Faith and Industry in “There Will Be Blood” (Part 2)

What is a gift without control or discipline, a skill without purpose or meaning? And is there a difference between a gift and luck? Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 film “There Will Be Blood.” For more analysis, check out Way Too Close on YouTube: https://youtu.be/J3usJ4fqOJU Upcoming Episodes: Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark” and “Drowne’s Wooden Image,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Julius Caesar.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:19 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. Welcome to part two of our discussion of There Will Be Blood. We spent a long time in part one talking about Daniel and his psychology and his relationship with oil and that symbology. And I think now we're about to move into his relationship with HW and the way that that might triangulate his relationship with oil a little bit or his relationship with himself maybe, and redemption that that might represent for him psychologically, which ultimately doesn't pan out. This is another reason why I think I like Daniel as a character to a point, is that his scenes with HW before the accident are very sweet. I mean, except for when he's actively deceiving people and just using HW as a prop in the background. I should have mentioned this first thing. Have you seen the SNL There Will Be Blood excuse for Bill Hader to do an impression of Daniel of Daniel Plainview? 1:29 Wes: I probably saw it, but I don't remember it. But it sounds great. 1:32 Erin: It's so good. You gotta. I'll send you the link as soon as we're. As soon as we're done. But it's just he has a show on the Food Network where he goes around drinking other people's milkshakes at various. And Amy Poehler plays H.W. in the underrated performance of that episode. It's just that she's in the background with these huge eyes and she says nothing and just has the sort of like silent, you know, look on her face. This is a funny look. I love that episode. And Anton Chigurh is a guest on the. On the show. 2:04 Wes: Oh, wow. 2:05 Erin: So he also, like, kills somebody with a cattle gun. Anyway, so they have a surprisingly, I think, tender and wonderful relationship which. Which would seem on the surface to sort of belie Daniel's own stated principles and behaviors. But I think this gets to his. To the ambivalence of oil, which is Daniel's own ambivalence about origins and a desire for connection and a desire actually for support. As he says to Henry later, I can't keep doing this alone or I can't keep doing this by myself. Something like that. So he needs a prop at all times for being Mr. Self Made Man. He usually needs a prop. 2:47 Wes: I guess his business partner gets killed at some point. When HW is what, two? 2:52 Erin: Yeah, one or two. Yeah. 2:54 Wes: He has the boy from a young age and he's a single dad. Yeah, I think you're right. There's a lot of sweet moments. And again, I think it represents a possibility for redemption. And I think he, you know, if HW hadn't been injured, you could speculate that there would be a different course for Daniel, that he might have. It's possible that that relationship could change him. But they lose. Their ability to communicate is significantly impaired. That's one problem. So HW's ability to actually affect Daniel and to produce any change in him is compromised. And then the other problem is I don't think Daniel likes weakness. And that's what the deafness in HW represents. And then there's the guilt. Right. He's embarrassed. Well, there's guilt and embarrassment. I think he feels guilty about what happens to hw, or maybe. But at the very least, he doesn't like how it looks. Right. So that the conflict he gets in with those other businessmen, potential business partners, is about the idea that he's not taking proper care of his family because he sent HW off by that point. Right? 4:12 Erin: I think, yeah. 4:14 Wes: So there's the implication that he didn't properly take care of his. Of HW and hw's getting injured. And then there's the implication he's not properly taken care of him by. Or that he's abandoned hw. And those two criticisms. Or that criticism, sorry, really, really bothers him. And then so we have to ask why it bothers him. Is it really part of his identity to seem to want, to seem caring to other people? I don't think so exactly. But yeah, how do we explain that? Why is he bothered so much by HW's injury and by this criticism of abandonment? 4:52 Erin: Does abandonment imply an abdication of duty or being unequal to a challenge? 4:59 Wes: That second one, I think sounds right to me. Weakness, maybe. 5:03 Erin: Yeah. So HW becomes quite a sticking point then. You're helping me see that with him. He's a symbol of weakness because he's. Because he's. 5:11 Wes: Deaf. 5:11 Erin: And therefore Daniel might become someone who's pitied for having a son with a disability, but without him, he's also accused of not being able to handle it. So HW can't exist for Daniel at all. His very existence becomes something which is inherently going to cause problems for Daniel. Now. 5:32 Wes: Yeah. Can we say more about the deafness thing. And why that's such a big problem? Because he's really cruel about that. Towards the end of the movie, flapping your lips or. No, what is he saying? Your hands. 