1. I have a competition in me.
I want no one else to succeed.
2. I hate most people....
I see the worst in people.
I don't need to look past seeing them to get all I need.
3. I want to rule and never, ever explain myself.
I've built my hatreds up over the years, little by little.
Match the above comments to the character who speaks or writes them:
a) Anton Chigurh, "No Country for Old Men"
b) The Zodiac, "Zodiac"
c) Daniel Plainview, "There Will Be Blood"
(Answers at end of post.)
* * * *
NOTE: Spoilers lurk sinisterly below.
Three of the most admired and fervently debated American films of the year move inexorably toward a climactic confrontation with a killer -- or someone's conception of a killer. Only Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood" actually culminates in a eruption of savagery, while David Fincher's "Zodiac" and Joel and Ethan Coen's "No Country for Old Men" gradually steer their attention away from the assaults and into the psyches of the characters who are haunted by the brutality penetrating their lives.
Much has been written about the violence in these movies, the darkness they find in the American landscape, and what some see as their bleak, fatalistic and/or nihilistic attitude. Does this somehow reflect the country's moral ambivalence about being mired in two bloody, confusing guerrilla wars on the other side of the world? A sense of No Exit hopelessness that the Vietnam nightmare is recurring? Mainstream (or art house) torture porn that allows us to vicariously groove on -- as we are simultaneously appalled by -- the crimes at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo? Dissatisfaction with the materialistic emphasis on the American Dream? A cynical exploitation of artfully staged killings for our (cathartic?) entertainment?
The popular press likes to talk about violence in movies with a superficiality that assumes all violence and all movies are the same, that blood is blood (and that gore and gunplay are automatically more sensational than depictions of beatings or other forms of physical and psychological abuse). But that Sunday feature-section approach ignores what it's like to watch the movies themselves, and the diverse contexts in which they present acts of cruelty and lethality. To say that "Zodiac," "NCFOM" and "TWBB" are all "violent films" tells you as much about them as saying they all use the color red.¹ I'd like to consider how the violence in these films conveys its own meaning, apart from any op-ed political parallels that can be drawn, however legitimately.
In all three films, somebody gets away with murder: By the end of "Zodiac" and "NCFOM," the Zodiac (played anonymously by several unidentifiable actors, according to varying eyewitness accounts of the assaults) and Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) in "NCFOM" fade into the landscape as if dispersing into some kind of pervasive fear or threat. These films broaden their focus, while "TWBB" narrows down to a single hard point, like the tip of a drillbit. Its heart of darkness is located in one man, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis), a petty tyrant driven by monomaniacal greed and a hatred for those repugnant little creatures he contemptuously calls "people." Plainview paints himself into a corner -- with blood. Yet he isn't caught red-handed any more than Zodiac or Chigurh. His deeds don't catch up to him; he simply fulfills his character-as-destiny, expressing the essence of who he is, and who he has been since he first appeared on the screen, a demon scratching for treasure in the depths of the earth. That final scene is as unavoidable as the ending of "Oedipus Rex."
"There Will Be Blood," as its title promises, heads directly for its explosive gusher like a locomotive speeding through the California desert, through long, torturous passages of cruelty and sadism. The extended cinematic treatment of its beatings and slappings (in lengthy takes) feels more brutal than the brief, bloody executions in "Zodiac" and "NCFOM." But although "TWBB" is perhaps the most unremittingly harsh of the three films, and displays an inhospitable majesty in some sequences, it may be the thinnest in resonance.² It's dark and viscous, but as Plainfield says: "Just because there's something on the ground doesn't mean there's anything beneath it."
Still, the movie works as a traditional, old-style Hollywood melodrama³ (like a silent film overlaid with a sleek, dissonant, period-appropriate score), an epic morality play illustrating the deadly sins of pride, greed, envy and wrath. "TWBB" has been praised as something "new," but that's a misunderstanding of its classical strength: Its straightforward manner of storytelling is the most conventional of the three movies. Nearly every scene (with a very few brief, transitional exceptions) is structured simply and clearly as a direct confrontation -- between two or more people, or between people and the earth itself -- as befits a movie driven entirely by competition and one man's titanic ego in conflict with the universe. The climactic showdown between Plainview the oil man (commerce) and Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) the preacher (religion) is inevitable because they are competitors, and God is Eli's oil. (I don't think it's quite accurate to say that Plainview metaphorically kills God in the final scene, because Eli -- a sinner, perhaps a charlatan, perhaps a genuine believer -- is a diminutive man, not a symbol of God, and Plainview the unbeliever never sees him as anything more than a rival upstart businessman: "That was a goddamn helluva show" he says after one of Eli's sermons.)
The more radical linear (analog) construction of "Zodiac" traces a cause-and-effect logic that breaks down and falls apart in the course of time. "TWBB" also adheres to a strict chronology marked by on-screen date-stamps and little or no inter-cutting of parallel action, but does so for the simple reason that it is locked onto one central character.⁴"Zodiac" and "NCFOM" have multiple protagonists, while "TWBB" places a solipsistic monster dead center.⁵
The specter of violence looms over all these movies from beginning to end. There's never a moment when you don't feel something terrible could happen. All three contain bloody, merciless killings. Yet violence, and the threat of violence, is used to dramatically different ends in each:
* "Zodiac" is a chronicle of professional and amateur detectives piecing together an elusive criminal's identity from crumbs, an epistemological thriller driven by the obsessive need for definitive answers in a world where empirical evidence and eyewitness accounts don't necessarily add up to anything conclusive or complete. In other words, it's not about who the killer is; it's about trying to find out who the killer is. The men who pursue the investigation have only disconnected fragments of information to work with: letters, cyphers, locations, dates and times, forensic scraps. "Zodiac" might have been made without showing the killings at all. As it is, the filmmakers depict only attacks as they could be reconstructed from forensic residue and the memories of those who were present. We never see the Zodiac himself; the movie's strategy is to show how he lives in other people's heads. In that sense he resembles Chigurh, existing not so much as an individual but as a shadow, an indistinct and incomplete pattern of signs and clues. (Sounds a little like "Bob Dylan" in "I'm Not There.")
