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The Bowling Alley: Plainview = Evil?

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    on that note, im going to go watch Elmer Gantry

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    I suppose I have a problem viewing his murders as evil deeds proper.  Killing someone is definitely horrible, but characters in movies who we would define as anti-heroes or vigilantes do it all the time.  The Punisher, Charles Bronson in "Death Wish," Dirty Harry, and The Man With No Name.  These people kill those they regard as evil because they have their own sense of justice independent of society's.  I think Plainview is the same.  While I don't think murder was the "right" way to go for him, I can definitely understand how a person as passionate and ruthless as Plainview would want to kill a person who had betrayed his trust and sullied the sacredness of family (Henry) and another who made him say despicable things and wanted to lord his will over him, going as far making him betray his own personal set of (non)beliefs.

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    This is such a great topic, I've been wondering about this ever since I saw the movie.  Well, on the back of the DVD case it says "There Will Be Blood" is a story of Plainview's "descent into madness."  So, can a person be evil if they are not in their right mind?  Plainview starts out in the oil business living a very lonely and isolated existence, and it's a very hard life.  And there are some very traumatic events that happened to Plainview that could  push anyone over the edge...H.W. loses his hearing, after H.W. starts the fire Plainview sends him away which is a decision that plagues him with guilt and makes him feel like he abandon his child, and he is deceived by the man claiming to be his brother...  The two murders, in my opinion, are connected to Plainview's guilt about H.W.  I believe he kills the man claiming to be his brother, because the man's arrival led to Daniel sending H.W. away. Although, they are eventually reunited, later in the film we learn that H.W. and Daniel grow apart over the years.  Then Eli shows up looking for money after Plainview, who has no wife or friends, loses H.W. perhaps forever, as H.W. decides to take his wife off to Mexico.  Being that back when H.W. lost his hearing Eli showed no compassion and did not try to help, Plainview resents Eli for more than just being a "false prophet." Plainview may hold Eli partly responsible for the fractured relationship with H.W., or at least believes Eli symbolizes what he finds most despicable in people in general.  So, I view Daniel Plainfield as a broken man, not an evil man.  There is also a good article that touches on the issue about Daniel Plainview, and also discusses "No Country for Old Men", "The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford", and other movies here http://jviz.blogspot.com/2008/04/dark-movies.html


    • CommentAuthorDarian
    • CommentTimeApr 23rd 2008 edited
     

    Firstly, i see things from the Christian perspective of nobody being perfet (except God) and hence everyone is evil to some degree. Things are not a black and white case of some characters being good and others being bad. Categorisation like that is not helpful in coming to a deeper understanding of the film's meaning.

    I love Dainel Plainview as I pity his spiritual stuggle and descent into darkness which is the self defeat possible for anyone and a warning to viewers. Also, he does love his son and has a moral compass even if he makes mistakes and commits various evil acts.

    Daniel Plainview is much more than just evil though, he represents the dark potential of humanity. Oil in the movie I take to be a symbol of the darkness inherint to the soul of every human being. Throughout the movie, until the end, Daniel is always searching and mining. By the end of the film all the oil, blood and darkness have been dug up to come critical spiritual breaking point and both Eli and Daniel die spiritually (Daniel kills himself spitiually- "I'm finished"). In Genesis it is said that -"The wages of sin is death" (for everyone of course, not just Daniel and Eli)

    If the Earth (a symbol of the world) is a great body, we can think of Oil as its dark blood. There Will Be Oil and so also, There will be Blood. Most striking are the shots of pools of oil on the ground, which indiciate darkness that has come to the surface (notice the large pool of oil just before Daniel beats Eli into the mud).

    Taken together with Eli, Daniel is a warning of avoiding the truth that God is Love or at least, not money and pride. Vanity, greed and materialism should not take center stage in a persons spiritual life. Superficial religion and the worship of mammon are dangers that America, humanity and we each as individuals all face. Mary and H.W by the end of the film appear to be religious people involved in business and we don't expect a tragic future for them. So relgion and capitalism in themselves are not bad things, only the oil/blood/darkness of every human being and the world.

    This movie asks each of us- Dig up and live out the darkness and where will it take you?

