After rewatching the movie, I both see why some critics found There Will Be Blood's ending underwhelming...and why I think it's perfect.
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2007 is a fascinating year in movies. On the one end, the box office was ruled by a series of underwhelming sequels and blockbusters including a third Shrek movie, the end of the original Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, Spider-Man 3, The Bourne Ultimatum, and even National Treasure 2 (in case the year of trilogies was getting you down). On the other end, it was also a great year for critically acclaimed modern classics, many of which made money, including No Country for Old Men, a rare great Best Picture winner, Michael Clayton, Eastern Promises, Atonement, Gone Baby Gone, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, American Gangster and Once. Towards the top of that list is Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, which earned a heap of awards and nominations including another Oscar for Daniel Day-Lewis.
And much like it's primary competition for Best Picture at the Oscars, No Country for Old Men, the film ends on a seemingly abrupt note with our protagonist Daniel Plainview offering up his most infamous quote (the "I drink your milkshake" speech) and then beating a man to death. It's the most contentious aspect of the film, that many otherwise consider to be a masterpiece, and was considered a weak spot by many high profile critics of the time, including Roger Ebert.
After rewatching the movie, I both see why some critics found the ending underwhelming...and why I think it's perfect. So let's dig into the ending, why some will roll off of it, and why I think it works perfectly.
The Ending
Taking place about 16 years after the lion's share of the films events, we catch up with oil man Daniel Plainview who is living a life of luxury and alcoholism. His son H.W. has married Mary Sunday and asks for a small favor. Dissolve their partnership so he can move and start his own drilling company. Daniel mocks him and H.W. leaves his life presumably for good. Trust me this is all very important.
Daniel is then visited by Eli who has fallen on hard times and asks if Daniel will partner with his church in drilling a property. After tricking Eli into renouncing his faith, Daniel callously reveals that he's already drained that property before chasing Eli around his in-home bowling alley and beating him to death before he announces "I'm finished." End scene. End movie.
Daniel is then visited by Eli who has fallen on hard times and asks if Daniel will partner with his church in drilling a property. After tricking Eli into renouncing his faith, Daniel callously reveals that he's already drained that property before chasing Eli around his in-home bowling alley and beating him to death before he announces "I'm finished." End scene. End movie.
Why So Many People Don't Like It
I'll be quick to admit that I didn't like this ending when I first saw the movie. The main reason is how it feels compared to the rest of the movie.
At 158 minutes, There Will Be Blood is in no hurry to tell its story and often revels in teasing out the tension in individual moments and relationships. As an example, it takes about 30 minutes between Daniel's fake brother arriving on-screen and being suspect as hell, before Daniel even seems to consider that he's not the real deal.
So Daniel losing what little family he has left and ending perhaps the last grievance he has left in his life in less time than that feels abrupt and ends without a feeling of resolution.
So Daniel losing what little family he has left and ending perhaps the last grievance he has left in his life in less time than that feels abrupt and ends without a feeling of resolution.
Not to mention the fact that Day-Lewis and Paul Dano play this scene to the rafters with all semblance of nuance stripped bare for animalistic instincts.
Which can feel both too big and somehow too small for what has otherwise been an epic tale of greed, ambition, anger, and family. So why do I like it so much?
Daniel Plainview's Self-Perception
The baseline for Daniel Plainview seems pretty simple. He's greedy and ambitious. He wants to make a ton of money so he doesn't have to work again and is willing to wade through whatever nonsense he feels he has to, to get his wish. He has a firm understanding of the cutthroat capitalist culture he's a part of and has molded every aspect of his life and person to ensure his success. He's also a proud man who doesn't take lightly to perceived slights which could be saying the wrong thing, attempting to trick him, or perhaps making him confess to abandoning his child in front of a congregation (as Eli did).
My read on Daniel adds one more wrinkle.
Daniel is constantly at odds with who he imagines himself to be, and who he actually is. And nothing demonstrates that more than his relationship with H.W.
Daniel is constantly at odds with who he imagines himself to be, and who he actually is. And nothing demonstrates that more than his relationship with H.W.
Daniel takes in H.W. after an accident claims the life of H.W.'s real father and decides to raise the child as his own. Surface level this looks really altruistic, but also reads as something someone with a baseline understanding of moral obligation would do when a man working for him is killed with no mother around to speak of.
And while H.W. seems to have affection for Daniel and he seems generally supportive, in action Daniel uses H.W. as a smokescreen to sell himself to property owners as a family man with a family business. This is even called out by another oil man who meets him at the train station. That's easy to ignore as a man doing whatever he can to make his money and Daniel talks a big game about him and his son being in business together.
But the explosion that takes H.W.'s hearing, reveals Daniel's true priorities and character. Starting with one question...why was he there?
Even if you don't know the first thing about oil drilling, the audience already has two example of how a moment of carelessness or faulty equipment can lead to death. That's why H.W. became an orphan and a man has already been killed at this well. If Daniel's priority was being a parent, he'd keep H.W. far away from any well, let alone one that's new and likely unstable.
Once the explosion happens, Daniel does what he believes he should do and retrieves H.W. and pulls him away from the gushing well that's about to catch fire.
But then, as H.W. clings to his adoptive father and begs him not to go, Daniel rushes to check on his actual priority...the oil well. And within minutes he's celebrating the giant resource he's found. Before finally closing the well with explosives. And then going to comfort H.W. trying to soothe him to keep quiet.
From here, Daniel continues to make decisions that reinforce his priorities. As H.W. struggles, Daniel's wells pop up. And when H.W. decides to set fire to the home with Daniel and the Daniel's alleged brother, whom H.W. sniffs out as a fraud right away, Daniel sends H.W. away without telling him. What we'd expect from a cutthroat capitalist.