View image A killer rises: Our first blurred sight of Chigurh's face in "NCFOM." As he moves forward, into focus, to make his first kill, we still don't get a good look at him because his head rises above the top of the frame. His victim, the deputy, never sees what's coming, and Chigurh, chillingly, doesn't even bother to look at his face while he garrotes him.
* "NCFOM" and its characters aren't even much interested in who the killer is or where he comes from. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) mainly just wants to prevent Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) from getting slaughtered. Chigurh is tracking a satchel of stolen drug money, and that's as much as anybody needs or cares to know, other than that he is unstoppable. He is a presence, not a person like other people. And that's not because he is supernatural but because he is inexplicable, an implacable force, an undeniable fact. Let's put it this way: Nobody who gets in his way and meets him face-to-face survives. Like the chess-playing avatar of Death in Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal," to whom he has been compared, Chigurh exhibits the occasional glimmers of personality -- pride, arrogance, annoyance, determination -- as do Zodiac and Plainview, but he never succumbs to the latter's fits of dudgeon. He kills not from anger, or even for money, but because it is his nature. Plainview is a petty bully, his unmanageable fury a sign of weakness that Chigurh would consider frivolous and self-indulgent. (That said, let no one suggest a "Chigurh vs. Plainview" sequel, please.)
* "TWBB" is the one film of these three that is expressly about murder as virulent misanthropy -- not just about the willful annihilation of human life but about the taking of it. Zodiac and Chigurh exhibit no emotion in their killings, because they are indifferent to their victims, some of whom are randomly or opportunistically chosen. For Chigurh, eliminating people is part of his work; he kills as an accountant would crunch numbers. For the Zodiac, it's is a challenge and humans are simply "the most dangerous game"; he gets a kick from the hunt itself, but even more so from getting away with it. For Plainview, it's personal. He assails only those close enough to insult, humiliate or betray him. And when his sense of dignity is offended, he acts out of spite to obliterate the "competi-tor." It's not enough that he should triumph; his victory is complete only when he can deprive others of what is dearest to them -- their very lives: "I want no one else to succeed."
Of course, "Zodiac" recounts the case of the infamous series of murders in California during the Age of Aquarius. Yet none of these movies presents its slayer as a classical serial killer. "Zodiac" comes with a built-in critique of the familiar psycho profile just to demonstrate how its namesake does not fit it. An institutionalized impostor calls a live TV morning show to melodramatically complain to Melvin Belli (Brian Cox) on the air that his headaches are compelling him to kill. It's a prank, a phoned-in performance based on tormented characters from movies and television, and it provides no clues about the Zodiac. Later, when Belli theatrically proclaims, "Killing is his compulsion. It's what drives him. It's in his blood," we know he's not only being haughty and self-serving but naïve.
Each killer, however, is uniquely methodical in his madness. (And each is successful at what he does, though there's nothing admirable about him.) After initially focusing on young couples, Zodiac begins not only selecting (and announcing) his targets in a deliberately random manner, so as to spread fear and evade detection. Further, he takes credit for crimes he didn't commit to enhance the power of his myth, and to throw off his pursuers. Inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) realizes what's going on after the murder of a taxi driver: "He's breaking the pattern." And once he does, anyone and everyone becomes a potential victim. (If Anton Chigurh were a publicity hound, the people of West Texas might feel the same way about him. Instead, he is internalized by the other characters, transformed into the abstract embodiment of their fear of death. Abstract until he's standing in front of you, that is.)
Chigurh, with careful attention to a cryptic internal logic of process and principle ("You use the one right tool"), operates under a rigid set of rules that no one but he understands. Really, though, it's pretty simple: 1) He eliminates anyone who comes between him and and the completion of his mission; 2) He never makes a threat or a promise that he doesn't intend to fulfill. "You don't have to do this," people keep telling him. They're wrong: He absolutely does. The way Chigurh he sees it, he's just doing what he has to do. The choice is not his, it's the other's: "Call it."
Chigurh and Zodiac intentionally keep to the shadows where they assume extra-human dimensions, while Plainview greedily grabs center stage -- at once all-too-human and less than human. As a man, and as a character, he is no more than the sum of his wants (or his lacks). In some ways he is a model of serial-killer alienation, incapable of intimacy and disdainful of humanity, a malignant shell of a human whose anti-social motivations are rooted in psychopathology. His attacks are rash and impulsive, the acts of a man desperate to satisfy the gnawing feelings of resentment and entitlement that have eaten away his insides (aided, no doubt, by rot-gut whiskey).
Plainview arises out of the earth, nothing if not corporeal, and only thick black oil can fill the cavity within him. (That and a milkshake -- as long as belongs to someone else.) The deadly forces of "Zodiac" and "NCFOM" seem to blow in on the wind and fade away when they're finished. Plainview simply stops in his own tracks. Chigurh enters the Coens' movie the way Plainview leaves Anderson's, with his back to the camera. The first time we see his face, he's an blurry presence in the background of a shot, rising over a man's shoulder to make his first kill. Zodiac appears out the blackness and turns a blinding flashlight on his prey. You might say that Zodiac and Plainview kill to act out their fantasies of omnipotence; that Plainview and Chigurh (because he's ostensibly after a bag of money) are images of predatory capitalism run amok; that Chigurh and Zodiac are portrayed as semi-illusory (they are hauntings), while only Plainview is cast as a psychological personality, strictly limited to flesh and blood. And there's evidence in the films to support all of those interpretations concurrently.
Indeed, Chigurh and the Zodiac linger in the consciousness beyond the last frames of their respective films in ways that Plainview does not. They are not captured; the dangers they pose are not dispelled. When Plainview announces he's finished, he's finished. We don't imagine a life for him after the final cut to black. Swallowed by his own emptiness, spent and sprawled on the floor (the closest he comes to a post-orgasmic moment), he's not going anywhere. He's done. He waves us away with a dismissive gesture, acknowledging that his story is over, no reason to continue. Without bothering to face our gaze with anything more than a glance over his shoulder, he gives up. Nobody else's judgment matters to him, anyway.
The homicidal/suicidal finish of "TWBB" is a narrative, philosophical and existential dead end, the terminal raving of a drunken, impotent lunatic against god, man and the universe.³ He's not Lear (Plainview is incapable of recognizing his own sins, or seeing his place in the world as anywhere but the center of it); he's not Ahab (Plainview's greed doesn't assume the tragic metaphorical grandeur of Ahab's quest for the Great White Whale); he's more like Yosemite Sam.... doing a John Huston impression -- a drooling, blustery blowhard.
