There Will Be Blood: Masterpiece

The opening scene of "There Will Be Blood" is a 14-minute sequence without dialogue that sets the tone for the entire film. It shows the main character, Daniel Plainview, as a determined and ruthless oil man who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. The scene includes a dramatic accident in the oil well and Plainview taking in a baby whose father died in the accident. This scene establishes Plainview's character and foreshadows the themes of greed, power, and sacrifice that will be explored throughout the film. Ladies and gentlemen, I've traveled over half our state in two years' time. I couldn't get away simply because my new well was coming in from the Goyle Hills and I had to see it by myself. That well is now for only 2,000 packers. It's paying me an income of 5,000 dollars a week. I have two others drilling and I have 16 producing and after them. So ladies and gentlemen, if I say I'm an oil man, you will believe me. You will agree, John. He's all about the oil. He is an oil man and as we will see and talk about in this episode, he will do whatever it takes to get that oil. And you see that in just like the opening scene. Oh, you mean like the opening 14 minutes where there's no dialogue? Where he breaks his leg and has to drag himself into town? Yeah, that man is an oil man and only an oil man. Oil flows through his veins. And you see that so clearly in what he is willing to do at the expense of other people throughout this film. He may sound like a nice businessman, but boy, is that just part of the act. Absolutely diabolical. Welcome back, guys. This is more than a hot take where we give some hot takes, but we want to give a little more than that. We want to dive in and talk about some of our favorite movies, maybe some of our not so favorite movies. But either way, we're always having engaging discussion about these movies and I'm one of your co-hosts, Mikey. And I'm John Andrews. And we are so excited to be back talking about Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 masterpiece, There Will Be Blood, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano. John, when did you first see this movie? I think I saw it... It was on AMC 2010. And even with commercials, I was still like, oh, go back to that. What's going on here? This is supposed to be a good movie. Somebody told me it won Oscars. And I was like, oh, okay. And I had been told Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the best actors ever. I'm like, Daniel Day-Lewis? One of the best movies? Let me see it. And I can't recommend it more highly. And re-watching it recently, it's just like, oh my gosh, this movie has aged. Just shift kids. It's gotten better as I have gotten more aware of what a great movie is. Yeah, no, I totally agree. So my first time watching it was last week. And I've watched it three times since. And that's the thing that we're doing with this episode and the next episode is I picked a movie that I had seen but John hadn't and vice versa. He picked one he had seen that I hadn't seen, but that we both thought were must-see movies for the other person. So he chose There Will Be Blood and next week we'll be talking about Bradley Cooper's A Star Is Born. And I am so thankful, John, that you had me watch this movie. As I get older and more willing if I have kids, I'm going to develop must-see movies for my children. These are just movies they have to see. Lord of the Rings is obviously going to be on there. Oh, of course. You know, some Hitchcock stuff is going to be on there. There are just some movies that everybody just needs to see and I want my kids to see. And this movie has made the list. And it's one of the top ones at this point. It's so good. I sat and re-watched this and I finished it and I was raving about it to myself, taking notes the whole time, thought about it for days after re-watching it. Sometimes you remember back to things in formative years and you're like, oh, that was awesome and you revisit it and it's actually kind of garbage and the time caught you up. This movie, the more I watched for mistakes and flaws and technique and style, it is a master class in every aspect. There is not a down note in any of this movie. It is all masterpiece, top-tier work. So I have a quick, just brief question for you and then we'll get to some hot takes. If you don't know, this movie was shot at the exact same time and at the exact same location as another 2007 masterpiece known as No Country for Old Men directed by the Coen Brothers. I'm assuming you've seen that movie. Which one would you choose? I need to re-watch No Country, but I'm so high on this movie and I watched it a week ago and I'm still re-watching scenes on YouTube. There's so much there and it's probably one of the quieter, more contemplative masterpieces. We'll get more into it and open up all of it. There's so, not to say so little movie, but there's so much to be captivated by and it's so limited. Yeah, so I think the interesting thing about these movies is I'm with you. I prefer There Will Be Blood at this moment. I watched No Country for Old Men actually also in the last week. Really just in part as a comparison, but also just because I do really love that movie. And I would say There Will Be Blood is more re-watchable than No Country for Old Men. They're both pretty re-watchable. I'm not going to say No Country for Old Men is not re-watchable, but it drags at some point while it's fleshing out the story. Whereas There Will Be Blood, and this is in part due to the fact that No Country for Old Men doesn't have a score and There Will Be Blood does. Yeah, I don't know that you mentioned it. Yeah, and that's interesting because that's actually kind of a cool creative element that the Coen brothers chose to really take out. The score is often what helps drive the narrative. They made a massive piece of a film with their hands down behind their back. Again, they tie them back there and will still make a movie. It's just that much more gripping than No Country for Old Men is. But they're both incredible films. However, at the Oscars, No Country for Old Men won more than There Will Be Blood did. So There Will Be Blood won Best Actor for Danny Day-Lewis and it won Best Cinematography. And then No Country for Old Men won Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Javier Bardem, for Antony Shaker, rightfully so. It also won Best Adapted Screenplay, because it is adapted from a book, Best Picture, and Best Director. That's neck and neck race. I love the Coen brothers, Javier Bardem, again, such a good performance. But man, Daniel Plainview, Daniel Day-Lewis being Daniel Plainview is another level. I think that brings me right into my hot take. It might feel hot to some, but cold to others, or just like the rational thought to others. But I think my hot take is that Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview, his performance is a singular performance. He's one of probably the top three ever in a movie, and you couldn't have replaced him in this movie. There are lots of other movies where you can swap out Matt Damon for Ben Affleck or Jake Gyllenhaal for Leonardo DiCaprio. You can do fan castings of whoever, and that can happen in so many different movies where Brad Pitt and Ed Norton were, and I could be wrong on this, but if I remember correctly, they were both going for different positions in Fight Club. They ended up where they were, but they didn't try to be there. But it worked out perfectly for those castings. But this one does not cut and replace Daniel Day-Lewis for any other actor. He embodies it so much that there's no other Daniel Plainview and actor that would match or even come close to what he did. Yeah, it's in similar categories to what we talked about last week with Anthony Hopkins and Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. We talked about Sean Connery being in the running for that. I don't know of another actor who could have portrayed that. I think we mentioned earlier Al Pacino as Michael Koyan. No one else can probably play that as well as he does. And then at the same time, I would also throw Robert Downey Jr. in there as Tony Stark. I'd probably put him in that category. I know there's an inclination to that's a Marvel film, the MCU. They're just kind of tight. But he is Tony Stark. In a real sense, Robert Downey Jr. is Tony Stark in real life as well. There's a few people that are in that category that these roles could not have been casted any other way and the movie had done equally as well. And that's kind of what you're getting at and I totally agree. My hot take is interesting. It gets kind of specific. My first time watching this, as I said a few moments ago, was just last week. And I have decided that Daniel Day-Lewis gives us a better performance as Daniel Plainview than Heath Ledger does as the Joker. And the reason why that's my hot take is because up until seeing this movie, I would have said Heath Ledger gives us the best performance of the 21st century. But now I give that to Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview. And it's like you're trying to pick between your favorite twin. It's like which twin is your favorite? And it's like, oh, there's... Which child do you love more? And both of them are despicable. Yeah, exactly. And then like, I mean, Anton Chigurh even. I mean, Javier Bardem gives us an incredible performance as Chigurh, but it's not Daniel Day-Lewis. He's firing on every cylinder plus some extra ones that you didn't see. It's so good. So hopefully those hot takes aren't too hot, too spicy for you guys and keep you guys engaged because we've got some more discussion to get into. And let me emphasize, when I say it's one of the best performances of all time, take your best performance. It's worse. I mean, this is better than that. Your choice is best, is worse, and it does not compare. Let me... Yeah, because I felt like my point was kind of tepid. Let me emphasize, whatever you love the most, it is lesser than what Daniel Day-Lewis does in this movie. And that's coming from a deep place that there are many performances that I've loved, and all of them... Like, I love Django Unchained more than most movies, and Christoph Waltz, and Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Jamie Foxx. They're all killing it. All of them. All of them less than Daniel Day-Lewis in that. And that is a lot for me to say. So your favorite is lesser than this man in this movie. Yeah, I mean, it's really true when we... I'm going to sit here and say Daniel Day-Lewis is the best actor of the last 25 years. Probably. I don't know. And that puts him above the DiCaprios. That puts him above the... Gyllenhaals. The Gyllenhaals, the Ledgers, which of course we've lost... Timothee Chalamet can pound sand. Daniel Day-Lewis is out here killing the game. Yeah, so this is just a must-see. And I have