    • CommentAuthortk21769
    • CommentTimeMay 17th 2008 edited
     
    If DDL is "channeling John Huston", it's not the John Huston of Chinatown, but John Huston as the voice of God himself in the 1966 Dino DeLaurentis epic, The Bible. Daniel is an anti-God, and his story is an Anti-Genesis, the Genesis not of a whole balanced world but of the American Self-Made Man, who rejects everything that does not serve his own single-minded purpose. At the film's conclusion, Daniel is not the loving God who looks upon Creation and "saw that it was good", but an anti-God who can only proclaim, "I am finished" with the business of making his own lonely world. It is a barren world completly out of balance with the needs of human beings for family, friends, community, faith and love. The Biblical Genesis is a beginning; the Anti-Genesis of this story reaches its climax only in madness and death. So yes, Daniel is evil, tragically so because his evil is so closely bound with characteristics that might have been good, and might have done good for everone in his world. I spent a couple days grappling with the bowling alley ending before deciding it was, after all, appropriate and brilliant.
    • CommentAuthorYeshedoesa
    • CommentTimeMay 24th 2008
     

    Do you reject the blood?  Or do you embrace the blood?  When the derrick burned and the fire came to light the sky, it took them out of the darkness.  The genie was out of the bottle.  Pandora had opened the box.

    Daniel made some bad choices.  He had his chances but was lost. 

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    Very well said, tk21769.

    "Do you reject the blood?  Or do you embrace the blood?"

    Depends on which blood you're talking about: the blood of the Lamb or the blood of the Earth?  The preacher and the oilman may embrace different kinds of blood, but maybe it doesn't matter, as they both are misguided in their obsessions.

    If anyone needs any more convincing that the genie isn't going back into the bottle any time soon, rent "Who Killed the Electric Car?"

    • CommentAuthorBriggsy
    • CommentTimeMay 24th 2008
     

    Thank goodness shepherdess the electric car is making a comeback in a big way.  But we should never forget the wealth and influence of those who extract and sell the earth's blood.

    • CommentAuthorSmithicus
    • CommentTimeJun 5th 2008
     

    Well, hello there people. I think what you have all writen is pretty great and I love the movie.

    First, I'd like to say that I agree with those that believe that Daneil is evil.

    Second, I think you all take it way too far if you ask me. 

    I think there are much less figurative scriptings and hidden meanings in this screen play than has been discussed in these forums. I do, however, believe it is good to discuss this sort of thing at great lengths as well. Speaking of mans struggle to survive and the similarity between blood and oil and so on and so forth is good because it challenges us to look within to find meaning in our own lives by casting the reflections of others life works accross our own. As I said before, this work is much more litteral than you have been lead to believe. It's all laid out nicely for you if you watch and listen properly. There is proof of this in that Daniel doesn't lie once throughout the whole movie, though some of his words are very mis-leading to the other characters, they have also mis-lead the viewers. To lie is to say something un-truthful, and un-truthfulness comes from saying words you do not believe. Now, that being said, if you watch the movie over, you can actually see the evil in his eyes when he is digging his first well and finds the precious metal. You can see the evil in his eyes when he speaks to the town folks about bread pouring out their ears and you can see the evil in his eyes when he calmly states "I'll give them quail prices". He does everything that he says he's going to do, there are no supprises and the reason, I believe, that so many people debate his morality is that most of us like him and, being good people, we make excuses for him and hope for the best from him.

    That's all I have, I'm finished. 

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    Daniel Plainview can be summed up in two phrases

    veni vidi vici - I came, I saw, I conquered

    and

    quod me nutrit destruit - What nourishes me destroys me

    he was driven by his own succes in business so much so that it lead to his demise in life

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    I think Plainview is evil. I just watched one of P.T. Anderson's DVD picks: "Downfall". And there you have the portrait of the most famous evil person in the world, Der Fuhrer. "Downfall" was criticized for portraying Hitler as a human being. And "There Will Be Blood" does a similar thing. It shows that even a big, bad oil man is a human being, capable of loving deeply his adopted son.

    The director who made "Downfall" also made the new remake of the "Invasion of Body Snatchers", in which the moral of the story is that the essence of humanity is war and conflict. For Upton Sinclair, it was the principle of competition that was the root of wars and exploitation. For PTA, the principle of competition can be found in the sibling rivalry of Cain and Abel (as in Steinbeck's "East of Eden"). In the bowling alley finale, Daniel wakes up only after Eli says: "Daniel, my brother!". When Daniel kills Eli, we can think of Eli as Abel. But, then we have to remember the scene in which Eli attacks his father (Abel) for selling the land so cheaply to Daniel. So, both Daniel and Eli are Cains. They are both evil, they are both monsters, and still, they are unmistakably human, like Hitler.

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