"Zodiac" and "NCFOM" also terminate abruptly with a plunge into blackness, but in their last moments they contemplate the faces of men who have been damaged by the violence they've seen. Mike Mageau (Jimmi Simpson) is nearly a ghost, a deeply wounded soul who is 80 percent certain of his own certainty but, like everyone else, wishes he could be sure. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), sitting in the fragile peace and security of his kitchen in the wasteland, has given up, yet also attained a measure of experiential wisdom, an old man's acceptance that there's no hiding from the grim reaper. He recounts a dream of his father, who died younger than Ed Tom is now. (It points forward to Cormac McCarthy's "The Road.") The dream -- like all dreams, all films -- is open to interpretation, but Ed Tom no longer seems to see his long-dead father as a giant "old timer" of romanticized stature, beside whom he will always fall short, but as a guide and a pioneer, carrying a light for him on a path into all that cold and all that dark that lies ahead for all of us.
So, are "Zodiac," "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood" entertaining movies, and dark, and violent? Absolutely. Which is not the same as saying, for all their commonalities and contrasts, that they're the same movie, with identical views of cruelty or indistinguishable depictions of death. In a movie, a kill is never just a kill.
- - - -
¹ Jean-Luc Godard on "Pierrot Le Fou": "It's not blood but red."
² "TWBB" is set up as a high-concept battle between God and Greed (there's a magnificent overhead shot of a man and his baby son [who grows up to be HW] on the rim of a blacker-than-black crater: oil pit as hellmouth), but neither the characters nor the movie quite support the metaphorical weight. The film comes down to a struggle between two egos locked in conflict: Plainview and Eli Sunday (Paul Dano). One is a bigger-than-life oil man and the other a punier-than-life man of the cloth. Eli's diminutive presence makes his conflict with Plainview all the more striking: physically and charismatically it's an uneven match. But these nemeses share two things: a killer instinct and a deadness at the core of their beings.
³ See David Bordwell's description of "classical Hollywood cinema":
I’ve long argued, along with Kristin [Thompson], that mainstream US filmmaking, dubbed long ago "classical Hollywood cinema," has cultivated a sturdy and pervasive tradition of storytelling. (1) That tradition depends on clearly defined characters pursuing well-defined goals. This commitment in turn creates a plot that displays linear cause and effect: In pursuing goals, the protagonist makes one thing happen, and that makes something else happen, which in turn triggers something else. Moreover, the mainstream tradition lays these actions and reactions along a fairly rigid structural layout. And this tradition depends on a system of narration that constantly reiterates the characters’ traits, their goals, important motifs, and the overall circumstances of the action.While this description applies to all three films, only "TWBB" is built exclusively around the singleminded goals of its protagonist, if only because it's the only one with a single character that dominates every frame.
⁴ I can think of only one scene in the theatrical release cut of "There Will Be Blood" in which Daniel Plainview is not present: a confrontation at the Sunday family dinner-table in which the mud-caked Eli (having been thrashed by Plainview in the scene previous) denounces and physically attacks his father, Abel. Note biblical references.
⁵ "There Will Be Blood" is a movie I admire without thinking it's particularly successful (or even ambitious) -- a less-than-the-sum-of-its-parts kind of film. It also feels curiously bloodless to me, dry and diagrammatic, while still reasonably compelling to watch, even if you watch from a distance. For the simple reason that I haven't written much about it previously (I was waiting until I'd been able to see it a second time), it probably gets more than its fair share of attention here -- especially in these footnotes.
* * * *
ANSWERS: All three quotations above are from the same speech by c) Daniel Plainview in "There Will Be Blood." He's the only one of the three who explicitly spells out his own motives in dialogue. But I could almost imagine Chigurh saying 2 and Zodiac writing 3.
Mr. Emerson, I miss agreeing with you on movies like the Descent. I loved There Will Be Blood, but then again I loved the Salton Sea and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Onscreen, insanity works for me. No Country is probably the better film, but when is the last time you heard an entire audience gasp, then cackle (and I think cackle is the only appropriate word) during a movie ? I am only 23 but doesn't There Will Be Blood have something that the communal cinema experience may have been lacking; something grindhouse? We are supposed to laugh at dumb jokes in crap movies like Shrek 3, but to chuckle at the perversity in TWBB, while still finding time to gasp at its brutality... I dunno, maybe I am young but it is new to me, but hell, it is fun. Maybe I would rather be in the audience for TWBB than NCCFOM.
So, you think Chigurh waxes the accountant?
The only way I felt the book NCFOM had it over the movie is that it is possible to read the book and never actually be sure of the pronunciation of 'Chigurh'. That the Coens, of all people, should show restraint in not making a joke of this is evidence of their maturity as filmmakers.
(Also, I haven't read anywhere that 'Chigurh' also suggests "chigger"... as in, you know, he gets under your skin...)
TWBB is perhaps the most ambitious of these three movies. And, not coincidentally, probably the least accomplished. The other two are, to their credit, more satisfied with residing in genre- the procedural and the crime film -and so able, through the mastery of their makers, to transcend their respective genres.
TWBB is a frustrated biopic (great review up at http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=956). I don't think PTA (yet) knows what movie he's making; take Punch Drunk Love, which is funny but not exactly, as it was conceived, a comedy. Lord love him for taking risks, and I'd rather see his failures than most filmmakers' successes.
I would suggest you watch TWBB again, but you've already done that. I think you're missing something, especially with regards to DDL's performance. I notice that many critics who love NCFOM seem to approach TWBB with a certain skepticism. Like you have to be in one camp and not the other. But I know you made a valiant effort to see the light and I appreciate that. By the way, Zodiac is the best movie of the year and I can't get enough of these analyses.
Mr. Emerson, I feel it might be helpful for the reader (well, at least me me) to see a separate analysis or review of TWBB itself rather than comparing it with two of your favorites.