not seen every DDL movie. It is now on my list to go watch every DDL movie. But this movie is absolutely a must-watch. But now we can get into our competing summaries. Oh gosh. Do you want me to go first or do you want to go first? You can go first. All right. My summary of There Will Be Blood is as follows. A raise-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps capitalist oil man competes with an early 20th century revivalist preacher in this century's most epic showdown between greed, pride, oil, and religion. Oof, yes. I'm pretty proud of myself. No, that's very good. That's very good because there's a portion of this movie where we go, is God against Daniel Plainsview? Is God out here just foiling Daniel Plainsview? Right. I think the way it's cut together does that very well. Let me go to my... probably if I print this out several page notes on this movie. All right. So, There Will Be Blood. All seems well when a father-son companion do their best to go out and work hard for a living to make it in this old US of A. But something goes horribly wrong when the father uncovers a secret horror underneath the ground that takes over their very lives and rips them apart. Because oil is introduced in this movie. He and oil are introduced in this movie like it is a horror movie. Like the villain is lurking underneath and he is trying to find that which is going to corrupt them the most. It's played like the villain of this movie is, gotta get the oil, gotta get the oil. But what it does to the people who get it, it's like the one ring. Those who get it, takes them over. Even the other oilmen that you meet in this movie, it's just grubby business people trying to make that money off the land and the poor farmers. It's like a horror movie. It is like you are watching a family fall apart, not in one weekend in a cabin, but over what's the span of 20 some odd years, 30 some odd years in this movie? The late 1800s into the 1970s. Turn of the century, yeah. 30 years. This is going to get later when we get into our superlatives, my favorite score moment. I'm not going to necessarily go into all the detail of why I love it right now, but it's because that moment of the score sets this movie up to be a horror film. I feel like I'm watching, as soon as the screen turns on and as soon as the film rolls, I feel like I'm watching a horror film. It is what is a loud violin? Yeah. It's what's happening when somebody is about to get attacked or some brazen tension on somebody going to get just absolutely murdered. And all it is is a landscape shot of some rocky mountains. That's all it is. But it's that music and it comes again one more time later on in the film. And the film actually, no it doesn't end with that, it's that classical music there after he does what he does to Eli. But that moment just from the get go, that immediately told me this is not a movie about oil. There is so much more to this movie than just oil drilling. And boy do you see that right in the, and this can be a good transition until we talk about the scenes. I feel like the first scene we agree to talk about is the whole first 14 minutes of this movie. That is without dialogue, but sets up everything we need to know about what's going to happen in this movie. It's so good. It's chef's kiss filmmaking. And just to catch up anyone who hasn't listened to us before, we like to go not through the whole movie, all of the script and play it out. We try to go chronologically, but we go for those essential scenes in the movie that really make it, that really solidify its status as one of our favorite movies, one of the best movies, and even some of the worst movies in the sense of kind of drag it down to being lesser than most. So we, you know, this portion of the podcast we're going to walk through and hit on those pivotal scenes that make up specifically this masterpiece. And that first 14 minutes, it sets the tone. And that, you know, note that's hit in the beginning, it grabs your attention. Because what you're about to see is going to be kind of horrifying. It is, and I'm trying to think of like a better opening scene to a movie. I mean, it's funny that we talk about Heath Ledger earlier, because The Dark Knight is a book. Oh gosh, talk about an opening, oh my goodness. Talk about an opening, but I still don't think it's better than this. And there's no dialogue, there's no dialogue. You'd think it would be boring, but it is just, oh, it's so good. The first time I watched this movie last week, because I've watched it three times in the last week and a half, the first time I watched it, I got probably eight to ten minutes into this 14 minute opening scene, and then realized, wait a minute, there's no dialogue. And the reason why it took me ten minutes to realize that was because I was so gripped by what was happening on screen. And it's unbelievable talent for Paul Thomas Anderson to set up an entire story in 14 minutes without a single word of dialogue, and just keep it so captivating. It's unbelievable. You don't know anything about this man but his drive to get rich, to be successful. At some point in this 14 minute scene, maybe about halfway through, maybe a little bit earlier, he falls down the shaft that is, I think, silver mining, I don't know if he actually started for gold. He doesn't start for oil, he's silver mining. He falls down the shaft trying to break loose some silver and breaks his leg, crawls out of the shaft. And Paul Thomas Anderson shows us him crawling out of the shaft. You see this man make it out with his silver and he crawls back to civilization, and you see him laying down, broken leg and all, getting his money counted from, I don't know if it was the silversmith or whoever's paying him for the silver. And just the sheer force of will that you need to do that tells you what you need to know about this man. At that moment you realize and learn about Daniel playing Hugh that this is a man who is willing to, quite literally, as we'll be seeing in this film, do whatever it takes to get what he wants. And he is willing to put the work in, and it takes sacrifice. At another point, later on in this 14 minute opening scene, after he's broken his leg and it flashes forward, I think four years or something like that, he is now drilling for oil. And he's got a little crew of workers that are working with him, and again, there's still no dialogue. But finally they were able to break the oil up and it's kind of gushing out now, and there's two guys that are down there in the bottom of the pit that they've dug to get this oil from. And they're down there, they're scooping it out with buckets and they're using ropes and pulleys to get the buckets up to pull the oil, to collect the oil, and there's an accident. And the little rig that they've got, that they've put together, their pulley system that they've put together, it collapses and this, what looks like a 2x4 or something bigger than that, falls down the oil shaft and flattens a man's head. Yeah, it's not overly gruesome, but you know, there's no like, oh is he making it? Nope. No, and Daniel Plaguey was down there in the oil well with him, and he's right next to him when this happens. And Daniel just looks, he pulls him out, and he's in, and he then takes that person's kid. That's solidified, right? We can say that H.W. is that character. Oh yeah, I mean they set it up pretty well, and again, no dialogue, just kind of watching this little scene play out with these new little oil workers, and this man, just I'm guessing single father, has this baby, and that guy dies, and Daniel Plainview takes on kind of care and ownership of this child. I don't know if there were official papers or anything he would have had, but he more or less is like, okay. And you know, again, silent, but like these interactions that are, I think are good. I think what it kind of transfers to, like Daniel Plainview takes this as his own son, and I think you get a really tender moment on a train with him right after leading into the scene that contains the dialogue from the beginning of the pod. But I noticed something in that transition, is that he's looking at H.W., the baby, the baby's looking at him. He's kind of in this tender moment, but the first thing said in this movie about him as a businessman, and it's just I think the juxtaposition of the dialogue of his introduction initially over this interaction, I think it kind of tells you what this pairing is. Right, it's important, even in that speech, we couldn't play the whole clip because it's like three minutes. Don't watch the movie, don't watch the movie, don't watch it. Even in that speech, and I actually do want to get back to something, talk about it in a minute, but right now I'll say even in that speech that he gives, he gives this speech twice whenever he's coming to a town and he's pitching to all these landowners, hey, I want to drill on your land. He gives this speech that we played at the beginning of the episode. But in that speech, he begins by solidifying himself as a business person first, and then he comes in and says, I'm a family man. And that's always secondary. And to go back to something you said earlier, I wonder, we assume that H.W.'s true father before he died was a single father, but I also don't want to put it past plain view to just take that kid. Yeah, I thought about that. That kid probably had a mother. Yeah. And we learn later in the film why, and we won't get into it right now, but we learn at the end of the film why Daniel took the baby and essentially adopted him for whatever that term is. For whatever that term meant in 1902. But essentially took him in as his own, and we learn later why he does that. But I don't think it's all, once we learn what this man is willing to do for what he wants, I don't think it's outside of the bounds of the possibilities that he just took someone's child. Even if the father had died, he probably had a mother and just took him, and probably didn't say a thing. So all that's just table setting for this absolute feast we're about to get of a movie, because it's such a good combination of, one, it looks gorgeous, two, with the minimal dialogue in these first opening scenes, minimal to none when you get into this meeting with the townspeople where they want to drill for oil, you get the characterization, you get some sketch of the characterization of Daniel playing view, maybe the nature of his relationship with his son you can infer a lot about, but you haven't really gotten the thrust of what the movie's about. You get it, this man's on a mission, he's going for oil, but then, after this meeting, kicks into the plot, to what drives Daniel to where the bulk of this movie will take place, and where you're going to get, to say Daniel's the protagonist just purely in the sense that he's the main character, but you're going to find his antagonist in Paul Dano's Eli. Eli Sunday, which