5:43 Erin: Sorry. And your little dog talks for you or whatever. 5:47 Wes: You're beneath a bastard or worth. 5:50 Erin: Bastard in a basket. There's so many. So many lines that I just like that I say so many times, and that's one of them. 6:04 Wes: I would love to see the outtakes from that. 6:06 Erin: Yeah, exactly. 6:07 Wes: Yeah. 6:08 Erin: No, Bastard from a basket. That's what it is. Bastard from a basket. So this is the flip side. So I think that in Daniel's universe, he wants to get rid of the idea of luck. I think I'm then tweezing luck from a gift or something like that. But anything which is not the result of work, maybe anything which you might luck into or which might be given to you as a gift, Daniel hates Daniel, doesn't want any part of it. And I think what happens to HW actually proves the existence of luck, namely, like the existence of bad luck. It proves that things can happen to you that are not the result of anything that you've done to either deserve punishment or earn praise or Reward. Right. Because H.W. is up there. Because he is kind of following his father's example by tending to the derrick. Right? He's. He's sort of like, you know, I had this idea that. That Daniel is like this shepherd of oil derricks, you know, and you could say that that's kind of what HW is doing. You know, they're all waiting for the oil to come in and sort of watching. And HW is up there, you know, like a. Like a shepherd lying in the grass in some kind of pastoral painting, only he's lying on the roof of a shed in a sort of like, hellscape in which nothing. He's not doing anything wrong. He's not. He just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. So that's proof of a force outside of the forces that Daniel wants to acknowledge. Eli, of course, will connect it to the fact that the well wasn't blessed. And then we have, I think, what Daniel is about, which is about playing God and being a creator. So I'm going to reject any connection to things that were given to me that I didn't necessarily earn, including a family. But, like, I will turn someone who isn't family into family. I like, I will make them my family member. And it's very important that he does that. Absent of a woman. Because that would involve collaboration. So this is sort of like this Shakespearean idea of, you know, the perfect print of the father without the intervention of the woman, which can be hairy and difficult for instances of paternity and stuff like that. Right. So Shakespearean characters are very interested in the workaround for that. So the idea of a perfect self. And the only way that Daniel knows how to be himself is through this rhetoric. Right. And so he teach it. We see him teaching H.W. telling him, here's what we're going to do. This is earthquake oil. So HW can no longer be a perfect copy of his father because Daniel can't reach him anymore. Because Daniel's not interested in becoming a different or a better person or a person other than what he is. And so that lack of communication means that Daniel would have to change and that HW can no longer be a perfect copy created by Daniel in his image. 9:08 Wes: Yeah, I think that's a very good point. I think that you're reminding me of how sweet that transition into the third act is with HW is getting signing lessons at the end of the second act, and then Mary is doing that with him, which is very sweet. Right. Daniel is not. So there's already love there. And then you jump into the third act is them getting married. So there's a big time transition as well. But there's something that is like, for me, was the most emotionally impactful moment of the movie. And there's love in that. And I think maybe this is part of the problem with hw. You could say Daniel has done a really good thing by putting HW into a community. Right now he's used him and used this idea of community to get what he wants and to serve this envious project. But he really did all these things. He really did irrigate the land and help create a community and also give HW a community. And that, I think, has been formative for hw, and it's given him a possibility of love where there is none for Daniel. So my point here is that by the time we get to the end of the movie, then this all happens very quickly. Right? It's sweet. He's married, and that is just horrible. But HW has been formed by forces which are more than just Daniel. This is going towards your point with printing and all that. So it's not just about that there's no woman imprinting on hw, but also that there's a competition for the communal forces. And I think that's what unconsciously would gall someone Like Daniel, HW is more than his because he's the communities. And HW is loved and can be loving, and that's not a possibility for Daniel. And in that sense, because of those things, HW can be an individual who's not just an extension, an extension of Daniel. So it's sort of a narcissistic appendage. And that's what's represented by HW saying, I