Actually I am not so sure if TWBB is a classic old-fashioned Hollywood melodrama. Large portions of the movie feel to me like nonfiction. A starkness and lack of a cohesive plot with consistent cause and effect (not necessarily a bad thing) remind me of In Cold Blood (the book). The bursts of small stories within the movie sometimes work, sometimes don't. (The father--son relationship works. The fake-brother thing doesn't.) There is something disjointed about this "epic" approach.
The God-vs-Greed theme is puzzling for me. I don't get it. Eli Sunday never gives me a sense of being a formidable opponent for even a human, not to mention representing God. His power over Plainview and his fate is never demonstrated except with one little (rather contrived) event about the railroad track. Perhaps it's a West Coat concept of religion? I wonder about the decision to choose a weak, youthful, rather pathetic image in this supposedly divine struggle. It seems intentional to set up such an imbalance of on-screen forces that predicts Plainview's "victory" in the end. Does Eli really represent God? I have my doubts.
Overall I very much agree the sum is less than its parts.
I would pay a lot of money to see a "Chigurh vs. Plainview" sequel. Imagine Plainview winning Chigurh's coin toss then screaming his now trademark milkshake line. I'm laughing already. We need to make this happen.
Darn you and your trick questions! I read that whole post thinking I was wrong, as my very first thought was, "Well, I think Plainview said all of those, but I guess I'm wrong." Great post (needless to say). Methinks this is going to be a very interesting Oscar year, and shame on them for totally ignoring Zodiac.
SPOILERS AHEAD (not sure if I needed to say that or not):
I'm glad to hear you say that you want to talk more about There Will Be Blood when you've seen it a second time, because I've been curious. I hope you will elaborate on your interpretation that it is a battle between God and Greed; I see elements of that battle in the film, but not how the film as a whole is about that battle. Unless...does God also refer to nature in your interpretation? I'm gonna have to give this some more thought.
I saw the film as something along the lines of Whitman's Song of Myself, a movie about all of America, albeit a deeply cynical one (like much of classic American cinema). Plainview is a self-made man who travels across the continent (manifest destiny), exploits the natives (who even assimilate via Mary Sunday's marriage), and upon his purposelessness (after profiting off the Sunday Ranch oil), delves into religious hypocrisy (the baptism, however fake) and murder (which I'd take as a commentary on post-Cold War America, after we lost a purpose). Daniel even created his own enemy, like America sponsoring the Iranian revolution in 1979. In fact, I have to admit that the deep nationalism of Persepolis and 12:08 East of Bucharest (which I saw around the same time as TWBB) profoundly influenced my take on TWBB. I still can't stop thinking about 12:08.
Obviously these two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, and I can't wait to hear more of your thoughts on There Will Be Blood.
More on topic, the violence in There Will Be Blood had way less of an impact than I expected. If I recall correctly, we get two bloody but obscured accidental deaths in the oil pit, and from there, Daniel shoots his "brother" and beats Eli. Anything else? Well, there's the occasional slap-fight, or your basic Oedipal rivalry manifesting as a typical family dinner, I'd say, but for a title like There Will Be Blood, I kind of expected, well, blood. While the titular blood definitely refers to the pools the develop around the few corpses, it seems to refer more to the idea of family, how Daniel immediately trusted and unloaded on a man that he thought would be the only person to "get" him, simply because they shared blood, or how HW's adoption is Daniel's final, impotent weapon against the boy he raised. I don't know, I see that there is violence in TWBB, but like you, I found it vastly different from that of No Country or Zodiac.
Forgive me if I'm forgetting something, but don't the two kids at the end of the movie (one of whom gives Chigurh his shirt) survive seeing him face-to-face? And for that matter you cannot say for certain whether or not Llewelyn's wife correctly called heads or tails.
A film that could, and probably should, belong in this discussion is The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford.
Every killing in that film is treated with such incredible sadness. There's no joy in the violence, as there might be in other Westerns or films that may deal with the horror of murder but still revel in it. Though No Country is the better film, the way the Coens shoot the violence is Cinematic Cool. The viewer admires Chigurgh's efficiency at killing, even when he's murdering innocents. Jesse James, more than anything else, is about death and treats murder as something horrific and sad, the obliteration of personality and memory. The murdered are frightened before the act, as are the murderers who are then haunted after the fact.
The film ends on a freeze-frame of Affleck's face, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' gorgeous and sorrowful score mourning the character's fate as the narrator utters the last line of the film. It reminds me of Ed Tom's stillness at the end of No Country and carries a similar though I feel more significant emotional resonance.
"The shotgun would ignite and Ella Mae would scream, but Robert Ford would only lay on the floor and look at the ceiling, the light going out of his eyes before he could find the right words."
I thought "There Will Be Blood" was the second best film of 2007, behind "Juno" (range, no?!)...
"No Country for Old Men" and "Zodiac" also cracked the top 10 of my list and all three films are remarkable in their depcitions of pure evil and misanthropy in the persons of three distinct, totally different sorts of people.
I feel "There Will Be Blood" (not without some "flaws," which make it all the more watchable somehow), is the best of these movies (arguably) because of the strength of the dialogue by P.T. Anderson (using Upton Sinclair as inspiration), and because of Daniel Day-Lewis' performance as Daniel Plainview, the power-mad oilman who hates EVERYONE in his path. I felt that Paul Dano's performance as Eli Sunday was in some ways, though more subtly, equal to Day-Lewis' because, while I agree that his character is not nearly the physical or charismatic equal of Plainview, they are both consumed by a greed and competition that ultimately devours one in favor of the other (not purposefully, just the way the cookie crumbles).
These are all three great films and well-deserving of this kind of analysis and praise (though "There Will Be Blood" is better than Jim is letting on...)
Jim:
I saw the Bergman classic "Shame" recently and to my surprise, found that it compares so remarkably well to No Country For Old Men (not in story, but in tone).
In particular, the final scene of "Shame" is frighteningly similar to that of NCFOM. As NCOFM and Zodiac both end on "faces of men who have been damaged by the violence they've seen," Shame ends with a shot of Liv Ullman's extraordinary, haunted face. Also, listen to her final speech. Sound somewhat familiar?
Jim, I like your website very much, , and I think you are an insightful movie viewer, but I've never seen you mis-interpret two movies as completely as you do NCFOM and TWBB.
