The ritual serves as a performance for Eli, a way to humiliate Daniel in retaliation for abusing his power. Daniel, of course, isn't participating in the baptism because he feels legitimate regret for his sinful acts, but because it's the only way his property leaser, William Bandy Colton Woodward , will allow him to claim his land for pipeline construction.
When Eli makes Daniel admit to abandoning his boy and slaps the devil out of him, Daniel internally vows revenge against his nemesis. Years later, Daniel makes Eli admit his own hypocrisy as a conning televangelist when the preacher offers the Bandy land rights to him. The milkshake speech is the culmination of all of Daniel's experiences throughout the movie and represents the character's truest intentions.
It's the peak of his ruthlessness and demonstrates his personal philosophy regarding competition, and the baptism scene spurred his even more cutthroat commitment to expansion and inspired his vengeful act of cruelty.
Like the true businessman he is, Daniel eliminates Eli as a threat to his power and revels in the preacher's pathetic groveling. Eli's confession may take place in a mansion instead of a church, but his lamentations give Daniel the pleasure of turning the tables on Eli. In this case, though, Daniel isn't content to simply accept Eli's forced apology. He also admits to stealing the Bandy oil that Eli just offered him, flexing his dominance even further by explaining oil drainage, his strategic maneuver, with the juvenile milkshake imagery.
Daniel does not see his enemies on equal footing, but as victims to crush under his heel. To the baron, the preacher is no more than a naive and stupid child who leaves his delicious, sugary drink unprotected from smarter, more experienced men worthier of the prize.
In fact, the recurring imagery of liquid plays a significant role in explaining the unbridled capitalism at the heart of There Will Be Blood. Daniel's search for oil leads to his immense wealth, but the film's concluding section reveals that he has become an alcoholic, quite literally drunk with power.
The baptism water also represents his ability to turn his defeats into power plays. Daniel abandons his child just as he admitted to doing in front of Eli's congregation, but he embraces his lack of compassion as strength and fortitude and metaphorically basks in his oil fortune through his drinking habit.
The Oil Man. The chiseled exterior, chiseled as rock, and a new kind of villain whose limp shall never overcome his greed. It's not a wayward stretch into the days and times of prospectors and the death and sacrifice that comes with oil wealth. It is a chronicle of one man's insatiable greed, his fears and how they fester in various forms of self-hate, hate for others, hate for the world and all of its parts and for everything but success while those around him fail.
But why this hate? What is Daniel Plainview so afraid of? Why is he so avert to discussing his past, his present? Why does he sleep on the floor? Who is he? Well, according to himself, Daniel Plainview is an oil man. He's a family man who runs a family business. Daniel and his adopted son H. Eli, himself, is the preacher of the church. He is a feverish young man, one that yelps and shakes at the Lord, tall and thin as a matchstick clothed in black as he vanquishes the devil with the power of his hands.
He wishes to bless Daniel's first well in the area, but is publicly denied, and it is this incident that trips an ongoing furor. Daniel's phrase, "I told you I was going to eat you up," and his climactic milkshake speech have haunted me since the moment I left the theater.
These are just two of the myriad deadly musings that Mr. Plainview utters to his surrounding obsolete, most notably, Eli. I am then prompted to wonder, is Daniel, like the man in the black suit, some form of the devil? Is he, indeed, the antithesis to Eli Sunday? Some version of Paul Sunday? Or perhaps Eli is just a nonexistent thing, a reflection of Daniel's fear, of the church, of God's wrath that Daniel holds so dearly in contempt. There are infinite times in the movie when Eli's dialogue parallels the dialogue of others, particularly and watch for this the phrase, "Daniel Plainview, your house is on fire.
And it's probably because I spent so much undergraduate time in the trenches of cryptic literature that I've opted to take a different look at "There Will Be Blood. It is filled with nods and winks, elbow pokes, magic words and phrases, motifs, things that repeat themselves throughout the duration of the film, things my English class and I would have had our satisfying way with.
For it is simply not in my nature to ignore such subtleties. It feels like a novel, slow-moving, unflinching, and graphic, yet it does things with characters that no novel could ever achieve. During "There Will Be Blood," I often found myself hating Daniel while simultaneously fearing him, loving him and watching over him like some distant matriarch, yet also wishing that he'd die.
And I recall going in and out on whether I could really do that. And I swear to God on set that day he was a recognizable, fully formed character.
He was just right there. I think you can probably imagine hearing some of the lines from that ending scene on the page but then, you know, the real deal is just a whole [other] level.
So casting director Cassandra Kulukundis contacted a number of schools around Marfa, Texas, where they were shooting, and asked for their help. According to the Los Angeles Times , Kulukundis was asking for "a child who didn't play with GameBoys but worked outside," while Anderson described the ideal actor as "a man in a young boy's body.
One of the boys recommended to Kulukundis was Dillon Freasier, whom she met, did some improv with, and was impressed by. That same day, while heading to another school to meet with some additional kids, she got lost and was running late and driving at triple the speed limit. Who let Kulukundis off with a warning.
Before agreeing to let her son spend so much time with a man she knew nothing about, she decided to watch one of his films. She thought she was releasing her dear child into the hands of this monster.
So there was a flurry of phone calls and someone sent her The Age of Innocence and apparently that did the trick.
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