am off to Mexico with Mary and I'm gonna start my own business. And that makes him a competitor in Daniel's mind. But I think in Daniel's mind, any individual is a competitor. Anyone who's not an extension of him represents a competitive threat. So H.W. has escaped his orbit in various ways. In the external action, the escape comes with, I'm going to go to Mexico and start my own business. But psychologically, the seeds of the escape are already there in the fact that he's got these communal opportunities and opportunities for love. And ironically, of course. Right. Yeah. Daniel puts HW into that very position. So his project of exploitation goes wrong there because he's. By making use of community, he loses control over this one person that he had a relationship with and that, you know, where the relationship was happening under his. On his terms, which is complete control. 12:24 Erin: Yeah, that's great. I just want to tease that out a little bit more because I'm thinking about the fact that he first puts HW into the community of Little Boston, giving him the ability to write, to meet Mary, the person he will marry. And then the deafness because of that lack of communication, it forces HW into a reliance on people. Right. So he ends up going. And it's. This is done so subtly and skillfully in the film, but we sort of know that the school he must have been sent to must have been a Catholic school or at least some kind of high church school. Right. Because H.W. and Mary are being married in a much more traditional looking church. Right. So we can sort of imply, intuit that the school for the deaf was one, which is probably a Catholic community. Right. 13:11 Wes: There's not any snake handling that's gonna happen. 13:13 Erin: No, I don't think so. I think. 13:16 Wes: Get out, devil. Get out. 13:19 Erin: Well, you know, I think that the film is obviously very suspicious of both Daniel and Eli. The cult of personality church, that is Eli's church, you know, in. In Little Boston, Sunday doesn't mean Jesus, it means Eli. Right. So he's gone into the, you might say, you know, the most community community of all the communities. Right. The. The Catholic Church. The one in which there is an extremely structured idea of communal responsibility, of charity, of, you know, one which would. Develops a social doctrine, etc. So I think that, you know, I was thinking about, well, why. Well, why is Daniel upset at the end that HW is going off for himself? And why does he construe him as a competitor? Why would he not admire that? Because one would think that Daniel would actually be, you know, would create the conditions whereby HW would inherit all this money and live a life of ease and wouldn't have to work. And that would be the thing that would make Daniel resent him, would be to inherit this money. But no, I think it turns out that as you're pointing out, there's a collaboration now inherent in HW's person. So he's going to be going out and using the knowledge that Daniel gave him in those early years of training in order to drill in Mexico. But he's also now been the. The feminine principle in him. You know, the mother or the other parent has become potentially the Catholic Church or some sort of like high church. Right. It could be Anglican. Right. Some sort of high church influence, which is representative of community, which is representative of the feminine, I think. And this weakness, this, this deafness which he's construing, which Daniel construes as weakness, that needs that community coming in and being the mother to this child, which means that Daniel can no longer sees him as a competitor. Because you're not my kid, you know, you're your mother's kid now. 15:24 Wes: I mean, the irony here is that HW has just kind of become a regular guy. Like, he's not, as far as we can tell, doesn't have some extreme personality disorder like Daniel does. So he's really not in that sense a competitor, some raging narcissist who wants to take over the empire or something like that. He's not little Trump Jr. Or something like that with all the same personality pathologies that's going to compete with him in that sense. So competitor, in a way is a rather. At the external level is a rather weak accusation. But psychologically it's spot on. Right, Because HW has bested him. He's got a more mature personality than Daniel does. He's a bastard in the sense that he's just not completely fucking insane like his father. 