There Will Be Blood

analysis
#1

OS (transforming desolate frontier into new source of wealth):
Situation > The Future > Choice > Conscience

MC (Daniel Plainview):
Activity > Obtaining > Approach > Consider

IC (Eli Sunday)
Manipulation > Becoming > Rationalization > Conscience

RS (competitors for influence over frontier)
Fixed Attitude > Innermost Desires > Dream > Control

Outcome: Success (Daniel’s oil business successfully established, transformed california, producing enough wealth to “get away”)
Judgement: Bad (Daniel is left with no family or friends, or healthy competition that would fire his passions, an empty hearted home)
Protagonist: Daniel Plainview

This film always felt like the most complete and on point of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films, in traditional narrative sense.
thoughts?
could HW (his son) also be an IC?

#2

I confess it’s been a number of years since seeing this film, but here’s a couple of thoughts:

  1. “Transforming desolate frontier” sounds a lot like Activity, rather than Situation. No one in the story is shown to be “stuck” in oil-rush California; it seems like they’re there by choice, though it’s not really addressed one way or the other.

  2. I have serious doubts whether Blood has a complete story in the first place. It seems to me it’s all Daniel Plainview all the time. There are no other dramatic characters outside Eli, H.W., Henry, and Bandy, and I can’t see a big picture perspective that includes all of them – they’re all there to just illustrate the MC, like the woman on the plane in Sweet Hereafter. The closest Eli comes to being an IC is during the baptism, where he uses public humiliation to goad Plainview into confessing his sins.

IMO it’s a relentless, arresting performance by Day-Lewis, but even at the end there’s still a big question mark about why Plainview does what he does. I mean, other than “Capitalism!” (a cultural interpretation) why is he so dog-eat-dog, just out there to win no matter what? We never know.

It’s possible that it’s a propaganda work (dramatica-style), in which we’re meant to project our own past and motivations onto Plainview’s actions. But that would require some deliberate framework in the other perspectives, which I have reservations about.

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#3

Aside: My vote for “most complete” movie by PTA is Hard Eight, starring an all-star cast of actors with 3 names.