NCFOM: Chigurh doesn't "have to do it." Carla Jean knows this and calls him on it when she refuses to call the coin toss. Chigurh, who sees himself as an agent of fate (the coin toss evidence of this), believes that his victims' deaths are not on his account, because they are responsible either through their decisions (like Moss), or their misplacement in the web of the universe (the guy with the truck he kills). By denying to call the coin, Carla Jean places the responsibility squarely back onto Chigurh. It's a victory of philosophy: free will and responsibility over chaos theory and fate. "Nihilistic" is a term overly applied to both the Coen brothers and Cormac McCarthy; people should read more closely, and because something is bleak doesn't have to mean that it believes there is no meaning to anything.
TWBB: Plainview and Sunday are not against each other at all; they work in concert, and need each other to achieve desired ends. The movie is an American parable, where religion needs industrial money and industrial money needs religion, but in the end it's this very relationship that destroys them. Sunday certainly doesn't get what he wants (power, acknowledgement, money, salvation) and Plainview does not get what he wants (family, love, a soul, sanity). They cannot get what they want because their very attempts to use each other to get it doom them to failure and destruction. They don't oppose each other, but to paraphrase Shakespeare, are like two spent and drowning swimmers who hold to each other and choke their art.
Again, I like your site. Thanks for the forum. To balance my overly-stated opposition to you here, I think your thoughts on Zodiac are brilliant.
Matthew: I really appreciate your takes on "NCFOM" and "TWBB" -- and I don't disagree that they work on those levels. Your reading of the scene between Chigurh and Carla Jean is spot on: she does exactly what you say, placing the responsibility squarely back on him. What I'm saying is that, although he's a bit disoriented by the reversal (which you see in the next scene, where he's distracted by the boys on their bikes, fluttering around his car); he kills because it is his nature.
You might say the same thing for Plainview (who, as you imply, suggests the tale of the frog and the scorpion). What you describe is what I think Anderson intends; I just didn't feel the movie could support the Big Themes it posits. I think Plainview sees Eli as his competition, and that God is Eli's oil. But your reading of the symbiotic relationship between commerce and religion is a profoundly provocative one (like the history of the relationship between neo-conservatism and Islamic fundamentalism traced back to the 1940s in the first-rate BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares"). You've given me more to think about!
Meanwhile, I've gone back and added a couple of sentences to clarify my own readings a bit. I love that about the back-and-forth of the web: comments like yours help me see where I need to express myself better.
I agree tons, except I think the melodramatic (period?) style of the acting was something stylistically more radical and yet corroborative with the meshing of form and function you've talked about in defense of _No Country for Old Men_. Melodrama! "Acting!" as Jon Lovitz would say (invoking the actors of the period, mind)
All three flicks are great and wildly different, but the sorta instantaneous backlash against _There Will Be Blood_ has it almost underrated in my view.
And ps- why all the noting of John Huston (not just here but everywhere) as though that's a diminishing of Daniel Day Lewis' performance? Plainview as the man who invented the west, voiced by the man who invented the "west," c'mon, that's cool.
And PPS-Carla Jean died. He checks his shoes for blood. Optimism has its limits.
Mr Emerson,
A great and provocative analysis.
Spoilers in this:
I only want to take issue with your characterization of Plainview as "incapable of intimacy." As the film shows us again and again, he is capable of intimacy with one person - his adopted son H.W. Certainly, he uses H.W. as a prop in his business dealings, but he truly dotes on the boy. I think it's one of the great aspects of Day-Lewis' performance that though I kept looking for something to tell me that his affection for the child was anything but sincere, I could never see it - until all hell broke loose (see below). DDL understands the contradiction of the man that viewers with an "either/or" attitude can't grasp: he can adore the child completely while using him as a tool to attain his desired ends.
It's been pointed out elsewhere (I can't remember where) that H.W. is his lifeline to his humanity. As soon as it is disrupted by the accident in which H.W. loses his hearing (because Plainview chooses to tend to his oil rather than his son?), Plainview begins his descent into full-blown sociopathic behavior. It's only when Plainview brings H.W. back after abandoning him to the school in San Francisco that his attempts at intimacy seemed forced and unnatural. Something has changed and it can't go back.
And, of course, when Plainview bears his own unreliable witness to H.W. near the end of the film about what their relationship meant to him, Anderson gives us a flashback to an intimate and carefree moment before the accident to show us that Plainview is lying to the boy, if only out of one side of his mouth.
OK, I hope some of this made sense.
I'm finished.
P.S.: You didn't fool me with your little trick question (but then again I just saw the movie this week).
The problem I have with There Will Be Blood, and the reason why I cannot love it, is this: Too much exposition.
The classic teaching is "show, don't tell." It took me a while to realize the reason why I did not emotionally respond to the movie, especially the second half, with the exception of the father--son passages, is that Plainview is given too much dialog. It made me cringe to hear him say I am this kind of person or whatever. The best part is when he is not telling us some truth about himself that we have not observed, but lying to his son and himself that his son is a bastard in a basket and means dirt to him.
To me Daniel Plainview could have been a worthwhile character, but Anderson missed his chance. He is more concept than flesh-and-blood. Ironically, he serves as more of a symbol almost the same way Chigurh as Death himself. The problem is Plainview is supposed to be Father, Mr. Anderson's father, a tragic father figure, a figure of mixed and conflicted humanity and vulnerability. Not a symbol or a concept. It's both admirable and disappointing. Compare him with a very similar character -- George Hearst in Deadwood Season 3 and one can see the inferiority of Anderson's writing.
An excellent analysis of three of the best films of 2007, Jim. It's interesting how these three films act as something of a litmus test for moviegoers. An earlier poster mentioned that with "TWBB" and "No Country" in particular, it seems as if cinephiles are struggling to place themselves firmly in one camp or another. I personally think that they are both excellent films, but I am more ecstatic about "There Will Be Blood" than you were, while I feel that "No Country" (as you said about "TWBB") wasn't able to support the BIG THEMES it was trying to express. Strange how mood, taste and personality can lead a viewer to see one film blending theme, character and mise-en-scene into a cohesive whole, while another viewer may feel that same film is struggling to say something weighty and coming up short. Personally, I felt that "No Country for Old Men" was the more "perfect" and less flawed film, but "There Will Be Blood" was the richer one...the one with more mysteries of character, more fascinating filmmaking choices, and more life pulsating from the screen.
