Well, after reading analyses of this movie Blackadder, Policraticus, and Nate, I thought you all needed…. a fourth review! I saw this last night, and found it very powerful, despite it dragging at times (it needed some crisper editing). Set in the oil fields of turn-of-the-century California, it tells the tale of Daniel Plainview, a pioneering oilman. In every way, Daniel (played superbly by Daniel Day Lewis) captures the essence of the American rugged individualist myth. There is no dialogue at the start of the movie, as we focus intently on this one person digging alone in a ramshackle mine, desperate to draw wealth from an earth that seems reluctant to give up its fruits. We see him crawling out of a mine after an accident, clearly with one leg broken, and somehow maneuvering himself across an endless desert expanse to claim his financial reward. And this sets up the character of Daniel. He will stop at nothing to make money. When his co-worker is killed, he takes his baby son with him, simply as a pretty face to enable him to buy leases from poor landowners, selling himself as a “family man”. The end always seems to justify the means.
And then Eli steps into the picture. Eli is the son of one of the poor ranchers that sells land to Daniel, with the promise that the oil wealth would make them all rich. Eli, though, has his mind set on God, or the God of the peculiar cultish church he has founded in the town, a church based on apocalyptic images of an eternal struggle between good and evil, God and demons, righteous and damned. Eli desperately wants Daniel to come to his church. He also wants Daniel’s money to build his church. Finally, it turns out that one old farmer — the last holdout– will only sell his land to Daniel if he comes to the Church, confesses his sins, and “washes himself in the blood of Christ”. Daniel is cold, calculating, and practical, and the fervent emotionalism of the Church clearly disgusts him. And yet, off he goes, getting on his knees to say what needs to be said– simply because he knows he can now build his precious pipeline to the sea and get rich. Eli knows this too. Deep down, he knows Daniel is faking, but desperately wants to believe Daniel is being genuine– he wants to take the money in good faith. In turn, this experience proves too much for Daniel. Wrapped in guilt over his adopted son– caught in an explosion that rendered him deaf, Daniel had little use for the boy, and had him shipped off to a distant school– he draws in on himself, becoming more unpredictable, more mercurial, more violent.
Years pass, and as Daniel’s wealth increases, his spirit diminishes, until he is like a shadow of his former self, Saruman reduced to Sharkey. He has become pitiable. And at the end, Eli comes to see him once more, desperate for money. Daniel finds him utterly pathetic, and, in a moment of rage, bludgeons him to death. And so there was blood.
For me, this movie represents the dynamics of the uneasy and twisted relationship between American capitalism and American religion. Daniel is the ultimate American individualist, with a single-minded determination to make money. He uses people for his own ends. Nothing can get in his way. He knows that something is not quite right with his life, though, and he can feel genuine guilt, but he never addresses his greed and selfishness as the cause of his problems. He knows the Church as it exists provides no remedy. For its part, Eli’s church represents that part of American protestantism that has accommodated itself to the church of manna, turning a blind eye to structural sin in society. Eli knows Daniel is playing him, but he needs Daniel. He needs the “progress” that Daniel can provide. He is a weak figure. Daniel too needs Eli for the cover of respectability, at least to a point. But this symbiosis is a most unhealthy one, and its violent end comes as no surprise.
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