But it's how he reacts to charges about his parenting that I find most fascinating and revealing. Shortly after H.W. is sent away without prior knowledge, Daniel takes a meeting with Standard Oil. A meeting that is tense, but mostly cordial, until Daniel perceives a slight on his parenting. And he blows a gasket and decides he's not going to do business with Standard Oil anymore because he's so offended.
He's so pissed at this guy and this inference, that he goes out of his way to call this guy out in a fancy restaurant, once H.W. is back, and more or less lords his upcoming wealth and fame over this guy literally saying what a good father he is. His ego will not allow his self image to be anything but a stand-up father.
Then we finally see H.W. alone, learning about the oil drilling and learning to speak through sign language with his translator/tutor as Mary Sunday follows him. And then we hit the time jump.
The Meeting
The movie jumps straight from H.W. and Mary working around a well together learning sign language and then cuts to Mary signing her vows at their wedding. A lovely demonstration of love and commitment, and easily the nicest moment in a movie full of selfish people doing awful things.
Then we come to Daniel who is living in a mostly abandoned mansion, firing pistols at his possessions and sitting in his study when H.W. and his translator arrive.
And the difference between Mary's sweetness and care and Daniel's real self is glaringly obvious. Daniel demonstrates outright disdain for H.W.'s disability and pushes him to speak with his voice versus his hands going so far as to call his translator a puppet.
Guess being that loving father he insisted he was didn't involve learning sign language in the last 16 years, which he clearly could've done because we've already seen Mary do it. Oh and why does H.W. have this disability again? Right because of Daniel's carelessness.
Guess being that loving father he insisted he was didn't involve learning sign language in the last 16 years, which he clearly could've done because we've already seen Mary do it. Oh and why does H.W. have this disability again? Right because of Daniel's carelessness.
Daniel is also pissed because H.W. wants to leave the family business and start off on his own in Mexico with his new bride. Something an alleged, hard-working man should love for his son. But no. Daniel takes this as an insult to his ego. And the mask, which was barely there before, completely slips as Daniel reveals H.W.'s true parentage taunting his adoptive son as a "Bastard in a Basket." And how did H.W. become a bastard anyway? Once again, we look to Daniel's ambitions. The man killed while working for him.
When it came down to his pride and his money versus family, and finally in a situation where his public image doesn't matter, Daniel chose pride and money, as men like this always do. And here comes Eli, arriving at the exactly wrong time with Daniel barely able to move and only capable of spitting out hate for anyone who "wrongs" him.
Daniel and Eli
Daniel and Eli are cut from similar cloth. There are both ambitious, prideful men who seek out an angle that benefits them at every turn. Daniel's baptism really tells you all you need to know about these two. Daniel is only being baptized so he can build his precious oil pipeline and become wealthy (he's literally being blackmailed into doing this). And Eli doesn't have to baptize Daniel, but it does give him an opportunity for payback for prior humiliations at Daniel's hand.
As such, Eli uses an act that's designed to save souls, a baptism, and decides to humiliate Daniel by calling out all of Daniel's sins, forcing him to account for them in public, and hitting him across the face, exactly like Daniel did.
They are both using this moment for self-fulfillment, which is very obvious in Daniel's case since he seems to be playing along with Eli. Almost taunting him saying "good for you, getting your shots in boy." And the two, basically never see each other again, since Eli leaves to become a missionary and Daniel retreats from society, until now.
And Eli is doing something he's never done before. He's coming hat in hand, begging for Daniel to make a land purchase for the church in Little Boston that's suffering through the Depression (contrary to what Daniel promised them years ago). So Daniel offers up an "equal" trade, for the baptism clearly, in his eyes. Eli renounces his faith and he'll buy the land. He badgers and bullies Eli until he recants his faith and then...the milkshake speech. It's a merciless victory lap over a man, that by all accounts, is already losing the "game" Daniel was trying to win.
Because....ego above all else. And still...it's not enough. Because much like his false brother Henry, Daniel's humiliations cannot be forgiven. They must be eliminated. So he eliminates the last one by beating Eli to death with a bowling pin declaring "I'm finished."
All of his scores are settled. He's won, as far as he's concerned. Standing over a corpse in a bowling alley with no one to play with, where the only person addressing him/checking in on him is on his payroll.
There Will Be Blood's ending is one of the best demonstrations of where unbridled capitalism ends ever put to film. With one man lording over his wealth in a giant mansion, dying of alcoholism, alone. An alleged hero of capitalism who went from solo miner to oil tycoon. And...for what? For a family? For humanity? He's disowned his son. He's abandoned the town he swore to take care of. And he's shed every last sliver of himself that cared about morality and people by beating a preacher to death after making him renounce his faith, because he had the monetary leverage to do so and wanted to check .
All that's left, is what's always left when men like Daniel Plainview get what they want: an empty vessel with the lives left in their wake.
There Will Be Blood's ending is one of the best demonstrations of where unbridled capitalism ends ever put to film. With one man lording over his wealth in a giant mansion, dying of alcoholism, alone. An alleged hero of capitalism who went from solo miner to oil tycoon. And...for what? For a family? For humanity? He's disowned his son. He's abandoned the town he swore to take care of. And he's shed every last sliver of himself that cared about morality and people by beating a preacher to death after making him renounce his faith, because he had the monetary leverage to do so and wanted to check .
All that's left, is what's always left when men like Daniel Plainview get what they want: an empty vessel with the lives left in their wake.
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