16:14 Erin: Right. So how can we square this with Henry? I mean, I think I want to make sure though, that we talk about the fact that Henry represents an alternate vision, maybe. Of what? Of how Daniel might make copies of himself in the world. I think Henry is this possibility that Daniel hadn't considered, which is, if he's my brother from another mother, that's important. I think maybe he is like me, through the father, through whatever paternal forces Daniel imagines have affected him and his personality. Perhaps Henry could be the same way, coming from the same place, under the same conditions. But having moved away like this is important, too. I think he's had this long journey to find Daniel. So both of them have moved away from Fond du Lac, which I know means bottom of the lake. So it's about water. But you can't think of Lac, Lac and Wisconsin and not also think of milk. Right. So they've both moved away from a kind of maternal force, which is also like the. You know, water is also, of course, a maternal force as well. So I think it works both ways, but they've both moved away from that. So I think that's another possibility for him. Of course, the deception and the idea that Daniel has been made a fool of in having been deceived by Henry makes this a very different kind of family lease than the one in which he was deceiving the child, HW or other people into believing that he was the father of this boy. Daniel can't be made a fool of. So Henry has to die. 17:49 Wes: Yeah. It's interesting. He comes right at the midpoint of the movie. So it's another redemptive possibility. It's another possibility for some kind of actual relationship for Daniel. But then we quickly see that. We see that HW Intuits that there's a way in which Henry might supplant him. And so that's how you get, you know, he lights that fire. I think part of it, he's. He intuitively understands that Henry is a fraud. And I think he gets into the diary. It's a little vague for me, but you get the sense that he's. He's on to Henry in a way, but also knows that. Right. HW has been Daniel's entire life. And now here comes Henry, and that's exactly what happens. Right. Henry is then sent away. And then Daniel and Henry have their little bromance road trip, surveying for the 18:40 Erin: pipeline, which returns them to water, briefly 18:44 Wes: ending up in the ocean, splashing about like having gale time in San Francisco. Is that where they are in San Francisco? 18:53 Erin: I think they're a little further south, barking up the wrong tree there. 18:58 Wes: I guess it's rather stale to point to the homoerotic element of that, but, you know, de rigueur for criticism, but. But anyway. But it's probably a little bit legitimate to point that out and to point to the fact that it ends in violence partly because of that. But really, when all one needs say is that Daniel allowed himself to get too close to Henry and that's why Henry had to die. You know, again, there's an external line of action that justifies it. And in a way, Daniel is sort of let off the hook. Right. He has an excuse to kill off Henry, but I think that that's his fundamental impulse anyway, is to do that sort of thing, to get rid of that relationship. But in any case, Good news for HW. Well, his rival is gone. 19:45 Erin: Yes. But HW's relationship with Daniel is over. And then. Yeah, so that might have been a redemption and I think Henry might have been another one. Not as effective. But, you know, Henry makes him open up. 19:57 Wes: Exactly. 19:58 Erin: Returns him to water. Returns him to the possibility of connection with other people. Even if at the same time he's saying, I probably couldn't look at that house again, it would make me sick. He talks about the Peach Tree Dance. He actually talks about being with women. Right. He actually is suddenly open to water, to the possibility of collaboration with somebody on the basis of a family tie. 20:20 Wes: Henry is the one. He tells about his envy, he's confiding all these things. And as you said, it's the only time in the movie where we get any of Daniel's inner life through his interactions, as far as I can tell, with Henry, any sort of self. Actual self disclosure. So it is significant, it is redemptive to some extent, or it goes in that direction and then of course goes sideways. 20:44 Erin: Right. And what's so fabulous about that is that it's the exact same scenario as hw, only this time Daniel is not in control. So he's ceded a little bit of control to these forces outside of himself under Henry's influence, and then discovered that Henry was not actually his real brother and cries. He cries. That's important. 21:04 Wes: Yeah. When he discovers this, he has a fair amount of control because he. Because Henry relies on him for money. And we get the info, the hint that that money is being doled out very, very by drip, by drip. Right. That happens in the saloon where Henry has to repeatedly ask Daniel for money and. 21:29 Erin: Oh, right. 21:30 Wes: At that point Daniel is furious. And so at that point in the movie, I'm wondering, is he furious because of his dislike of sexuality? Is he furious because of Henry's weakness? Weakness for women, but also the weakness implicit in Asking him for money. The dependence. And I think that's part of it. Right. So he needs dependence. He needs people like H.W. or Henry to be dependent on him. That's the only position in which he can tolerate the relationship. But dependence is also weakness, and he doesn't like weakness. So he seems to be disgusted by Henry's weakness. I guess we're supposed to also infer at that point he already knows that Henry's not his brother. 22:11 Erin: Oh, yes, he knows. 22:12 Wes: Yeah. When does he find out? 22:14 Erin: It's the Peach Tree dance. 