Regardless, your points about the ways in which all three films deal with violence are spot-on. One of the problems I had with "No Country" (and don't get me wrong, I think it's a fantastic thriller) is that it seemed to be striving too consciously to make Chigurh an allegorical symbol of evil..."the ultimate Badass", as Woody Harrelson's character puts it. I simply didn't feel as if the rest of the film created an atmosphere that could support such an apocalyptic conceit. Whereas Plainview's acts of violence emerge out of his (all too recognizable) misanthropy and frustration...so that the extremes of his human behavior elevate the material to allegorical levels (the one area in which I think Anderson's allegory of greed run amok fails is in the second-last scene of the movie, easily the film's worst, in which Plainview disowns H.W. Despite his beautiful cut to their earlier relationship, Anderson simply relies on the old "his greed has cut him off from those who loved him" cliche without taking the necessary time to explain how the relationship between these two central characters could have taken such a dramatic turn).
Plainview is first seen in the film chiseling away at rock, and he ends the film with almost the exact same motion. The link is obvious, but powerful nonetheless...the physical actions of Plainview remain the same because the GOAL remains the same (namely, the conquest of the material world). It doesn't matter if the receiver of Plainview's violent chiseling is a rock or a human skull...Plainview views them with equal disdain (one might even argue he would grant the rock some grudging respect). Anderson finds another way to link the violent final scene to the opening sequence (thereby showing us how little Plainview has evolved), and that is, interestingly enough, through a tribute to Stanley Kubrick. In the opening scene, right as the title card reads "1898", there is a shot of Plainview squatting by his fire in which he is framed almost exactly the way the ape is framed in "2001" just before its moment of enlightment (when it draws the link between the Monolith and the use of a bone as a weapon/tool). In the final scene, Plainview is seen clubbing Sunday from a similar angle as the ape's near-orgasmic smashing of the bone onto an animal's skeleton. This is more than mere homage...Anderson is using "2001" as a reference point to link Plainview's development (or lack thereof) as a character. Some may even suggest that Anderson is cynically suggesting that the human drive (and its accompanying violence) really hasn't evolved all that much since "the Dawn of Man".
If I have neglected "Zodiac", it is because the Zodiac killer is too much of an apparition to be accorded the same weight as a character as either Plainview or Chigurh (although, as you pointed out Jim, Chigurh is closely linked to the Zodiac in the way both are framed as almost existential forces of evil). Yet interestingly enough, I think that "Zodiac" is the most effective film at presenting the way violent acts seep down through time and effect people caught in the wake of violence. Of all three films, "Zodiac"'s ending is the most haunting, because the accusatory look of the Zodiac's former victim points out toward us all...indicting not just the Zodiac but all of humanity in the perpetuation of violent acts. The lyrics to "Hurdy Gurdy Man" enhance this effect ("Down through all eternity, the crying of humanity"). If the Zodiac killer himself doesn't have the same resonance as either Plainview or Chigurh, the effect of his deeds on others carries the most weight (perhaps because we in the audience are aware that of the three characters, the Zodiac was the only one who REALLY EXISTED).
All three films have different outlooks on violence, as you said, but those outlooks expand into different worldviews. Strangely enough, it is the colder David Fincher and not the more emotional Paul Thomas Anderson who presents a more melancholy ending, one tinged with sadness and regret at humanity's misdeeds. "No Country for Old Men" shows a character looking out at the world and finding guidance in the past...but it also implies that the Tommy Lee Jones character is discovering a beacon to guide him through a world that is accepted as rotten, evil, and on the decline (a worldview I couldn't quite buy into). "There Will Be Blood"'s ending is, I agree, the most reductive and least expansive...whereas "Zodiac" and "No Country" end on notes that make the story larger, "There Will Be Blood"'s ending is almost like the final stages of a blackhole...after bombast and explosion, the universe collapses, and nothing is left. I don't know what the ending of "There Will Be Blood" tells us about the world (the capitalism/religion reading is too reductive for my taste), but I do know that I enjoyed the ride that Anderson took me on in getting to that point. For that matter, all three films are wonderful journeys, and one can only hope that 2008 offers three American films of such thematic richness and filmmaking dexterity.
P.S. Sorry to add to this already gigantic post, but I have a theory about the ending of "There Will Be Blood" that I haven't seen much-discussed and I would like to throw out there. Here goes:
Most people seem to agree that the ending to "There Will Be Blood" is tonally different from the rest of the film...an over-the-top, crazy conclusion to what has up to that point been a slow-boiling movie. Some differ on whether or not the ending works in the context of the film...I will say that while I enjoyed it, something about it seems so off-kilter that I wonder if there is some ambiguity to the final passages.
After mulling it over, I think that an interesting perspective on the final scene is that it is simply a dream or fantasy of Plainview's. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying "It's obvious this scene is a dream"...I highly doubt that's what Anderson intended, and I'm not even really sure that I believe it is. But consider these facts from that angle (WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD):
- The scene begins with an extended shot of Plainview lying in the middle of his bowling alley, asleep (or passed out from drinking), his meal and his drink sprawled beside him. Anderson holds the shot just long enough that he could be implying that Plainview is still in a state of rest.
- The scene, as many have noted, is radically different in tone from the rest of the film, with Plainview letting loose and ranting like a madman (including the great "I drink your milkshake" spectacle). Perhaps Plainview is releasing his true hatred and rage in his mind, rather than having to suppress it.
- (VERY IMPORTANT) - While Anderson and Day-Lewis have taken trouble to age Plainview with a few grey hairs and wrinkles, and H.W. is now played by a grown-up actor, Eli doesn't appear to have aged at all in fifteen years! Is this simply a slip-up by Anderson, who may have felt that the actor Paul Dano couldn't convincingly be made up to look like a man in his early thirties? Unlikely, considering Anderson is one of the most technically proficient directors working. Or, if you follow my theory, is Plainview imagining Eli returning in the same form that Plainview would have last seen him...as a young man.
