I'd like to have a thread specifically on the topic of confused identity in There Will Be Blood. Please contribute.
Naturally, I must keep the OP short and sweet (and not say anything in the OP), so as to entice other posters. But I will advance some ideas in the immediate sequel.
Don't talk to me or my dead employees bastard in a basket ever again
>>70879290
why was HW such an ungrateful fucking child?
>>70879309
Daniel tossed him aside the moment raising him got too difficult.
>>70879338
I'm sure he sent him money though.
>>70879290
What was the significance of having one actor, (Dano), play two different characters? Why did the two brothers look the same? What was the significance of that?
>20 minutes into drainage and chill when he gives you this look
>>70879290
>confused identity
IF YOUR INSINUATING SOME GENDER FLUID TRANNY BULLSHIT OP I SWEAR TO GOD
>>70879358
I think the actor for the brother dropped out, it wasn't something done on purpose
Why didn't HW just "extend" his fathers company into mexico?
>>70879353
But Daniel wasn't struggling for money, it was the easier path
>>70879425
He wasn't as savvy as his dad
>>70879570
so what? it's not like it was for several years. they reunite when HW is still a child.
>>70879661
The emotional blow of "your dad doesn't care about you" is pretty large
>>70879425
he wanted to be his own man
>>70879290
As someone who works in the oil industry, i fucking hate this movie. First reason is that everyone not involved in energy thinks this is how the oil field is. Second, every dumb ass redneck in the industry has an email or username with some variation of Daniel Plainview in the name.
> hurr durr muh milkshake
I wish i could appreciate this movie but like any movie about your profession, all you can see is the idiotic and inaccurate portrayal.
>>70879358
paul dano originally only played paul. another actor played eli but was fired during filming and dano was a quick replacement, so they became identical twins instead of fraternal ones.
Like the Bible, There Will Be Blood is a patriarchal story of men in the desert, with confusions and ambiguities in the narrative. Also like the Bible, the nature of those relationships among men (and their very confusions and mysteries) are also central to the narrative. Women are present in the narrative, but they do almost none of the talking. Indeed, Mary Sunday learns in her own way "not to talk", instead learning sign language to communicate with her husband H.W. These opening remarks are not intended as some ham-handed SJW analysis, but a simple, honest reckoning of what the story is /like/ in terms of older, relevant narratives, especially the bible, and American expansion and industry. This is a man's world.
We must pass therefore into a consideration of all of the males of the story. It is their story, and in addition to the male creation of space, industry, America, a tension arises from confusion of identity. It seems best, by way of beginning, to simply list all of the ways in which male identity and relationship is confused over the course of the film:
-Daniel commits a sort of first fraud by taking H.W. for his own. In turn, H.W. grows up and unwittingly, falsely believes that he is Daniel's biological son. H.W. is then dragged along in this fraud, however, over the course of the film, it is clear the Daniel really did grow to love H.W. They were father and son.
-Then of course, the Paul and Eli characters are portrayed by the same actor, which leads to another confusion of identity. Whether intentional in the narrative or not (there are substantive accounts that the casting change was made late, and honestly), it deserves mentioning that having twin brothers, one of whom is never seen again, plays directly into the other confusions of male relationships, as I'll continue to note. Re-watch the scene when Daniel and H.W. meet Eli for the first time. They both do a double take and have initial apprehension (didn't we just see this fuck?)
>>70879724
when I think of the oil industry I think of that scene at the oil derrick in Joe Dirt where the guy covered in oil pees on the fire
>>70879724
how are you posting from the early 1900s
>>70879724
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnLlIvwyAY4
How accurate is this representation of awhl men?
>>70879724
It's set in the 1910's you retard.
>>70879802
And yet everyone thinks that kind of wildcatting still occurs.
But then again, everyone on here is an anti-fracking retard so...
Then there are the Bandys. TWBB is a long-ish movie and it's easy to forget about both the elder Bandy and his grandson (who appears first), but they are both confusingly identified by the same name, "William Bandy", over the course of the film. The elder is named as William Bandy during the land dealings, yet is conspicuously absent but for one important scene (and its baptism aftermath). The Grandson, meanwhile, is identified by name himself as (also) "William" by Eli, during the final scene. There is even a slight confusion in the credits over who-is-who. The Credits are in order of who appears first (the grandson, in this case), yet this grandson is credited as "William Bandy", while the older person more strongly associated with the name over the course of the film's events is given as an afterthought: "Bandy".
There is even Eli's strange language during the famous final scene. Eli identifies himself as Daniel's "brother by marriage", both quietly and in his final moments. "Brother" has a squishy religious connotation, but it also has a literal familial sense. Taking things at face value, Eli's sister Mary married Daniel's son H.W. , but of course even both sides of this assumption are variously problematized (we may theorize that Paul and Eli are the same person, and we know that Daniel and H.W. are not blood).
It is most natural to take Eli's usage here in a squishy familial sense, but even so, Eli is one generation "below" Daniel, however you slice it, which yet puts the lie to the "brother" word. Serious question: what do you call it when your sister marries a man's son? How stand you to that man?
>>70879933
Fracking causes earthquakes and shits toxic sludge into the water supply, of course we're anti-fracking.
>>70879984
A picture of the elder Bandy, during his scene.
Then of course, we must also remember Daniel's false brother Henry. There are brief initial exchanges between the two concerning family history (which I must review and do not have mentally in front of me, Fond du Lac etc). But the main point is that this character and his relationship to Daniel are just another in a train of confusions and deceptions over the course of the film. 1911 is a pivotal time for Daniel (the film's four eras are 1898, 1902, 1911 and 1927), and indeed it comprises the main chunk of the film. Daniel has almost totally settled into the family man image, but things go awry and he (largely correctly) again learns to distrust all around him. This sets Daniel off alone, by himself again, mostly.
There is furthermore the religious angle of male relations, calling a catholic priest father and so on. Eli and the church (somehow or other, by Bandy's intercession and possible blackmail) manage to humiliate Daniel --- and yet, even Daniel's confession that he has abandoned his son is /itself/ false. Daniel has sent him to a school and is keeping tabs on him.
Related issues include the confusions over sums of money, and the film's deaths and maimings: $500, $5000, $10,000. Daniel's leg wound, H.W.'s father, Joe Gundha (after the well had not been blessed, which can be interpreted as the Bad Move on Daniel's part in the film), H.W. struck deaf, "Henry's" killing, and finally Eli's killing.
In the course of developing this thread, therefore, one more idea occurs to me for the very first time ever. And embarassingly so, as I always associated the film's title with a contemporaneous (unrelated) tagline for an early SAW movie: "oh yes... there will be blood." To the point that "literal" blood was always near the front-along with oil.
A "literal blood/oil" dichotomy is thematically obvious. But what the film's male relations suggest, is that consanguinuity is suspect. And yet, these males deal with each other consistently over the years, intermarry into each other's families, insinuate themselves into each other's lives for various reasons, deal with one another. They will have intimate truck with one another, for better or worse, though they variously grow to hate one another and only deal with one another by means of last resort, inevitably. In other words, no matter how hard the men try to avoid and get around one another...There Will Be Blood.
Apologies if you've realized this before, but I've just had a personal breakthrough.