I have, I don't want to jump into that right away, but I've got interesting questions about Eli Sunday. He is a character. So Daniel playing view is approached by Eli Sunday's twin brother Paul. Paul Sunday. Paul Sunday, and he says, hey, our family has a lot of acres, and we have oil. I'll take some money, and I'll tell you, give me some money, and I'll tell you where they are. And after some negotiating, Daniel's like, all right, fine, point it out, let's do it. And it's important that he is a twin, because Daniel goes out there with HW to go and do some pheasant hunting, which is really just scoping out the land. So he's going to scam, not scam, but he's going to get one over on these poor farmers. He's going to scam them. Yeah, these poor farmers, like he says, HW, HW's like, what are you going to pay them? What are they going to get? He said, we'll give them pheasant. Give them quail prices. They're quote, unquote, hunting for quail, but really what they're doing is looking for the oil on the land. And they're surveying that land, and so he's just going to get one over on them. And then you can kind of see, I think HW in that scene, which kind of leads from these, is catching on as, that might not be the most honest. Like I'm sure he's seen it before, but that's what the audience gets to see of him learning like, okay. But I think HW's okay with it. I think he's just trying to learn, this is how this business is run. And I think what's really important too is the reason why Daniel Plainview doesn't just come to the Sunday Ranch and talk to Mr. Sunday, I think we get it first name, but I can't remember what it is, and doesn't just talk to him about, hey, I know you've got some oil here. I want to buy your land to dig oil. The reason he doesn't do that is because at this point in time, there weren't many people who, A, not only knew where oil was, but also knew how to dig for it and had the means and money to dig for it. Oftentimes you would have to sort of kind of bring in companies from other places, someone who can dig, someone who can then ship the oil. Daniel can do it all. He knew how to do it all because as the first 14 minutes set up for us, he spent a long time learning how to do it all. And so Daniel has his own guys. He is there while the drilling is happening. It's not like standard oil, which is located in California, I believe, and they're sending guys, and something could go wrong, they might lose their equipment down in the rig, and they've got to spend months finding. Daniel knows how to do it all, and he knows that's rare, and that's important in his pitch to the Sunday family because they don't know that he knows that. They don't know that he knows how to do it all. So this is one of my favorite scenes is that scene where they're having dinner, and it's Daniel Plainview, it's Eli's Sunday, Paul's Sunday's twin brother, and it's the father, and they're sitting at this table, and they're talking about buying the land. You look like you're about to say something bad. And there's something important to them being twins is that from that moment, Daniel meets Eli, and it's a twin. He is skeptical. He is on guard. He no longer thinks, oh, these are just like roofs he went over. He thinks someone else might be trying to scam him. I mean, for one, I don't know how many twins he's ever met, but two, okay, it just seems like his whole interaction they have set forth was I have to be on guard. And this is where both Plainview and H.W.'s acting is so good in that scene because they don't say anything, but they just give each other a look like, wait, is this the same guy that we just met? But, yeah, so it's great acting in that moment from them, especially from the fact that it plays H.W. They're at this table setting, and Daniel's trying to give them the once-over, try to get more than or give them less than they know they can get. And so what's interesting about that scene is, again, they're having this negotiation, and Daniel offers to Mr. Sunday to buy his land, specifically to hunt quail for $3,700 or something like that, which is cheap, or at least cheaper, and it would cost more because of the oil that's there. Oil is very valuable. So Eli chips in and says, but what about our oil? We have oil on this land. And so then that's where Daniel comes in and says, oh, okay, well, you have oil, fine, but do you know how to dig for it? Can you drill for it? Do you have the means to do it? Can you ship it? Can you do all of this stuff? Because that's all very, very expensive. And so at the end of the day, essentially, Daniel ends up making this deal to buy the land, and he starts drilling for oil on it because he has the means to do that. And the deal, and this is important. Eli Sunday says, agrees to the deal that Daniel can buy the land and drill for oil on it on the assumption that Daniel is going to pay Eli Sunday's church, he's a preacher, $5,000. That's the deal they make. Fine, you get the land, you drill for your oil, you do whatever you need to do, hunt quail, whatever it is you're telling us you're going to do, but you're going to give my church, the church of the third revelation, $5,000. That's the deal, and that's important because he never gives them that money. No. No. And that actually wraps around at the end when they meet for the last time, some of what Daniel does to absolutely humiliate him. So, yes, no, that seems great, that sort of, the kind of footing that they put each other on kind of sets their trajectory for their relationship. And I think it is good to emphasize that Daniel Plainview is a kind of, is a commanding presence, and he has a voice. Daniel Day-Lewis's voice in this movie is one of a kind. It is something else. It is not, it doesn't sound, it's not human, but it's so different. Every single person in this movie sounds like they are from Southern California, they are from Montana, from Mexico, wherever they are from, and Daniel Plainview's voice is so tailored, it is almost perfect in an uncanny way, the way he says things and how he talks, and it doesn't sound like anyone else in the movie, and you couldn't mistake him for anyone else. It is so, it's so good, and I found out something about this, I mean, it's been a little while since I remember reading about this, is that he tried doing another voice for this movie for the first few weeks, and he and PTA had to sit down and go, this is not working. I think I heard that, yeah. Like, they got to this voice ultimately, but he talks, he talks eloquently. I don't know if he ever, how many times he ever falters on his words. It always seems like he's precise. I don't think he ever does. He just sounds, he just sounds so different. That when he says, I'm a family man, you know, I'm basically trying to give the, I'm a regular person, but you don't sound like a regular person. You sound like a larger than life character. And that just speaks, that just continues to speak to the exceptional performance that ADL gives us, and there's an intentionality to the alien-ness of his voice. Yeah. And it carries, and it's not even, it's also in the way you walk. Oh yeah. It's in the physicality of his performance. Guys, go watch that daggone movie. Stop the movie, stop the podcast. Go watch the movie. Go watch the movie. Or we're just going to spend seven hours talking about two hours and change movies. It's so good. It's so good. But, so that, you know, Daniel's presence compared to Eli's is different. And I remember from when I first watched it, it felt like Eli was always in this defensive position, like Daniel always had the upper hand. Man, they are like, they are equals duking back and forth in their own realm. Because Daniel is the business, and Eli is the religion, and that plays a really big, really big portion of this movie. And just some of the best scenes in this movie, of a movie full of 10 out of 10 scenes, the conflict between God, in air quotes, and Daniel playing you is one of the bigger themes in this movie. Yeah, the, arguably, the, the. So, like the Church of the Third Revelation is this, I don't want to say pillar in this community, it is the constant kind of contrast to Daniel's empire. It's like these two big pillars, and they're fighting to hold it all up, or at least to use the people for their own means. And so, they're on such a back and forth footing in their own ways, in their own realms, and it's just so much more of a equal fighting. It is what Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, like, it's, or Sonny Liston, it's, it's these heavy weights hitting each other, but they come across in such different ways, and they're both hucksters. Yeah. And it is scanning you, whether it is the religious zealot or the economic powerhouse, you are being had, whoever you are talking to. Yeah, I think that, so I would say that, like, I think, I think Daniel and Eli are both, I think they're both businessmen, and I think they're both manipulative, mind bending, mind gaming, greedy, arrogant, selfish businessmen who have different means of going about their business. And Eli's going to use religion, because religion is the easiest tool to use to manipulate. Hands down, we see it today all the time. And Daniel's going to use oil and his ability to drill for it. That money he can get, that people need him to spend this money to make the area grow. He talks about, you know, when he pitches it to his people, he's going to do libraries and education and families and whatever he has to say in the most convincing yet alien way, but then to go, bring the rigs, bring the people, come get this stuff out and around. And I love that, I mean, what am I, I mean, again, I mean, every scene is my favorite. We could be here for so long. We could. And that's why we've got to keep this momentum, because gosh, we'll get, I'll just go on these four scenes forever. Let's bring it back to the, just real quick, the dinner scene where they're making the meal. Yes, yes. So let's bring it back to that, because there's something interesting about this. When initially, when Paul Sunday comes to Daniel's office, Paul Sunday asks him, what church do you belong to? And because Paul Sunday knows his family is a church family, it's a religious family. So Paul Sunday says, what church do you belong to? And what's Daniel say? He says, well, he says, I'm fond of all faiths. I appreciate all faiths. I like them all equally. I don't choose one over the other. And we get to the Sunday ranch where he's now trying to make this deal, and Daniel intentionally assumes a religious identity. So Eli Sunday's father, when they're talking about this deal, Eli Sunday says, God sent him here. God sent this man to us. And Daniel says, yes, I believe he did. And I believe he did. And it's like, we see here another glimpse that he is going to do whatever he needs to to get what he wants, even if it means assuming a religious identity that he