There Will Be Blood

The derrick explosion

The theme, emerging humor, visible oil-building process, score, ambiguity, PTA’s ascendancy, practical landscapes, script, trailer, young H.W., and “I’m finished”

Jonny Greenwood’s clacking, accelerating explosion score

Oil drilling

Two steaks, whiskey water, and goat’s milk lead, with final-scene steak and whiskey in H.W.’s baby bottle as alternatives.

The bowling alley

The beach two-shot with Henry’s face partly in sunlight

No weak link

The real fire’s environmental damage, Miramax branding, and the oil state’s global damage

Travel to inspect Paul Sunday’s claim; the Bandy-tract pipeline survey

No additional sex scene

No consensus; one preference is “I have a competition in me”

“Yes, I do”

Three takes argue Daniel may be sexually attracted to Henry, the film is much better and more important than No Country, and Day-Lewis cannot be greatest without a mass-audience movie.

Kel O’Neill’s removal after three weeks forced Paul Dano into both Sunday roles; Philip Seymour Hoffman was originally imagined for Telford.

Paul Dano’s exorcism

Legendary SNL writer Jim Downey

Bandy

Philip Seymour Hoffman as Henry; Paul Dano retained as Eli

The milkshake metaphor to Albert Fall’s Teapot Dome testimony, the adjacent No Country fire disruption, difficult financing, Day-Lewis’s laborer letters, Greystone Mansion, and Edward Doheny parallels

Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Thomas Anderson, oil, modern outdoor epics, oil-covered faces, private bowling alleys, well explosions, and feeding liquor to a baby

Daniel Day-Lewis: yes; PTA: split between There Will Be Blood and Boogie Nights

Third Revelation

The unexplained mine escape, orphan’s mother, Daniel’s late discovery of Henry, Eli’s agelessness, and Paul’s cheaply sold family fortune

No remake; an all-Black version as a thought experiment

Wayne Jenkins (comic default); Philip Baker Hall; Steve Buscemi; Jon Bernthal in Ciarán Hinds’s role

Daniel Day-Lewis gets the single Oscar.

Is Day-Lewis cinema’s greatest facial-hair actor? Why does Daniel hate Standard Oil so intensely?

The butler discovers another bowling-alley corpse and may treat it as routine; the discussion then asks whether Paul profited ethically by destroying his family.

The bloody bowling pin leads Daniel’s flask, hat, Henry’s diary, long swimming trunks, and Eli’s final cross.

Oil defeats religion and unchecked competition can poison the self and the world.

Daniel Day-Lewis