When we first meet Daniel Plainview, protagonist of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 oil-epic, There Will Be Blood, little of his background is made clear. He is given no childhood, no prior failures or success, no clear world view, not even a voice yet. His actions speak for him in this opening, and his actions tell us that he simply began as a silver miner, working alone, methodical and restless. His only apparent drive in this moment is to find wealth and move forward.
Throughout the film, in moments of privacy, Daniel remains characterized as quiet and cold. When interacting with others, it becomes clear that he views speaking in the same way he views any other physical action, a means to his desired ends. In conversation with the character perhaps closest to him, his adopted son H.W., his warmest moments come through. However, even these lines of Daniel teaching H.W. business tactics and oil industry methods are contextually driven, not as much by a desire to truly connect with the child, but by Daniel’s goal that H.W. will grow up to follow in his footsteps and continue to maintain his legacy. Interactions outside of those with H.W., such as conversations with members of the Sunday family and the townsfolk, characterize Daniel as an assertive smooth talker, guiding any conversation in the direction he wants it to go, and willing to weave webs of lies as big as he needs to in order to get what he wants from people with the least amount of resistance. The few times Daniel speaks in a way that feels like it’s truly coming from the heart are his violent outbursts throughout the film, when he loses control of himself and allows the real, bitter anger waiting underneath to be seen.
Daniel’s main dilemma is his lust for power and wealth in order to fill an emptiness he feels in himself. In sparse moments, we see him attempt to fill this emptiness in other ways, emotionally with his son or brother, and as both relationships reach a point that no longer satisfies him, he returns to the pursuit of wealth like a drug. He has a dramatic need to continue to amass wealth for the sake of amassing more wealth. He needs to feel like he’s finally won at a competition designed never to end. In this pursuit, Daniel takes progressively ruthless steps to ensure the growth of his oil empire from his individual beginnings to the final moments in his shadowy, lonely mansion. In his attempts to change the parts of his life surrounding success and wealth, he never ends up changing how alone he is and feels. He goes from being a poor silver miner who happens upon oil and becomes what society considers a respectable businessman, then escalates that transformation to what feels like its fullest extent, a completely bloodthirsty animal driven only by chasing monetary wealth.
There is almost no positive transformation experienced by Daniel. Instead, we only see him become more and more aggressive in his steps towards the expansion of his empire. It is in his most violent moments around the back half of the film, when he becomes fully unrestrained, that a new yet related drive for the character becomes evident: Daniel’s passion for dominating an adversary. This desire is implied through many of Daniel’s business practices and becomes especially apparent in his treatment of Eli Sunday. After getting as much monetarily out of Eli as he can, he proceeds to attack and humiliate him in two instances spread years apart, showing a deep seeded need to experience the feeling of success in any way and a willingness to take that out on anyone he sees as weaker than himself. By the end of the film, after losing the one semblance of human connection he had in H.W., Daniel experiences what could be considered his ultimate success, brutally murdering Eli, finally ending what he very well may have considered the most personal rivalry of his life, a conclusion supported by his final line, “I’m finished”.
Daniel’s animosity towards Eli can be traced back to one moment from the film in particular. In a scene at Eli’s church later in the film, Daniel is forced to accept a baptism in return for a ranch owner allowing his pipeline to be built over the ranches land, as well as that same ranch owner not divulging the knowledge that Daniel’s murdered the man impersonating his brother. Within the context of the film, this scene is one of the only instances of Daniel struggling to take action for the sake of expansion. At the scene’s start, Eli asks the congregation if there are any newcomers who would like to repent. Daniel knows what he needs to do, but he is visibly opposed to taking part in any of this. Eli goes on to humiliate Daniel in front of the congregation, having him get on his knees and repeat apologies for his sins. At first, Daniel seems content to simply speak the words, not allowing the sentiments to affect him, performing just to get it over with. Then Eli makes him say he’s abandoned his son and we see emotion besides annoyance start to sink in. Eli has him say it again and again, each time getting to Daniel a little more until he falls into an outburst, both enraged that he’s forced to take part in shaming himself in this way and hurt by the realization that it may be right. It’s one of the only moments in the film where we see Daniel have anything resembling emotional introspection, and he openly hates it. Soon after, he makes this clear, yelling “Give me the blood Lord, and let me get away.” Description from the script makes the impact of being pushed on abandoning his son even more clear, reading after Eli tells him to say it again, “DANIEL looks hard at Eli…HOLD. Daniel is somewhere between faking it/taking it/and exploding up at Eli…”
On Eli’s side of the interaction, he presents the scenario as if he’s doing Daniel a favor, helping him to banish the evil inside of him. Meanwhile, this moment follows an earlier altercation in which Daniel attacked Eli and physically dragged him through mud. We know Eli hasn’t forgiven this, later attacking his own father for allowing Daniel into their lives. That context informs Eli’s motivations in this moment in a drastically different way from how his character attempts to present it. It becomes clear in his dialogue towards Daniel that he’s using this moment as an excuse to berate him and actively attempt to make him feel bad, “You’ve lusted after women and you have abandoned your child. Your child that you raised, you have abandoned because he was sick and you have sinned.”
What adds even further to the layers and impact of this scene is the fact that Daniel and Eli are having this intense moment in front of a majority of the townsfolk, unable to say explicitly what they are thinking, remaining within the confines of a performance while their true intentions bubble under the surface until they start to burst through the seams. At the height of each of their emotions, both feel as if they’ve won. Eli is screaming at god to remove the evil from Daniel, slapping him across the face over and over, while Daniel, at this point, has begun to allow himself to begin openly mocking Eli. In one reading of this moment, Daniel sees that Eli has become so overwhelmed by himself that he can say whatever he wants, he’s already guaranteed the pipeline, and so he allows a flippant disregard for the religion to slide out “Where’s your god now?” and after another slap “There he is.” He doesn’t mind physical pain, the threat of real emotional pain has passed. In another reading of the moment, Eli is aware of what Daniel is saying and it doesn’t matter to him, he feels he’s accomplished what he intended, whether that is to truly save Daniel’s soul, or just to humiliate him publicly as revenge for being in the reverse position earlier. I think both these lines of thought can coexist in the moment, which adds a lot of complexity to what’s happening. In the end, Daniel is finally baptized, shaking his head jovially and energetically like a wet dog, like someone who’s past the hard part. The line he whispers to himself, “There’s a pipeline” shows that while he’s accomplished his goal, he has not been truly affected by this in a way he will consciously recognize. It is only when he returns to sit with the rest of the congregation, and Mary, Eli’s sister and H.W.s future wife, hugs him, that we see a moment resembling any sense of lasting emotional impact the events have had on him.