does not have, does not possess, and does not care to have. And in fact, probably actually despises, especially as we see what happens later in the film at the very end when he goes on to make Eli Sunday say there, which I can't wait to get to. But I just think that's interesting that he assumes this religious nature and this religious identity to make this business deal. And it's just, it's so natural, and he's so believable. It's such a good back and forth contentious relationship. They're both, again, firing on all cylinders. And it leads to just the best interactions in this movie, which again, I don't know if I can say that, because HW and Daniel and their father-son interactions are also, for a child actor, let's talk about him for like two seconds. The kid who plays HW, it's a good kid actor. And usually kid actors are like, get him out of here. And I should, like, he's not a kid actor. He's never acted. Nope. He's never been in a single role. Dude. So listen to this. I'm going to butcher this story a little bit, but I, so Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Thomas Anderson, I think something like 3,000 different child actors auditioned for that role. And all of them were like, this doesn't work. These are all LA boys. We can't have LA children coming to play a deep Texas, like deep southern Texas little child. Like we can't have, we need someone from Texas. So they, the casting director went to like local elementary schools in this town. What? And basically described to principals the kind of kid that they wanted. And this principal hooks them up with this guy, his last name's Frazier, I think. I can't remember his first name. Hooks him up with this little boy. And she looked at him and said, that's exactly who I want. They said, okay, let's set up a meeting then between the casting director and this boy's parents. That way they can talk. That way they can get together and see if this boy is good for the role, if the parents are on board. And this kid's probably, he's elementary school. He might be nine, 10 years old, eight years old when he's playing this role. And so they're like, okay, well let's get the casting director meeting with the parents. One night, the casting director's on the way to the parents' house for dinner. She's running late. She's speeding. She gets pulled over by a police officer. The police officer is the boy's mother. Yo. So she's like, I'm sorry. I'm explaining who I am. I'm sorry. I'm on the way to this person's house for this. And the police officer says, I think you're on the way to my house. You're on the way to my house. And so they go to their house. They talk. This woman had never heard, the boy's mother had never heard of Daniel Day Lewis. Had no idea who he was. And so the producers of the movie, of Bear Will Be Blood said, okay, well let's get her some Daniel Day Lewis movies so she can see who this person is. So I think they show her like, Gangs of New York or something like that. And, or was that, that was after? I think it was after. There was one that came in like, Gangs of New York did come before. And then there's Last of the Mohicans. It was in My Left Foot. So yeah, so they, there's some to pull from. They show him one of these movies where he's, where he's been the violent character. Yeah, there was a butcher in Gangs of New York. And she's like, I don't want my boy with this man. So then they show him another one where he's a gentleman. Yeah. Nice and kind. And she's like, okay, I'm on board. And so she agrees to it. This kid, he has never, again, never, was never in a role and has not been in anything since. Dude, why, hit on, hit, like hit the top and keep going. Like, get out, like Jordan on that second retirement, get out, you are done. You don't need to do anything else. You are set. You're the goat of child actors. Yeah. You're good. H.W., the guy who played you, whoever you are now, Ted Addison, best child actor. Sorry, Stranger Things. Sorry, The Goonies. Again, hot takes. Those can all pound sand to this kid who is not completely overshadowed and out, like, done by Daniel Day-Lewis. Because it's, he does great. So that whole dynamic between the two of them is awesome. It's a lot of small moments. It's a lot of little dialogue, looks and interactions. That's also part of why I'm saying go watch this movie. We can describe all of these very wonderful things to you. But going and watching these interactions, this dialogue, these scenes, this beautiful cinematography, and what we're going to get to here in a second with my favorite scene, again, is, I can't describe it. I wouldn't want to talk too long about it because you need to go watch. You need to go watch this movie. You need to go watch these interactions between Eli and Daniel and H.W. and Daniel. Go do it so we don't have to sit here for four hours just describing an amazing movie to you. We don't want to ASMR all of There Will Be Blood for you. Yeah, I think, yeah, I just take it all back. You have to go watch this movie to get this. What, because I've got some other scenes that come a little bit later, but what do you have, I mean, after the negotiation deal at the table, what do you want to talk about next? I think a pivotal scene that we can hit on for a little bit that goes on to, again, foreshadow probably how Daniel Plainview sees what's going on is the dedication, the opening of the oil rig, the starting of the drilling, and the dedication, the blessing that Eli said that he would do. He didn't, like, ask to. He just kind of said, I will be doing this more or less, and Daniel says, okay. And he gives him kind of this, Eli gives Daniel a little bit of something to say, and he says, all right, we'll call you up. We'll have you ready. And then what happens, he brings up his younger sister and basically says everything about her that he was going to say about him, says a small, quick dedication, and goes, and you can tell Eli is perturbed, but can't react, Daniel's being a spiteful, spiteful man, and it starts up. And then from there, it seems like God is against the drilling on this, in this place, on this ranch. And that's definitely kind of the, that is the first domino to fall, I think, in their dispute that is going to continue to happen throughout the rest of the film, and I love that. It's so subtle. It's so well done. And it's the little stuff, like, at the end of his little spiel, Daniel Plainview, just because he knows he has to say this for the crowd to keep him on board, he just says, God bless. And it's like, he doesn't believe that. He doesn't care. He just gives the people just enough to know, oh, okay. And it's kind of an indictment of how Christians kind of maybe are today still. It's like, oh, they reference the Lord. Maybe they are God-worshippers. Maybe they're God-fearers. Or they know who's listening to them, and it keeps them coming. That's definitely some commentary I feel like PTA worked into that one, or at least in this interaction throughout the movie. So they open this bad boy up, you're watching these very subtle moments. No one else knows about it, but these two men, and they're just, I mean, it is so good. And then somebody dies in the oil rig. That's exactly what it's about. Like, within 24 hours. So just, dude gets, again, crushed. Right, so just like what was kind of foreshadowed, if you will, in the first 14 minutes with that one man dying down in the rig because something fell down on him, they've got this rig built here on the Sunday Ranch, and they're drilling for oil, and someone's down in there. It's the night shift. Yeah, it's the night shift. Someone's down in there. Daniel's passed out drunk on his floor, and this, I don't even know what it is, but this solid steel pipe. I think it's what's used to like break the earth. Yeah, exactly, to get to the oil. It falls down in there and just, oh my goodness. That's another rough one. It is too long to oil the rig. And it's not gory. Like, it's not gory at all, so don't hear that. But it's brutal. It's brutal. It is not a, it's not played up. It is a hard hit, and it's rough. And so, Daniel confronts Eli that next day, basically saying, hey, all of the men, my men, who are working 12-hour shifts to get the oil to keep this going can't have them at church all day or all the time because they have no energy and the mistakes happen. And Eli's like, where's our money? Yeah, well, that's a great moment because you get quite a glimpse into what Eli really cares about here. And it's so funny because the man's name who died was Joe Gunda. That was his name. So Joe Gunda dies. They pull him out of the oil rig. They clean him up. They dress him up so they could have a proper burial. And then the next morning, Daniel comes to Eli's church service to essentially, which is a really interesting scene. It's very, yeah. And he walks, Daniel essentially walks up to what we could maybe say is exorcism? A very charismatic Protestant level exorcism of weird proportions. So basically, Eli Sunday, Paul Daniel's character, is this preacher, and he comes to this old woman who has arthritis, apparently. That's how he says it. She's afflicted with arthritis. She has arthritis, essentially. And he really awkwardly caresses her hands and whispers, like, get out, ghost, and get out, demon. And he essentially, like, acts like he's literally wrestling the demon in midair and throws him out of the church building. And so then the congregation leaves, and of course, they're all, you know, on spiritual highs because of what just happened. And his congregation leaves, church is over. And Daniel, you know, was sitting there the whole time, and he stays back to talk to Eli, and he says, we had a man die in the well last night. He was a man of faith, which maybe he was. He had that cross, and, you know, if you want to bless his grave or his burial, you can. And they never show us whether that happens or not, but I love it because Eli's whole point is, well, I wish I had more time with Joe Gunda. In other words, what he's saying is, I wish your men would come visit my church more because they need to hear the gospel. That's kind of what he's trying to get at. At least it's what he's presenting. And then Daniel says, well, Paul, or not Paul, Eli, well, Eli, we all know you want my money and the money that I'm going to bring in. So what you need to understand is, if my men are spending time here at your church, then they can't be there digging for oil, and gold can't blow over this place. That's what he says. Throw gold all over. And gold can't blow over this place, Eli. And I told you, gold can't blow over this place. And why that's so important is because Daniel knows what Eli really cares about is the gold. What he really cares about is the money that his oil is going to bring in because, as we will see, it's going to lead to things like church renovations. Right? He's renovating his church. They showed a