22:15 Wes: Okay. 22:16 Erin: He says we could get all dressed up and take him to the Peach Tree Petri. Yeah, we can get all dressed to the petri dish. Petri dish. The Peach Tree Dance. And Henry clearly does not know what he's talking about. Whatever the staple of Wisconsin Fond du Lac society is, which is so funny. And this is. So this is h. This has to be a Paul Anderson invention in the script. Right. Because remember in Sierra Madre, Curtin wants to grow. Grow peaches. And then he goes off with Cody, has that peach orchard. And so he's left his wife and this peach orchard to apparently go to seed. Unless Curtin goes there and takes his place. Anyway. Yeah. So he gets this fantasy fulfilled of this wife in the peach orchard. Yeah. So that's the tell. 23:07 Wes: I see. 23:07 Erin: And it's at that moment with this idea of women and place and connection that he realizes. 23:14 Wes: I see. 23:14 Erin: Yeah. 23:15 Wes: Yeah. I think I missed that. I mean, I think I concluded there had to have been a tell that I missed, but. Right. Yeah. It's. In a way, it provides him with an excuse, probably to unleash aggression, you know, built up irritation just with having, you know, having. Being. Being in a relationship with a person, getting close, the humiliation of having confided all those things. For instance, that in and of itself, you know, is enough to make you want to kill someone. How dare you know these things about you? 23:46 Erin: About me? 23:47 Wes: How you dare you know my weaknesses. 23:50 Erin: Right, Right. 23:51 Wes: That's the way I used to feel going to. Going to therapy. It's like, did I really. Did I really say all those things to my therapist? God. Oh, my gosh, I hate her for knowing that. 24:02 Erin: I'm just. I'm. I have no boundaries and I'm obsessed with self disclosure, so that doesn't. I'm like, oh, finally, I feel close to you now that you know all my darkest secrets. Thank you, checkout person. 24:18 Wes: Yeah. Well, self disclosure is at the very essence of. Yeah. Friendship. But it's got to be regulated. 24:25 Erin: Yes. 24:26 Wes: You say too Much the other person's got to die. 24:29 Erin: That's right. I hate it. I hate it when that happens. I've killed so many people. 24:35 Wes: That's why you got to keep a little pistol on your body at all times. 24:39 Erin: That's right. Then William Bandy always finds out. 24:44 Wes: I thought we were having a good time. Remember what I told you? Never tell anyone. 24:50 Erin: Don't tell anyone. No, but, I mean, I revisited the moment where Henry comes into Daniel's life, which is a scene that I love because it's shot from so far away, so we don't see Henry up close for a very long time. Just this real distancing effect that goes on there. And he keeps asking Henry who he is, and he keeps just saying his first name. He doesn't say Henry Plainview. So he's. And there's this. This obsession, I think, with naming and names in the film. I mean, not only because the names are so, you know, loaded, but that's a really significant tell, I think. Henry. I'm Henry. You know, I'm just some guy named Henry. I'm not Henry Plainview. Necessary, necessarily. And then I'm your brother, which, you know, which could have a lot of different meanings. So in a way, he, like, almost doesn't lie to him. Of course he does. But, you know, in a sense. And then when he holds the gun to Henry's head and he asks him again, who are you? Henry says, I'm nobody. 25:47 Wes: This is a really good. Yeah. This is really interesting. Yeah. I hadn't thought of this fact that this kind of identity thing bookends the whole relationship. It starts out with this who are you? Thing, and then it ends with this who are you? Thing. 25:59 Erin: And the. The idea to, you know, the. Maybe the idea of making your name is part of this, too. You know, you think of the fact that hws father, you know, who you only kind of realize is the father after the fact. Because it's so difficult to tell in the oil who anybody is. Right. Because they're covered in the goop, which is. So whatever you want to say about that. 26:19 Wes: Right. 26:20 Erin: Amniotic. 26:21 Wes: Fungible and amniotic. Yep. Right. 26:24 Erin: And there are so many, you know, like, those accidents where you could be anybody, it could happen to anybody, and it literally happens to people who. You don't even know who they are. Right. Because they're working with you, but they're. You maybe know nothing about them. And that the anonymity of the west, which could be. Either you get a fresh start, or it could be you Die in a hole and nobody even knows your name, you know, versus, like, Daniel Plainview. I'm an oil man. 26:52 Wes: I'm an oil man. 26:54 Erin: Right. And becoming this guy with this enormous house on the. On the coast, making. Making your name in that way, identity. I don't know. There's. There's more to be said about that. Yeah. Making your name versus being given a name like Eli Sunday. Who. Who's. Yeah, who's all. Who's all about. 27:09 Wes: Good transition. Yeah. Let's talk about him getting bludgeoned to death. 27:14 Erin: Yeah, yeah. With the bowling pin, which is just, you know, love everything about this movie. 27:22 Wes: You hated violence. 