THERE WILL BE BLOOD

Daniel Plainview occupies almost every frame of 'There Will Be Blood', and in the hands of Daniel Day-Lewis, he becomes monolithic; a monument of America itself. His performance is enormous in almost every sense of the word, but while much has been talked about his masterful, gradual and careful path towards the film's magnificently histrionic ending, it's in the quieter moments that the full enormity of the character and the performance emerge. The concept of the American Dream hasn't even been conceived in the time period covered by the film, but the pioneering spirit - that idea of taking the land and making something of yourself and it - has already become part of the American mythos. Daniel has the intelligence, the charm and the determination to succeed in any endeavour he sets his eye on, but he also has a ruthlessness, a violence, a possessiveness. Another easy word to level at him might be greed, but I don't think that is ultimately his hubris. Greed is a grubby, selfish trait, where integrity and the care of others don't play into account. 'There Will Be Blood' has always felt to me like the middle chapter in the great cinematic trilogy on American power, preceded by 'Citizen Kane' and followed by 'The Social Network'. Daniel Plainview is cut from the same cloth as Charles Foster Kane and Mark Zuckerberg, men who begin with genuine conviction to make the world a better place but who are willing to relinquish their humanity in order to achieve their personal goal: the acquisition of power. Greediness may be a trait of these men, but it isn't greed that propels them. It is power - always power - and if one has to forgo their soul and hurt those they love, then so be it. The difference is that while Kane and Zuckerberg naturally move towards that end, the loss of Daniel Plainview's humanity tears his soul apart in front of our eyes.

Another theme at the heart of 'There Will Be Blood' links to this, that of fatherhood. The idea of being a good father is central to Daniel's view of himself. He openly shows love for his son H.W. Plainview (Dillon Freasier), referring to him as his business partner as well as his son. There is sternness in their relationship, but also tremendous affection. It isn't a coincidence that the first words in 'There Will Be Blood' come after Daniel decided to adopt the orphaned baby, after that miraculous shot of the infant reaching up to touch the man's grizzled face. At this point, where the man we see in this film has found a connection with another human being and consequently connected with his humanity, Daniel speaks, but with a careful, soft, almost inviting tone. H.W. is the key to Daniel's humanity, his one genuinely good act, and one that he cherishes. That same respect and affection he has for his son are there in his professional relationships, in the way he addresses the people of Little Boston as he buys up their land. For Daniel, a good father and leader is about integrity, something he intends to pass on to his son. This is why he chastises Abel Sunday for beating his daughter, but more so why he cannot connect with Eli. Both Daniel and Eli are the father figures to their community, but Daniel sees no integrity in Eli positioning himself as a healer; he doesn't believe him, sees straight through his theatrics and his posturing. What Daniel sees in Eli is a young man thirsty for power and influence, using the veil of religion to achieve his end and shield his intentions. That's not to say that Daniel doesn't desire the same, but he sees his actions as purer. At least when Daniel is putting on a show to dazzle his audience, he isn't selling something he can't deliver.

Just as is the case with 'Kane' and 'The Social Network', 'There Will Be Blood' is a portrait of the Great American Figure as a monster - but like those films, we must understand their humanity before the monster emerges. In many ways, the rise of Daniel Plainview is the more operatic and the more tragic. Kane and Zuckerberg make mistakes that lead to their damnation; it isn't so much Daniel's actions as much as his responses that ultimately seal his fate. Just at the moment of victory, a catastrophe occurs that hits Daniel right in his soul, rendering him inept as a father. It could be argued that the turning point of 'There Will Be Blood' is not the explosion that shatters H.W.'s eardrums, but the moment minutes later where he is begging his father to stay with him. Daniel could comfort his son, but instead chooses the oil, destroying his relationship with his beloved boy in one terrible instant. It's a decision that will haunt Daniel for the rest of his life - the knowledge that, when given a choice between his son and the oil, he will choose the oil. He is a disciple and a priest at the altar of capitalism, believing that industry and product are the absolute necessity for happiness, and as this tragedy leads to a further series of devastations and disappointments, it becomes all the clearer to Daniel that his humanity and his ambition cannot work together.

This realisation is the tectonic conflict of the film, and Eli's greatest weapon. Where Daniel has humanity in a state of collapse, it could be argued that Eli has almost none to begin with. His care for others is a performance, a series of pre-prepared symbols and phrases to give the illusion. At a moment where his guidance and empathy is needed, he instead demands money for the church from Daniel, and as a consequence, the monolith pounds the martyr into the mud. One commonality between the two men is that they cannot stand to not be in power, and when Eli is given the opportunity, he uses Daniel's one open wound against him. If Daniel will pound him into the mud, the earth, his playing field, his domain, then when the man steps into Eli's domain, he will pummel him with his words, force him to admit to his son's abandonment, Daniel's greatest shame. The moments where we see Daniel's terror and pain are fleeting and monumental, and none more so than as the man screams, "I have abandoned my child." In this moment, his pain erupts and Eli believes he has won, he has stabbed this man in the ribs with a hot poker and subjugated him to the Lord's (and ultimately his own) power.

And then Eli makes a terrible mistake. He strikes Daniel, just as Daniel had struck him - but impotently, with hardly a fraction of the force. He believes he is a man of power, and yet in this moment, very much an act of self-aggrandisement for the sake of his congregation, Eli reveals just how weak and petty he is, that he must make a man subjugate to him in order to feel powerful. But Daniel Plainview is a man of true violence, a man of true fury, the true Third Revelation, and as his grasp on the most precious strands of his life, his family and his son begins to slip through his fingers, so does his patience. "I've built up my hatreds over the years," he says to Henry Brands, the man pretending to his brother, "little by little... I can't keep doing this on my own... with these... people." And then he laughs, one of the darkest laughs in American cinema, and we see the man of violence and vengeance that is to come.

When that figure arrives, he does so with a biblical fury, and that fury will be just as squarely directed at himself as it will be at others. His casting aside of H.W. is as much an act of self-punishment, the fulfilment of his self-prophecy that he would one day fully fail his son, now a grown man in control of his disability and his destiny. Daniel is terrified of abandonment and loneliness, but if he is in control of how that fate is served to him (killing the pretender Henry, disowning H.W.), then he is in control of his pain. And God in heaven help those in his way, whether it be the blade to the heart of calling H.W. a "bastard in a basket" or beating Eli to death with a bowling pin, the long-awaited final battle between the pillars of religion and capitalism. In the end, one must annihilate the other, and where Eli performs his power, Daniel has become pure - pure rage, pure ambition, pure fury.

Daniel Plainview is the ultimate portrait of the madness of American power. He begins in a well-pressed suit with honeyed words and the promise of a better tomorrow and ends as a fetid, mad thing, a rabid rat in shredded robes, biting and scratching and annihilating anything that threatens the horde he has gathered for himself. 'There Will Be Blood' is both the simplest of parables and one of the biggest films in existence, as if it were adapted not from a novel, but from a chapter of a religious text, a new volume of the bible, set in the rise and fall of the industrial and modern age. Just as is the case with 'Citizen Kane' and 'The Social Network', it is a story told over and over again since the beginning of time, of the same terrible men committing the same terrible acts - but unlike those films, both of which feel so modern and immediate, 'There Will Be Blood' is as old as history itself. You can imagine unearthing the original film print in a vault and finding it caked in mud, buried in dust, dripping with blood. It's the kind of film that feels alive and insane, as alive and insane as the figure at the heart of it. 'There Will Be Blood' is one of the true masterpieces of American cinema, and one of the true masterpieces on America itself.