scene, a little intermission kind of scene, of them building the new church building right there. Exactly. The road that leads to the church. And so Daniel is starting to realize things about Eli that we, the audience, are also starting to realize. This is not necessarily, and we can get into it later, whether he actually believed in God or not, but for right now we can say, this is not actually a loving, caring, genuine town preacher. No. This is a man who's realized he's got an opportunity to withhold, or to take a lot of power for himself by assuming the title preacher. And in the meantime, he can do some things like casting arthritis out of old ladies because anybody watching that in the early 1900s is going to believe that that's happening. Yeah. And he can get money for it. He can make that green metal. Exactly. He's kind of what we would understand, like, maybe the modern day prosperity. He's a proto-like televangelist, man. Yeah, exactly. Wild West. It's like these guys are the two archetypes of Wild West, is it crazy religious snake handling and the crazy crush-you-all capitalist. Yeah, exactly. And so I just love what we learn about specifically Eli from that scene. And I love the way it ends. Daniel leaves and what's he say? That was one heck of a GD show. He says, that was one heck of a gosh dang show there, Eli. Yeah, they're both putting on shows every time they're talking to people, every time they're pitching, they are putting on shows. Speaking of putting on a show, we kind of bring it on into the next most pivotal scene of all the pivotal scenes in this whole movie. Oh, boy. And this isn't even halfway through the movie. Let me give you that. This isn't halfway through the movie what we've described. So we're kind of probably have to pick up the pace here in a second and I'm really realizing we spent so much time on 14 minutes. That's true, we did. That I'm like, man, I hate to not do this justice, but I'm going to do this. I'm not going to describe my favorite scene in great detail. You need to go watch it. Go find a clip on YouTube, go watch the whole movie. But this next scene is the catastrophe at the oil well that really sets up the drama for the rest of the movie. It's arguably, and guys, I'm not exaggerating, it is arguably the most beautiful seven minutes of movie I have ever seen. It's so well done and again, there's really minimal scores throughout this movie. The scenes with less dialogue are filled with some scores. Very minimal, not super grandiose. But when there's dialogue, it's really minimal and the score during this oil disaster is just a steady... It's so good and you're just watching. And it's almost a lot of unbroken take. Like the more I watched it, because I re-watched the clip, the more I watched it, it's like Daniel running to go get H.W. who was on this oil rig playing around as a kid does, on oil rigs and race around them. When he is up on a roof when there's, I'm guessing, a natural gas blow. And it knocks him back and he goes deaf. And so that's kind of a catalyst for other parts of this movie. But Daniel runs, he asks, where's H.W.? So again, he's a ruthless businessman, but I really do think he has an affection for this child in a deeper way. Where's H.W.? So he goes and gets him and he takes him to the mess hall and he lays him out. And all the men are scattering. This thing is on fire. It is just shooting... Oh, and it's really on fire. They actually set this thing on fire. Yeah, it is on fire. So the oil derrick, the oil shooting out of the ground, it is just an inferno straight up. So he takes H.W. and he lays him down and he finds out that he can't hear. And they're trying to... he goes and voluntarily has to go take care of it. So you watch him go and knock down the wires that are at a distance stabilizing this thing. And the thing is burning and it's going and it is a beautiful disaster to watch. And Karen Hines as his second hand man throughout this movie. Fletcher. Fletcher. Karen Hines and Fletcher. It comes to the end of this really dramatic drawn out scene and he is standing there covered in oil and they're both gross. And Fletcher asks him, how is H.W.? He is in the mess hall. And Daniel is covered in oil watching this. And Fletcher goes to check on H.W. and Daniel is watching what he cares about the most. And even before that, this is also important, right before that, before, I think it is before Fletcher asks about H.W. or maybe after, he looks all distraught over the fact that this oil rig they've built just fell apart. And Daniel looks at him and he says, what are you so upset for? We've got a whole ocean of oil under our feet. And it's like Daniel is just... he is a businessman first and a family man second. Listen, this man is Michael Jordan of the oil game in the 1900s. Like there is a I will beat you and there is a monologue that kind of similarly reveals that. This man sees the prize and he is going for it. And he is like, I would say, and it's so funny, I didn't mean to cut you off there, sorry. This just comes to my mind. Like Daniel Plainview is like late 19th, early 20th century oil industry, the equivalent in the oil industry of Michael Corleone in the mob. Like Daniel's relationship to H.W. parallels so closely Michael's relationship to K in part one and two of just where they fall on the priority list for these men and what comes first for these men. And the manipulation and the games and the mind games that they play in regards to their families. I'm just drawing that connection. Like there is such a clear similarity. So if you know what I'm talking about with Michael Corleone, you're going to love. Yeah, go watch Godfather one and two. But yeah, I mean Daniel's priority is to play it out and he is just watching. And I think what comes next as time goes on and they get TNT and they go to blow it up because explosions do stop fires. I'm like, oh, that's cool for 1902. I wasn't sure if they knew that. But they load it up and he's just sitting there in a chair. He's still covered in oil. And I'm led to believe he just stayed there watching this thing until they blew it up and stopped it. So he was there because when it's happening, the sun is going down. And this is like not first thing the next morning. And he's sitting in a chair still covered in oil. You don't see his face, but you see him from behind center screen. And he gives them the signal and they go and blow it up. And it's beautiful. It's wonderful. Go watch it again. Stop what you're doing and go watch it. So H.W. is now deaf. Now, if you don't want to do this, that's fine. But if you're okay with it, we can probably skip over the fake brother plot for the sake of this discussion. I think, again, so yeah, midway, exactly halfway through the movie, someone impersonating his younger brother shows up, has intimate details on his blood. Daniel's younger brother. Daniel's younger brother has intimate details on his life and where he's from in Montana. And that's the first, I think it's something good to hit on, is that you actually finally hear about the man from his history that he's talking about with his fake brother, who has all of these details in a diary or a journal of all of these things from his brother. And so that actually brings me up, we'll talk about it in this furlative, is my favorite quote in this movie. Yes, it's a great monologue, it's a great quote, it is wonderful and terrible, and we can get into more of that when we get into this furlative. But you actually see that character, like you see his past that he has completely rejected. He doesn't sound like a Montana boy. He doesn't really sound like he's from anywhere, but he's an oil man. It doesn't matter, and he is, and I think family is incredibly important to him, but as a means to an end. To his brother or to Daniel? To Daniel. Incredibly important to him, but as a means to an end. That's absolutely right. I think he loves H.W., but to an end. And I think he really had an affection for this younger brother, who I think they cast really well. It would be like, yeah, that high forehead, that look, even if it's a good sibling. You give any middle-aged white man in the early 1900s a mustache like that, a mustache like that, and he's going to look like a bone. Same bone structure, it's like, okay. But it works. And you see a lot of Daniel play out in that. You see his character vulnerability that he allows, and I think that's why he reacts so violently and then ultimately kills his sick brother, is that he actually got more deeply intimate and personal with this man than he was with any other character, even H.W., and then he finds he's an imposter, and he kills him, buries him, and he's conflicted by it. But I don't think he's conflicted from killing him. I think he's more in the way that he exposed himself and he was conned, and in more vulnerable ways than he lost money. But the thing that he buries down deep is he dredged up in a baird, and this man was a fake. So he kills him, which leads him to the Bandys, who he had not won over before, another family near the Sundays, that he needed to get their land for this pipeline that they want to build. Because they wanted to run oil from where they're at to the ocean, all the way to the ocean, with not standard oil, but I can't remember the name of the other oil company that they were going to make a negotiation with to deal with, in which they would receive the oil that they're digging. But yeah, that whole, before we get into that, the brother kind of subplot, the fake brother subplot, is important. It's probably my least favorite subplot of the film, which we can get into later. It is important, and if you're kind of confused about it, it's just because we don't have enough time to get into it right now. But go watch it, because you do learn a lot about Daniel in this little subplot. Yeah, again, it's looks and subtle interactions, and you see that facade kind of come down, because he can't act. He can't give that impenetrable impression that all of these other people are getting. Like, this man knows, he knows his origins, and he knows this guy. What is important to say is that because H.W. now is deaf, Daniel sees him as, first, he doesn't see it as, my son's now deaf. He sees it as, my business partner is now deaf. I need a new business partner. So when this man comes up and is an imposter, acting like he's his brother, but he's not, he now replaces H.W. as Daniel's business partner, until Daniel finds out that he's faking it and kills him. He's now playing a fake son, real brother trumps fake son, until real brother's fake brother is better than fake brother. And this calculation of how can I craft my outward-facing persona to get the most business. And I think, so I think we have to talk about what is probably the most gut-wrenching moment in this film. And that's when Daniel Plainview, shortly after H.W., his son that he took in, goes