anything vulnerable and that could not contribute towards financial gain as useless and contemptible.

[Me]

did Daniel kill Paul?

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