27:24 Erin: Yeah, that part is. That part is, you know. Well, I mean, I was going to start with the joke that There Will Be Blood was the original title of my first book, but so I, you know, I do and I don't. I love blood. Under certain circumstances, I'm very interested in blood. So, father named Abel, twin brother named Paul. Very confusing moment. I remember first watching theater. 27:50 Wes: Yeah. I was very confused. I thought when Eli was introducing himself to Daniel that it was Paul and that they were pretending not to know. I was. And it turns out originally they weren't twin brothers. There was a different actor. Yeah, right. And then that actor was not very enthusiastic about his job, let's just put it that way, and even admitted that. But so anyway, he got fired. And then the actor who plays Eli, who's wonderful. What's his name? 28:20 Erin: Paul Dano. 28:21 Wes: Yeah. Paul Dano plays both parts, but they don't really. I don't think they draw attention to the fact that they're twin brothers. You just have to figure it out. Right. 28:29 Erin: Daniel and H.W. do give each other a look, because of course, they can't say, like, oh, we saw your brother Paul. He tipped us off. Right. 28:37 Wes: Yeah. 28:37 Erin: So it's very, very subtly handled. 28:41 Wes: It is very interesting. Yeah. So you have the one son who. The chosen one is the one who tips him off and goes on to make a fortune. If Daniel is telling the truth, apparently Paul becomes a oil man himself. 28:58 Erin: He doesn't. He just makes that up to torture Eli because he said he gave him $1,000 instead of 500 and. 29:04 Wes: Right, right, right. 29:05 Erin: I gave him a million dollars. 29:08 Wes: Yeah. There is this Cain and Abel element. Right. Am I wrong to read that into this? 29:15 Erin: No, you're not wrong. Even between father and son. I mean. 29:19 Wes: Right. Yes, of course. But I'm thinking between Daniel and Eli. So when. Because. Right, so, okay, so here's the. Here it is, from Genesis. Now Abel kept flocks and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time, Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil. Oil that is just kidding. Fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. And Abel also brought an offering, fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering. But on Cain and his offering, he did not look with favor, which is always just find so confusing and funny. But so Cain was very angry and his face was downcast and I would be too. And if God didn't even tell me why, what did I do wrong? I'm the crop guy and the brother is the flock guy. Right? We. This has got to be someone for everything. Why am I the. But anyway, it. And I was looking online like why does. Why does. It's just Googling. Why does the Lord, you know, not favor Cain? And I. I saw someone on Reddit say because that's God's prerogative with all caps. 30:35 Erin: You can't argue with that. 30:37 Wes: Literally one way of looking, looking at it. And I'm sure you know a lot more about the interpretation of this than me, but. But just from my amateur point of view, it looks a little bit like the Abel is in the position, the more spiritual position with a flock. Right. And leading. Leading a flock and doing all that as opposed to taking something out of the. Or from the ground or something like that. I don't know. So I was associating Daniel's envy with Cain's envy of Abel and you know, Daniel's envy in the general sense that we talked about, but also his envy of. Of Eli. So he envies Eli in the sense of having this position to be of being a spiritual benefactor to people. Right. To leading a flock and envious people in general, of course, in the sense of their possibility for actual connection to others. Daniel can only be connected to the ground. Others can be connected to each other. And his envy ultimately is about, you know, he thinks he needs to defeat people, but ultimately he needs to connect. And that's. That's what is torturing him. But so that's my sort of reading Cain and Abel onto this, which is the. Why I think the bludgeoning is so apt. I don't know. Tell me, tell me what I'm getting wrong or right in that. 31:57 Erin: No, I think that's totally right. I think, you know, he envies Eli in the same way that he envies women and Fond du Lac and water and. Right. Anything that he can't control or that he isn't Totally playing God over. I mean, there's so many things I could say about this. Just one of the elements that I meant to talk about with land is also the fact that land and ownership is, of course, fundamentally. There's already a kind of mental gymnastics that you have to. That you have to do with yourself to even think about ownership of land, period. Never mind ownership of land in America or in the West. Which is. Which is maybe a hint that when Eli calls himself, you know, the son of these hills, that's. That's what he wants Daniel to call him, and that having some authority to it is already kind of suspect. So, you know, they're both flimflam men, it turns out, right? They're both. They're both orators who are manipulating people and trying to get something out of people. They both have gift for speech in a certain way. So Eli sets himself up as being the inheritor of the land, someone