deaf, Daniel literally puts him on a train and sends him out of town. To go, sends him to go to a deaf school to get a teacher, but he like, he leaves his, not just like hard of hearing, child's who can't hear. And he frames it up as he takes H.W. to the railroad, to the train station. They're both sitting on the train. H.W. can't hear a thing, because obviously he's deaf. And Daniel just looks at him and kind of mouths at him, I'm going to go talk to the conductor. Daniel just gets off, gets in his car and drives away. H.W. notices, tries to run off the plane. And who's there to catch him and stop him? Fletcher. Fletcher, keeping an eye on him. Daniel, right-hand man. And it's because, and Daniel's not sending his son to a deaf school, because he really genuinely cares about the well-being of his son. He might, but primarily he's getting rid of his son, because now his deaf son is just an obstacle in the way of his oil business. And in the way of getting what it is that he wants. That success, that competition that's within him. It's heart-wrenching. It is hard. I even think like his character, you know, he is torn up about it. I don't think he liked doing it. I think he knew he had to do it. I think he, on some level, deeply wanted to do it. He had a new business partner, his fake brother. You know, unbeknownst to him. But then his fake brother is murdered. And so he brings his son back with a specialized teacher to be there with him. And it's interesting. There's again another subplot in this movie. It's very, again, subtle but good. Other oil men's interactions with Daniel. He has a very sore spot about being labeled as a bad father. Comes to, maybe my favorite scene in this movie, where interaction between Eli and Daniel in Eli's church. That's fantastic. We're about to talk about it. Go watch it. Go watch it. Go watch it. Go watch it. Go watch it. Just the way that they manipulate each other in this last half, in the last third. Yeah, 40 maybe minutes of the movie. It's masterful for both of them. And so to carry on the story, Daniel kills his fake brother. That leads us right into the Bandy, the owner of the, to Mr. Bandy, who's the owner of this other plot of land that Daniel needs to buy in order to have this pipeline. Mr. Bandy says, I'll give you the land. I'll sell it to you. But you have to be baptized at the church of the third revelation. That's his deal. Which I wonder, did Eli put him up to that? Well, Bandy seems pretty sincere about it. And it seems like the other people definitely did. See, that's a good question, because Eli uses this... That's what I'm saying. He uses this as a, it is an emasculating moment, especially for Daniel in the way that he's been confronted about how he raises his son, and it hits him personally. And so when he comes to the scene where Eli has got him up in front of the congregation, in front of the implausibly lit cross, the more that I thought about this, is that like, it is, other scenes in the movie, it's kind of darker behind it because of where they built it, it is like full-filled bright in this scene. And Eli is telling him to confess his sins, to ask for forgiveness, to declare what he's done wrong. Do you have it cued up for us, my man? I was going to save it for the superlatives, because this is the award I give for my favorite scene. But I'm just going to play it now, because it's so good. This is Daniel's confession scene with his baptism, and he has to do this in order to get to Bambi land, and here it is. I'm abandoning my child! I'm abandoning my child! I'm abandoning my son! The bait for the flood! Give me the blood, Lord, and let me get away! Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Yes, I do. Get out of here, devil! Out, devil! Out! Get out of here, you son of a gun! And Eli takes to slapping this man several times, which is payback for Daniel, not punching this guy earlier, but slapping him into submission onto the ground. It's a super humiliating scene that hits earlier after HW is deafened. Now, here's what I really love about this baptism and confession scene. After that moment that we just played... You're about to say what I'm going to say. Okay, yeah. After this moment, the water is poured over his head, he's baptized, the song that the choir is now singing is, There is power in the blood of Jesus, and under his breath, Daniel mumbles to himself, There is a pipeline. And it's that contrast, and that there is like, there is power in the blood of Jesus, is in contrast to Daniel's mumbling to himself, I did the baptism, now there's a pipeline. And I'm going to get my money. The way he shakes his head, washes the water off, and walks out, it's like, boom, I did the performance I needed to do, let's make money. It was one of those, when I was thinking about Favorite Lines, it was one of those, it's so subtle, it's so combined in this scene, I couldn't strip it out of the context. So, he gets the blessing, he gets the land, they're getting the oil, and then it skips a jarring amount of time forward. 20 years. 20 years. So you see HW and little Sunday girl, I can't remember, Mary Sunday, they've had a little childish relationship. I do want to say, I'm sorry, I do want to say this really quick, I found this interesting. So Mary Sunday is obviously the youngest daughter of the Sunday family, her and HW are about the same age, they get pretty close. After he goes deaf, Mary Sunday takes the time to learn sign language. Oh, they are, she, like you can tell she loves, like she loves him. Daniel never takes the time to learn sign language. No. Never does he. He does not care. Mary does, that's all I wanted to say. So, it jarred me at first, I had to rewatch it, but when I started it as, Eli leaves, Eli leaves at some point, so Daniel's antagonist is gone, we skip ahead 20 years, but it goes from HW and Mary playing to them doing Mary. And it's honestly kind of sweet, because you're like, oh, this is great, like they've known each other for 20 some odd years. And his only groomsman. Who's standing next to him is his training coach. His language teacher. Not his father. His translator, yep. And it's like, I think it's the contrast of the beginning of the movie with Daniel finding this, okay, silence at the beginning of the movie, and then you're introduced to Daniel, HW, silent at the end, but what comes after, he can't hear, there's no audio for HW, but he actually finds love and affection in someone who truly cares for him, and Mary, which is contrasted to the beginning of the movie where who takes him under and raises him up, this person who kind of used him for that. And I think cared about him to an extent, but, like, it's contrasted. You get to the end, Daniel's running out of the youth, but HW is in love, and they actually care for one another, and it just contrasts the relationship so much. And I think it's really, for me, redeeming for HW, because it's like, okay, you've found someone who cares about you. Like, that's awesome and that's wholesome. Leads to the most bastardly interaction in the whole movie when HW comes and tells Daniel, hey, I'm going to go drilling on my own. I'm going to go do it. You know, he's got a translator telling him, I'm going to go do it. I'm going to go make my own. In Mexico. In Mexico, and Daniel just says, you know, this makes you my competitor. Dynamic changes. He no longer is using him as a business partner. He is just, again, it's the most bastardly interaction. He degrades him. Daniel is a horrible alcoholic. It is a gross amount that they show him drinking, like, out of that bottle a little later in the movie. And he is ruthless and mean, and there's just vitriol coming out, and he makes his deaf son say to him in words that he's leaving. It is. And he can talk because he had eight years of his life where he was able to talk. So he doesn't know. But it's very, like, there's no sharpness in the words. No. He almost talks like an eight-year-old. Yes, but it's that kind of stereotypical speech that comes from having lost hearing, and he gets it out of him. It's despicable. And then Daniel tells him that he's not really his son. He's not really his blood. He says, you're a bastard from a basket. You're a bastard from a basket. And he just keeps yelling it. And then H.W. says, I'm glad I have none of you in me. And you leave. And Daniel just yells it at him as you're going. Kid can't hear it. Yeah, he can't hear it. Kid can't hear it. This man is just overflowing with just hatred. It is so captivating, and you just feel so bad for him. And then you get to the end. Boy, oh, boy, what an ending. Before we talk about the end. Before we talk about the end, this is a worthwhile question. Did Daniel ever love H.W.? I think so. You think so? I think there is a scene. There is a scene in the flashback, and it kind of reinforces what we have seen in other scenes. Oh, I think he does actually have some deep and vulnerable affection, but I think he's so rotten in his desires that not even this genuinely good, what he has and wants to give just overcomes his drive to not just to win but to crush his competition. I think so. And that's a heart-wrenching little bit that you throw in. Yeah, I really want to agree. It is heart-wrenching, and I really want to agree. I think that as capable as someone like Daniel Plainview is of love, he probably expressed that with H.W. I don't know that we can really call it true love if this is another really important moment in that final scene when H.W. comes back to Daniel, telling him he's going to drill. Daniel there confesses to H.W. and the audience, the crowd watching, that the only reason why he took H.W. in as a baby was because he needed a cute face to buy land with. He said that, and I believe that right there is the truth, probably the most truthful moment of Daniel's character in the movie is that moment. Which makes me wonder, is a man like this capable of what we understand true love to be? Or was it really all just... it's so hard to say. He's such a complicated person. I think it's there. I just think he's just so despicable now. What he says earlier in the movie is that he wants to make enough money to go and be alone. He asks himself what he would do with his time, which he uses to spend shooting at expensive things from a rifle and a chair, which is kind of funny. Sorry, you go ahead. He goes to be alone, but he got what he wanted. He succeeded. He is in this lavishly beautiful house. Which that house, I was about to say, is the property that belonged to the actual historical figure Daniel Plunder's character. No way. That's awesome. The Doheny Mansion is what it's called. A ton of Hollywood moments are shot in that mansion. That black and white tile floor is definitely pretty iconic. He got what he wanted. He succeeded. He did what he had to do, and by all accounts, in terms of achieving his goals, he did it. But it cost him his soul. This is