I suspect Flannery O’Connor would have appreciated the mystery and manners of Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, particularly its vile characters, its parody of Christian imagery, and its fascination with the soul-eating effects of sin and the moments of grace that arise from the macabre.
Unlike his other films Boogie Nights and Magnolia, Blood is not ultimately about atonement and reconciliation, but about the decent into madness and hell on earth. When its protagonist Daniel Plainview shouts he is a sinner in a baptismal ceremony presided by preacher Eli Sunday, he would be making an understatement if he weren’t being almost entirely insincere. “Give me the blood, Lord, and let me get away!” he yells. Plainview thinks God is nothing but a superstition, but he agrees to be baptized by Eli as part of an agreement to purchase vital land from a church member.
The movie shows us Daniel’s hatred consume him bit by bit until he has gained all he wanted and has garnered nothing he cares about. Indeed, he cares for nothing, not himself, not his things, certainly not his son. In his blood flow neither life nor love, but greed and hatred.
The film’s end has baffled not a few viewers and reviewers, for it changes the whole dynamic of the narrative. We finally see into the depths of Eli and Daniel, and what we see are lives filled with sound and fury signifying nothing. In an act of pure cruelty and in parody of his baptism at Eli’s hand, Daniel demands Eli renounce his faith in order to be saved from the market collapse that ushered in the Great Depression. Only Daniel tricks Eli, for the terms of the deal turn out to be meaningless. Eli falls and then dies in an act of drunken, violent rage from the hands of Daniel. The blood that ends the film is not spilt from a deed of planning and calculation, but it is nevertheless inevitable, an overflowing of Daniel’s violent hatred of every person and everything, himself and his things included.
In his rage before descending to murder, Daniel shouts, “Did you think your song and dance and your superstition would help you, Eli? I am the Third Revelation! I am who the Lord has chosen!” When it dawns on Daniel that he has murdered and this time will not be able to hide the body and blood, he utters in a voice of utter nonchalance, “I am finished,” echoing in perversion the final words of Christ on the Cross. He has substituted himself for God, and the effects of that can only be bloody and bad.
There is blood, and when it pours at the end it pours not for salvation but in damnation. Yet the saving Blood of Christ for which Daniel has substituted his act of hateful, bloody murder remains as a specter, haunting the final scene and with it the whole film.
Dante would be proud.
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