- (ALSO IMPORTANT) - The scene just before Eli's appearance, humiliation, and eventual murder involves Plainview disowning his adopted son H.W. and treating him with cruelty. Earlier in the film (during the scenes set in 1911), in an embarrassing spectacle, Eli forced Plainview to admit to abandoning his child in front of a church congregation...most likely the greatest humiliation that Plainview ever had to endure. Now, having abandoned H.W. once more (by disowning him as an adult), perhaps Plainview is reminded of this incident and of Eli's cruel exploitation of it. That may be why thoughts of getting revenge on Eli are rattling around in his head. Notice the way the final scene of the film almost completely mirrors Plainview's baptism scene...in each scene, one man bullies the other into yelling out something personally humiliating to them.
It is possible, highly likely even, that the ending of the film is meant to be taken on strictly literal terms...that it does all "really" happen. But it's a credit to Anderson's artistry that you can look at the ending of this wonderfully rich film through multiple prisms.
I didn't like either "No Country" or "Blood" so I'm not sure what camp that puts me in. It's pretty rare that I'm not a fan of at least one of the Village Voice/Film Comment faves, but I've got no horse in this particular race. "Blood" felt like badly watered down Malick to me, though I did love the score. What mystifies me most about "Blood," however, is the weight given to the relationship between Daniel and Eli. I thought of Eli as nothing more than a minor character in the film until he suddenly reappears at the end for a dramatic confrontation. I could only think "Were you even in this movie? Why are you showing up now?" I suppose we're supposed to read between the cuts to assume that Daniel and Eli had a long, if not harmonious, relationship from the baptism to the final scene more than a decade later.
I do think that Plainview and Chigurh are somewhat comparable characters, though for me the primary point of comparison is that they both seemed cartoonish rather than mythic. Neither carried the weight I felt they were supposed to and, quite frankly, I found myself utterly uninterested in both of them.
As for the filmic treatment of violence, all I'll say is that I'm really looking forward to Haneke's American remake of "Funny Games," not just for the film itself but also for audience reaction. I have a disturbing image of teens howling with ironically detached laughter at this film.
Alex, this is not Mr. Emerson, just a fellow commenter. I'd like to thank you for your take on the final scene of "There Will Be Blood." It's an illuminating and new perspective, sir.
I plan on seeing TWBB a second time. I was having a discussion with my brother about what I perceived to be DD-L's wild, absurd overacting at the end of the film. I was complaining about how the bowling alley scene, as you said, "is radically different in tone from the rest of the film." The first 2/3 are quite low-key and restrained, and then at the end, it's like a different movie. Then I read somewhere that "TWBB nods to postmodernism by devolving into high camp at the end." Since I was desperate to love TWBB, I grabbed onto this as a reason to quell my frustrations. If P.T. was intentionally exaggerating Plainview's ridiculous outburst to be campy so that the wacko bombast seemed to be a perverse kind of comic-horror show, then it was not a flaw, but a deliberate Lynchian sort of twisted irony. So for me to complain that Anderson didn't rein in Lewis's mad outburst was to miss the point, right? I want to believe that.
Because, frankly, if the end is intended to be perceived as a plausible, sobering moment of anger, then it failed grandly.
As for your comment that "the capitalism/religion reading is too reductive for my taste" I would say that the very act of analysis requires a work of art to be broken down and simplified into concepts and symbols. I also don't like boiling a film as complex as this one down to its bare elements but when writing about it and debating it with skeptics who demand an explanation, I often find myself discussing the battle between religion and industry in the formative years of the United States. This might irk you some, Alex, but I think both Eli and Daniel represent larger forces and institutions in a power struggle for the souls of the nation. In the end, as in real life, the cynical bureacratic greed-fueled corporation defeats the poor man's idealistic avatar of spirituality overcoming the selfishness of man's animal nature. Religion is invalidated and defeated. The spirit is crushed by the machine. This could be inaccurate (which is why I'm sharing it with you in hopes that you can correct me) but I think to have the film end with the zealous young preacher denouncing his faith for some money is the black-hearted triumph that Plainview has been waiting for since he first met Eli. Religion loses in the end, just as Sheriff Bell's hope is resigned at the end of "No Country For Old Men."
As for Greenwoods' score, the shrieking violins and dissonant chords sounded almost identical to the soundtrack of Kubrick's "The Shining." I read a comment from someone complaining about how the music was unnecessarily ominous and that when he heard it, he expected something to happen, but that something never did.
But it *did* happen. It was happening. That score alerted us to the gradual and sinister deterioration of Plainview's sanity and outlook on humanity. This film, like "The Shining" is about a civilized man's descent into primal madness, only instead of the catalyst being isolation, it is association. The more time Daniel spends around people, the more he views their petty vices and concerns, the more haughtily contemptuous he becomes, until finally he is an out and out misanthrope. This is the terrifying transformation of a regular man into a scowling monster who exiles himself to the lunatic fringe, much like Travis Bickle did in "Taxi Driver."
This is a classic character arc told with the kind of sober restraint common among directors three times as old as P.T. Anderson. His last 4 films, as great as they are, are all obviously made by a young man. TWBB is an old man's film.
Alex, thank you! I chewed over that final scene, and why Eli was not aged, for days after seeing it and never came up with a proper answer. I don't much like the "it was all just a dream" scenario (for that matter, I dislike the lame symbolic dream being described at the end of NCFOM either), but at least it's a possibility. I'll definitely keep that in mind the next time I see it (hopefully this weekend).
I just saw TWBB yesterday, and am still processing it, but as I was watching it, I was thinking that despite what I've heard, this is a deeply conventional movie; I appreciate that Jim brought in the Bordwell comment about sturdy, Hollywood-style film-making. How different it is from "Magnolia," with its Altman-esqe communal dynamic. As Jim points out, TWBB is a film with a larger-than-life character at it's center. It's all Daniel Day-Lewis, all the time.
Like Matthew, the thought occured to me that Anderson was toying with the idea that far from opposing each other, industry and religion in America have historically reinforced one another. The residue of this can be seen in the prevalence of "prosperity doctrines" in many American churches (Joel Osteen is the current best example). It is God's will that his followers prosper; if you don't prosper, you must not be in God's will. Eli Sunday thus tries to co-opt Daniel Plainview--he baptizes him and gains the most powerful guy in town as a member. When it turns out--courtesy of the great depression--that Eli is not prospering, but of course it means he's not in God's will, and may not have been all along. Eli's reaction to being forced to state it is as real as Plainview's humiliating admission that yes, he had abandoned his son. Though this might be the first time Eli has been confronted by this realization, Plainview's uncanny abilities as a predatory exploiter allows him to take it and run.