my question. This is a worthwhile... Okay, I'll tell you what. Before I get to that question, let's talk about the ending. Let's talk about the ending, and then we'll get to my question. Yo, who slithers back into Daniel Plunder's garden? Right after Daniel has this encounter with H.W., H.W. goes and he leaves Daniel, whether it's the next day or the same day or however long later, is passed out drunk on the bowling alley floor, and 20 years later, unaged all day now, walks up, and it's Eli Sunday. Huckster Eli Sunday walks on in, tries to talk to Daniel like they're old friends. He's like, oh, you and I shared some times. It's like the most bullcrap slung at this moment. He's trying to say, well, listen, you and I are like brothers by marriage now, because your son married my sister, so I'm not sure that makes us brothers. We're both family. Yeah, we're families now by marriage. We baptized you. You're a Christian. You're in this. He is appealing to him in every slippery, slimy way, but Daniel's not even playing games anymore. He's not even trying to go toe to toe. He's just throwing haymakers. And so the reason why Eli Sunday comes to Daniel, this is 1927, okay, I believe it's 27. We all know what happens historically in America in the 30s. The Great Depression comes in. 27 comes. This market's crashed. Eli has quickly realized, crap, I'm out of money. I need something. You know, I know a guy who can drill oil. He owes me $5,000. He owes me $5,000? He never gave me my five grand for the Eli Sunday wrench. So I'm going to go to Daniel. I'm going to go to my old pal Daniel. My in-law Daniel Plainview. And he comes to him, and Eli presumably doesn't understand how oil drilling works. And so Eli comes to Daniel and proposes this business plan where Daniel can drill on some more land around the Sunday ranch that Eli thinks he's not already drilling at. He doesn't know. And Daniel actually lets him propose this deal. It's so funny, because Daniel knows it ain't going to work because he's already getting that oil. But he lets him go through with it, and Eli Sunday says something along the lines of, God didn't prepare me for this devastating crash. We lost money. We lost money. Daniel, we're brothers. You can drill on this part of the land that you don't have any oil rigs at, and we can enter this business deal together, and I can gain some of that wealth from this oil business that you've created. And Daniel says, I would love to do business with you. He says that. He says that. But what does he make him say first? He makes him say that God is a superstition and that he is a false prophet. He says, I need you to tell me I am a false prophet and God is a superstition. And I need you to tell it to me like you're preaching on a Sunday. Like this is your church. This is your congregation. I need you to shout it as loud as you can. I am a false prophet and God is a superstition. And after he makes Eli Sunday, it's humiliating. And this scene is meant to parallel Daniel's confession of baptism scene for sure. He is not forgotten. 20 years have gone by, and he's still coming at this man. Exactly. And so after Eli says this, Daniel lets him in and says, I've already drilled that land. Oh, and it's the most deflating, like, Lance, try. I've already drilled that land. And Eli does not know, again, how oil works. And he just, he sticks it in the iconic, do you have it queued up for us? You're talking about the drainage? No, not drainage. I drink your milkshake. Did you get that? Oh, I have it, yeah. This iconic line, the line from this movie, which, we're just going to play it. If you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw, there it is, I have the straw. And watch it. My straw reaches, accrues through, and starts to drink your milkshake. I drink your milkshake. I drink it up. It's, this man has humiliated him. He has run him out. And not for an audience. Eli did it in front of a church. This man did it for himself. He emasculated this man, made him deny that God is real. Everything that this man, he made this man sink to his lowest to get his money, like he made Daniel sink to his lowest to get his blessing for his money. It's how low, it is the limbo of what you will do, what you will do to yourself to get this money. It is despicable and awful, and it's a great picture of humanity. So Daniel here explains the concept of drainage. Drainage! No, Joc, go watch it. We're describing things. Go watch this movie. Yeah, Daniel here explains the concept of drainage to Eli. He basically says, listen, I don't need to have oil rigged on this land, because my rigs and my pipeline, the oil all drains and comes from the sea. It's all mine. I've got an ocean of oil. It's all mine. And then what happens? Daniel finally snaps. Daniel kills Eli. He runs around like a monster. It's like the devil's fighting against this kind of Frankenstein-moving monster, because Daniel sleeps on the ground all the time. You usually see him once or twice on a bed. He's sleeping on the ground in this bowling alley, his hips gone out from other injuries and time. And so he's kind of, he's moving with the limp, and he is drunk. There is a section where Eli is talking, and Daniel is just drinking, it seemed almost like a gallon's worth of tequila straight out of the bottle. It is a disgusting amount of tequila, or I assume tequila because of the location. It's gross how much he puts down, and he's listening, and he starts like, it is bombastic and loud, and lesser actors, again, all other actors, this would have looked like a comedy sketch or a farce. But he sells this alcoholic mania of just rage and anger and 20 years of holding onto humiliation, and he's chasing him, throwing bowling balls at him, and chasing him around, and it would seem like a parody if it weren't so dang well done. And then he takes a bowling pin, and he beats in Eli Sunday's head. Not very graphic. No, it's not at all. Again, it's all violence in this movie. It's brutal, but not graphic. There is a distinction there. And he beats him, and he sits down on the bowling alley, and Daniel's little manservant comes and, this plain view? Mr. Daniel? Mr. Daniel? And he turns back and goes, I'm finished. And the movie cuts to cue classical music. You know what's just occurred to me? What's that? This is, what were Jesus' last words? It is finished. It's very much, it really plays on the religious themes very big. Just massive. It pervades this whole movie, and gosh, it's great. It's fantastic. So this is the question, right? We're soon going to transition into the primitives. If the primary conflict in this movie is between, let's say, religion and capitalism, represented by Eli and Daniel, would you say that's fair? Yeah, absolutely. Is there a winner? Oh, everyone lost. Everyone did. Everyone lost. Because here's the deal. H.W. who found love won. That's it. Yeah. And that could even be, like, love is the winner, right? Yeah. And if you didn't actually, those who didn't actually love the congregation, love family, love one another. Yeah. Daniel succeeded, miserable man. Eli failed, miserable man. Charlatans, hupsters, not genuine people by any stretch, just personas. They're both show, they're kabuki theater, you know, the most convincing manipulators. One succeeded, one failed, and everyone else lost if you follow these men, because they sent you away with less than you came with. It is captivating. It is so well acted. It is so well done. And now we've come to superlatives, and when you're trying to give, you know, A best out of these 10 out of 10 ring of movies. Yeah. And that's the thing, guys. Like, we talk about a lot, but there are a lot of scenes we left out. We can't reiterate this in months. Like, if you've listened to it this much, you've probably seen the movie. Encourage everybody you know to go watch it. You know, I'll do it this way, to see if our listeners are paying attention. If you don't want to pay the Amazon rental fee or do the week subscription to Paramount Plus, I will Venmo you the $4. I also just have Paramount Plus. I'll give you my login. I want you to see this movie. I want you to see this movie. I will Venmo you the money to watch this movie if you cannot access it and are on the fence about it. If we have not convinced you to pay the 4, I will pay for you to watch this movie. Absolutely. 100%. Go watch it. Mikey, let's hit them superlatives. We've been gushing, and I want to gush some more. All right. So, first the superlatives, as if you've been listening, they're all Lord of the Rings themed because we love Lord of the Rings movies. And they're the GOAT. You use the GOATs to tell you who the best are in Lord of the Rings movies. So first up, we have the Sam Gamgee Award for the best line or monologue moment. John, give me your best line or monologue moment. All right. Middle of this movie, maybe almost about two-thirds through the way, Daniel is sitting with his fake brother, opening up immensely, and he tells him, I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people. There are times when I look at people, and I see nothing worth liking. I want to earn enough money, and I can get away from everyone. I see the worst in people. I don't need to look past seeing them to get all I need. I've built my hatreds up for years, little by little. Henry, to have you here is to give me a second breath. I can't keep doing this on my own with these people. He straight up says, I am a hateful man. I hate most other people. I want to stop all competition and succeed. And that just speaks to the depth of this man's evil. He knows. He is a sinful man. He knows. Yeah, I've got to go with, I mean, that's the best monologue moment in this movie. I gave it to, I'm a false prophet, and God is a superstition. Gosh. I mean, obviously, I agree with the former. I think Eli Sunday was a false prophet. I don't agree with the latter. I don't think God is a superstition. But that line comes, just with what it means at the moment it comes in the film and how that parallels back to, I've abandoned my boy. What are you willing to do to get what you want? And that's deny the things that you're shoving into your mouth. Eli Sunday is willing to blaspheme me. What he apparently holds to so dearly to get what he wants. And that moment, I think we learned that Eli Sunday is not at all much different from Daniel Plowman. They're the same terrible boy. They bleed the same blood. Yeah. So let's go to the Helms Deep Award for our favorite scene. Mine is Daniel's baptism scene. We already played it earlier. It's so good. I won't play it again. I gushed about it. It's the oil rig scene. Stop listening to us now. Go watch it. Go watch it all. It's beautiful, wonderful. It's character revealing. It's captivating to watch. It's well shot. They actually lit this thing on fire. And then they actually blew it up. It's fantastic. Go watch it. And it was all in one shot because