Searching For Family In Paul Thomas Anderson’s 'There Will Be Blood'

Certainly, no shortage of critical ink has been spilled over “There Will Be Blood.” Paul Thomas Anderson’s ferociously ambitious American epic has rightly been hailed by many as one of the finest achievements of the last few decades or so of popular cinema, and the recent announcement that star Daniel Day-Lewis would be reuniting with Anderson for a period drama set in the world of New York high fashion has seen collective cinephile enthusiasm practically shooting through the roof.

This might seem like a bit of an oversimplification, but I would say that by and large, “There Will Be Blood” is often looked at by many as Anderson’s most severe film. It’s a tough, blunt picture, with none of the stoney romanticism of something like “Inherent Vice.” Even “The Master” — the Anderson picture to which ‘Blood’ is probably the most tonally similar — is more foggy and dense than Anderson’s furious fifth feature. And yet a video essay from Must See Films suggests that “There Will Be Blood,” like practically all of Anderson’s work, is ultimately not so much about the intersection of faith and capitalism, and that all that is really just backdrop for a story about family.

The quest for a family is a motif that bleeds into nearly all of Anderson’s films. Whether it’s Dirk Diggler getting cozy with Jack Horner and his surrogate clan of pornographers in “Boogie Nights,” Freddie Quell searching for a father figure in “The Master” or pretty much the entirety of “Magnolia,” family is clearly a subject that is never far from the writer/director’s mind. It’s easy to look at “There Will Be Blood” and remember Daniel Day-Lewis’ throat-clearing speeches and towering performance, not to mention the utterly batshit finale, which culminates with one of the most memorable final lines in film history. And yet a closer look reveals that, like nearly every film Anderson has ever directed, “There Will Be Blood” is about the mysterious twin forces of family and fate, and how they fuse and then disband for one very focused and ultimately heartless man.

An interesting point that the narrator makes is that, except for the film’s disquieting opening stretch, the character of Daniel Plainview is almost never seen alone. He can usually be found conversing with some interested prospectors, or hunting for quail with his son H.W. The essay also examines how the tragedy of H.W. losing his hearing in a horrible accident sends Plainview down the path to despair: Knowing he’ll never have a son to raise in his image means his so-called legacy dies when he does.

Exactly how the notion of family can ease a troubled soul is a thread that gets explored here, which makes sense: It’s the dominating thematic obsession of early Anderson films like “Boogie Nights” and “Hard Eight.” The inheritance of the sins of the father is also a subject that is brought back here, after dominating so much of the emotionally apocalyptic final act of “Magnolia.” The essay is also keen to note that Plainview displays overt sentimentality exactly once in the film, when he sheds a solitary tear whilst abandoning his son on a train headed East (if the video didn’t make note of it, it’s possible that many viewers would have simply missed it).

A comparison is also made to the protagonist of another P.T. Anderson film, “Punch-Drunk Love.” The hero of that film, Barry Egan, was a lonely man who craved human connection but had no idea how to sustain it. In stark contrast, the Daniel Plainview of “There Will Be Blood” is blessed with everything a man could want on the surface of things, but his loathing of humanity runs as deep as one of the oil wells beneath his feet. All in all, the video, titled “The Search For Family,” is a fascinating new take on one of the most talked-about films of our time.