Anyone who sees that ending as "tonally different" from the rest of the flick must not have been paying attention. Specific example: Plainview's first over-the-top beating of Sunday. It seems to me that the ending is different only quantitatively, i.e., in scale or volume.
Rick Olson - I still stand by my statement that the ending is "tonally different" than the rest of the film, and yes, I did remember that scene in which Day-Lewis plants Eli into the mud. But that scene emerges out of Daniel's anger over his son's loss of hearing, so what comes across is Daniel's unchecked rage (just as the murder of Daniel's "brother" is believable since Daniel feels deeply betrayed). In the final scene, though, Daniel starts prancing around like an absolute monster. It's possible that this is because he is drunk (I've read some people point out the subtle ways in which Plainview's alcoholism is presented).
I don't quite buy the "it's all a dream" theory myself either, but it is possible that the scene really does occur, but that it's presented through Plainview's own way of seeing Eli and the world around him...thus a bizzare, over-the-top quality emerges.
Christopher Long: Excellent point. Aside from Daniel Day-Lewis' performance, my other big problem with TWBB was the same you articulated about Dano's character.
I thought the whole notion of how religion and capitalism intersect was fascinating, but I didn't feel the film fully explored that theme, largely b/c Dano disappears so often (to the point where I'd be wondering "Hey, wasn't Paul Dano in this movie?" I think it's most glaring during the whole detour with Plainview's brother, but...glad someone else pointed it out.
I'll throw out a contrarian opinion on TWBB here: I really disagree with the notion that the ending clashed with the film, and I also disagree with this from your post, Jim:
One of the things I really loved about the film was how much Anderson deflates the metaphor: he had ample opportunity to play the characters as Big Ideas, but he kept subverting it by focusing on the personal and intimate details instead. It's a reflection of the film's attention to mundane, everyday details of the oil business rather than the Grand Narrative.
Take H.W., who ostensibly represents Clearview's conscience. Anderson could have made that explicit, but he sucks the symbolism right out of what could have been heavy-handed moments (H.W. being injured, or being sent away).
Or take the masterful scene where Clearfield threatens to slit the throat of the Standard Oil representative: it could have been a capital-S Statement about big oil and capitalism, but Anderson makes it a setpiece for Clearview's shame at his treatment of his son, and his wounded pride at finding himself at the receiving end of the same type of exploitative sales talk that he's been using since the film's beginning.
Or finally: take the ending, which I felt was both perfect and inevitable: it's set up during Plainview's "baptism". In order to succeed (he's burned his bridges with Standard Oil) Plainview is forced not only to acknowledge his most humiliating failure, but to pretend that he's acknowledging it for salvation. When Eli returns at the end, he gets the full force of Clearview's rage, and the type of humiliation Clearview chooses for him is purely for mirror effect: it's not there to "say" anything about Religion or Capitalism because it's tied so strongly to their personal history. I'm not sure why you see this as a failing, although the pitch of your post seems to hint that it is (Yosemite Sam? Really?)
You might argue that has less resonance because it doesn't fulfill the promises of a Grand Metaphor (who promised a Grand Metaphor?), but I found it powerful and resonant because Anderson didn't go in that direction. Clearview isn't Lear and he isn't Ahab, he's Clearview.
Think of it this way: it's quite an accomplishment when you consider the source material. Anderson took a muckracking novel and turned it into a rich character study. And a rich, complex one at that. Not too shabby.
First, Jim, I am very pleased with your analyses of these three pictures. You were spot on with nearly all of your thoughts. I especially liked your analysis of NCFOM.
Second, to Alex Murillo: I love your theory on the ending of TWBB! I left the theater thinking it well-conceived but poorly executed, and now I see it as quite deliberate. While I don't think your theory should be taken as truth, it definitely made me think of the ending with more respect and intrigue, instead of just as an error on the part of PTA. Thanks!
I am surprised no one has brought up a point I thought was moot after seeing the TWBB only once, but more plausible after a second viewing. (MAJOR SPOILER) Are Paul and Eli actually the same person? Could Eli's split with reality be so severe that he gave up his own family for a chance at the life of a preacher? Was Plainview's last-minute revenge on Eli (revealing his brother's own successful business) just a ruse to further confuse a schizophrenic man who also thinks he can channel the Lord? I tried on many arguments to convince my girlfriend that they were two people, but it seems equally possible that the y may be one. Not that it changes the themes at all. I think this film is about the ease in which towering institutions can be abused and abusive, taking over the wills of those who let it. Great post, Jim, and fascinating discussion, as usual.
I watched Woman In the Dunes for the first time last night. Great film, BTW, but the real reason I mention it is that the score immediately reminded me of Johnny Greenwood's score for TWBB. Greenwood's is a little more in your face but both have what seems like a constant barrage of strings that make you feel the weight and dread of the picture.
Brad: I can't agree with your idea that Anderson is deflating the religious symbolism. Plainview's final "I'm finished" seems pretty clearly a reference to Jesus' "It is finished." I would agree with Alex that he has just symbolically (rather than literally, Eli hasn't aged, etc.) killed the ghost of his salvation in the belief that said salvation requires his greed as much as his greed longs for salvation. In other words: Salvation means nothing if he has to sacrifice for it.
Note: In saying I agree with Alex I mean insofar as the final scene didn't strike me as "actually happening", whatever exactly that means, but symbolic, whether dream or vision or just some kind of bizarre Heaven for Crazy Greedy Bastards. Somehow, the bowling alley made me think of Nixon.
Dane: It's a fair point, but there's a difference between using religious symbolism and having something to say about religion. To use another Andersonian example: the frogs in Magnolia and the accompanying passage from Exodus certainly involve religious (specifically Biblical) symbolism, but they aren't there to say anything about religion per se. Likewise Plainview's invocation of religion at the end seems less Anderson's attempt to "say" something about religion and more Plainview's commentary on himself and his relationship with Eli. I'd argue that Anderson is deflating the Grand Metaphor in order to emphasize the specific and personal; according to those terms I thought the film's ending was perfectly prepared and executed.