they actually lit it on fire. They had to get it in one take. Again, we already talked about it. Sorry if it seems like we are not going through these well. All of the things that we love, we're going to talk about a little bit more because we love them and do superlatives. This next one is funny. So the LTR Prologue Award for the best shot. Mine is in that scene, in the oil rig scene, when the oil rig is up in flames. Daniel's looking up at the burnt tower that was used for digging oil. It's on fire. And there's this orange hue, this orange spherical cylinder-esque oval shaped hue around the camera from the flames. And Daniel is just off center, shadowed out, looking at it. And it's, oh my goodness. It's beautiful. The best shot for me. God, what did I write down? Because I keep thinking, we've talked through this whole movie now. And I'm like, well, all of this movie. I think it's the one that hit me the most in a very good way. I mean, I love the oil rig scene. I do love the scene where it comes back and he's sitting there. He's just watched it the whole time. He's sitting with a chair. He's watched the oil rig. So it's after your scene. The best shot is he's sitting there, back of him drenched in oil. They roll up the dynamite. He signals and they roll it up. It means he doesn't care about the oil. It's another means to an end. We'll keep building. We still have oil. Let's keep oil. Burn it all down. Blow it up like he does with his relationships. Blow it all up. We keep going. Best shot is him sitting there. You don't see him, but you know what this man's about. Yeah. I mean, that's great. This next one, John, there's no point in spending too much time on it. The Andy Serkis Award for the best actor and actress. Daniel Day-Lewis. It's Daniel Day-Lewis. No other option. And you could reasonably argue that everybody does awesome in this movie. Paul Daniel is great in this movie. And one thing I did want to say about Daniel's performance is I see the roles that he's going to go on to do in his career and his performance in this movie. One of my favorite Paul Daniel movies is Prisoners. He plays Alex Jones and he's this timid, really shy character. And I see that, especially in his portrayal of Paul Sunday. But then you get the Riddler in the Batman movie. That's Eli Sunday, baby. That's Eli Sunday all day. I do love Daniel's performance, but obviously, DDO gets the crown here. Again, I mean, Ava Shavita's great. All of the people who play these random farmers do well. Kieran Hines does well. I mean, even the guy who does the sign language for him. Everyone does well. It's great. Daniel Day-Lewis sits like a king on his miserable throne in his bowling alley. All right. This one's interesting. The Ewan Award for what we didn't like. Do you have anything? No. Not an aspect. Again, nothing. Nothing that I dislike. No, nothing. Yeah. So, I mean, guys, this movie's incredible. I love this movie. I hinted at this earlier. I don't hate this part of the movie. It's fine. I don't know that we needed the fake brother storyline. I don't know that it was. The things that we learn about Daniel from that, specifically the monologue you referenced, I think we can get that in another context without bringing in this kind of 30-minute weird. To me, again, I love this movie. To me, it just felt like let's just put something else in here to reiterate what the audience is kind of already learning about Daniel. And I don't know. I don't know that we needed it. But I also understand why it's in there. And at the same time, it's not like I'm going to skip through it when I watch it. I do appreciate it. To me, that's probably, this movie is like beginning to end is nothing but highs. This is probably the lowest high. Which is still higher than most highs. Which is still really high. I so heartily disagree. I understand. I understand there maybe could have been another way. I still think what it revealed about his past, the fact that you actually learn about him as a person, his history before this persona, I think that was kind of what you got at and sort of vulnerability that he was never showing before. In all of his erraticness, he was never showing that kind of vulnerability. No, you're absolutely right. And I completely understand that. Part of it was like, let me just give an answer to this. Yeah. You needed an answer, honestly, yeah. I don't know what else. Yeah, I don't know what else I would put. Even when they're going and surveying him and his fake brother, it's like, the score is great, it looks amazing, you wouldn't even cut those scenes, even though you feel like you might not need them. There's nothing. One thing we did talk about at all, we won't get into now, this just reiterates why you need to go watch it, is the restaurant scene. When he's drunk at the restaurant. Again. Another scene you just kind of, oh, you got to go watch it. It's so good. All right, next up we have the Howard Shore, Phil Collins, John Williams Award for Unnecessarily Great Score. The greatest score moment, real quick, shout out to Johnny Greenwood. He did the score, and this score is so good. Yeah. For mine, my favorite score moment is the opening scene. It's the first thing you see and hear. I feel like I'm sitting down and about to watch an A24 Ari Aster movie, and it is horrifying. It's horrifying. We've been trained probably from the influence of this movie to be like, I'm on the edge now, and you are, but you're not sure why. It's just an oil man. I am an oil man. Mine is cut between a lot of them. There are a lot of good second places, I think the score during the oil rig scene sits atop. The oil rig scene, it's the scene amongst, it's the first among equals of the last. With maybe like five lines of dialogue. There's not a ton in there. You just have to watch it all burn, baby. Yeah. Next up we have this one, the Bibble Bag and the Ribbon Deal, the jump scare award, doesn't apply to this movie. The jump scare at the very beginning when you're like, oh, it's capitalism, there's a villain. Oh. Yeah. All right, here we go. You take this one, the Eagles Award for the, what is it, the Death Machina. Oh, the Deus Ex Machina. I can never get that right, Deus Ex Machina, convenient, happy ending. I don't have one. There's no happy ending. There's no happy ending. Convenient, happy ending, the fact that H.W. found a woman who would become his wife when he was like 10, and they, you know, were together for many more years. But like also, it's the early 1900s. That's what happened. Honestly, there's no happy ending. Everyone's in a role, and then there's a happy ending. Getting what you want is bad sometimes. There is no Deus Ex Machina in this one. No one's happy. I'm interested to hear your answer for this award, the Token Award for the MVP. Again, Daniel Day-Lewis, it's a lesser movie. I feel like we've been seeing his praises. I would just for variety's sake, Paul Thomas Anderson, masterful director. That's my answer. PTA is my answer for this one. Like, you'll still get an amazing Daniel Day-Lewis performance in another director's movie, but PTA doing what he did in this movie, drawing all of the, everything that we've praised, who put all of those things together, who worked on all of that, the GOAT, the man who did it for this movie, PTA, Paul Thomas Anderson. All right, it's time to rate this film, John. But wait, hold on, before we rate it, we've got to listen to it. Wait. I think I'm going to get a six. I think I'm going to get a six. It's the most ridiculous sound bite we've had. I love it. All right, John, how many lit Gondorian beacons does this movie get out of ten? Out of ten? I mean, I'm just getting ten. I'm just getting ten. I don't, like, I, we're going to be talking about a lot of good movies that are going to get a lot of high scores. I don't want that, like, I think I just found Salansa nine. I don't want that to, like, there needs to be an understanding of the chasm between eight, nine, and ten. Like, one, two, and three are pretty close. One, two, three, and four are pretty close. Five and six are closer. Six and seven are closer. Seven and eight is about a football field in between. Eight and nine is about a runway in between. And then nine and ten is the distance between Berlin and Paris. Yeah. It's a long ways away to march to get there, but once you have made it from nine to ten, you've won the war. Ten out of ten. Yeah. It's not, it's close in numbers, but in terms of quality and what this is and how much I love it, ten out of ten. I could not suggest anything better for this movie. I mean, this is a perfect film. I don't know the flaws in this movie. And, like, I know I said the whole brother thing, but, like. If you had to pick anything. If I had to pick anything, yeah. And it's, like, personal preference, too. Like, maybe you could put something in the middle of another flaw, but, like, I wouldn't cut a thing. I couldn't add anything. It's ten out of ten. Go watch it again, if we haven't said that, thirty times in the past hour and twenty-nine minutes. Go watch this movie. I will pay for you to watch this movie. Go do it. It's great. And it's not super long. It's a little over two hours, so ten maybe. Two hours, ten, like, it's not that big of a deal. But, man, you'll be at the end of it going, wow. Yeah, what happened? You'll be amazed by the work. John, this has been a lot of fun. I'm sure they can have this conversation. This is helping me recover from two hours and forty-eight minutes of that. Still. I would watch this movie four times, just easy, before watching. Not even to say that Avatar is that bad. I just love this so much more. So much, so much. And I'm glad you enjoyed it. It would have been interesting if you would have come in here and said, trash, dog-water movie. I wouldn't be worthy to do a movie podcast. Honestly. But, yeah, man, I'm glad we could do it. Thank you for making me watch it. Dude, no problem. And next week we'll talk about A Star is Born. I can't wait to hear your opinion. We'll see how Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga make me feel at the end of that. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. I know how they make me feel. Oh, my. Because I've seen it. Oh, my. Like five times. Well, then I will come in with that new perspective. We'll compare notes. We'll hit some hot takes and show you that we're just a little more than a hot take here. Guys, thank you so much for listening. Real quick, if you do enjoy this content, please leave us a five-star review, both written and just clicking on the five stars. That's really helpful. And share the pod. Please do, yeah. If you know someone who loves movies, whether they'll love it and agree with us or hate it and want to listen to our bad opinions, share it around. Let them know. Share it around, and we cannot wait to get back with you guys next week. All right. Peace. We'll see you next week.