who's connected to the place, someone who has territorial rights that supersede Daniel's, and someone who's also a son of God and also a father to the flock. And I think Daniel actually envies, come to think of it, in this discussion of Abel, Eli's father, Abel. I think he also envies Abel for having a daughter like Mary. I think this is something that Daniel is interested in. I mean, you know, you. 33:26 Wes: You. 33:27 Erin: You've alluded to this already, but when Daniel pulls the switcheroo on. On Eli and doesn't let him give the blessing of the well, Daniel himself does the blessing, right? He's. He's constantly putting himself in the position of God to Eli rhetorically. And he instead positions himself. Oh, he says Mary. He steals Eli's language and says, Mary is a proud daughter of these hills. And he puts, like, his hand on her shoulder, right? So he does this leasing thing, even with Mary leasing family members, leasing land, right? Where he's like. He then installs himself as the surrogate father of Mary and therefore grandfathers himself into the town. You know, like, I'm a member of this town, too. I'm gonna be the guy who's part of the town. Eli, I think he views the fact that he has this oil under the Sunday ranch as a gift that he's been given that he has the right to because he owns the land. And the negotiation scene where Daniel comes clean, basically, he's not just quail hunting, that I wrote down the dialogue. Eli says, we have oil here. That's worth something. Daniel says, oh, do you have someone who can drill for it. And he says, it's very expensive to drill and to get it up and out of the ground. You ever tried that before? You know, like you don't know what you're doing, you know, you moron. How much is it? Costly. And Eli says, well, our. Our oil sits right up on top of the ground. I have this gift that everyone can see. My gift of healing people. Right. My guy, like, I'm. I'm an. I'm a child of God. I'm, you know, I'm part of the body of Christ. I'm member of a church, of a family. All of these things, I think, are twinned in there. So. So Daniel says, I believe that's called seepage. Doesn't necessarily mean there's something underneath. 35:09 Wes: Seepage versus drainage. 35:11 Erin: Seepage versus drainage. Right. Yeah. Where Eli says, what would you give us for it? And Daniel says, I don't know. And Eli goes, something? You don't know? And Daniel says, that's right. What would you like, Eli? And Eli says, $10,000. And Daniel says, for what? And Eli says, for my church. I love that moment. And. And Daniel, like, has to concede. That's good. That's a good one. Because he's expecting to be answered with, for what? Like, what do you want the $10,000 for in terms of what they already have? For what? For the land and plus the oil. But instead, Eli answers with what he wants, what he's going to use the money for. So it's like an oil answer. I'm going to take this money, and I'm going to do this with it. Right. It's about getting you somewhere. But it's also a strategic answer in a way that is showing Daniel that Eli is a match for him, I think, because he can't object to it without objecting to the church. And, you know, he has to play ball with these people. And part of playing ball is being like, I enjoy all faiths. I 36:12 Wes: love it. 36:13 Erin: Depends on what you are. Are you a Methodist? Oh, that's what I am. You tell me what you are first. 36:19 Wes: Which one of these mixed nuts would you like? I enjoy all the nuts. Even a macadamia. 36:29 Erin: And so, yeah, so he. So he can't object with that without objecting to churches, churches, the church itself, like the community itself. And he's trying to win them over. And it ties a decision about a fair price up with charity. So again, we have this, you know, opposition between the two of them as being somehow about religion. And when. When Eli accuses Abel of having Squandered everything or given everything away. Abel says, I listened to his word. Right. So Daniel has this competing gospel that is in competition with Eli's, and Eli's is also kind of in competition with the gospel. But that's a. That's a question for another podcast. 37:07 Wes: No, these are all good points. It's. And you're reminding me of. Yeah, Eli does not come across very well in that scene. Yeah, it's the scene after. So Daniel has beaten him up or humiliated him and rubbed mud in his face. Right. And then he's going to do something similar to his father, take it out on his father, Abel. But we do see this dark side of Eli there, and we do get the sense that there's a little bit of Paul in him. Right. He's also after. His intentions are not pure. Even though he wants to use the money for the church, there's a fair amount of self aggrandizement in that. Most like he wants to be a cult leader or something like that. In the end, I think he seems less ambitious. You know, he's coming to Daniel for money, but he's really fallen, you know, his willingness to say that, what is it? I'm a false prophet and God is a superstition. 38:02 Erin: God is a superstition. 38:04 Wes: Right. So this is Daniel's revenge for Eli getting him to say earlier on that I abandoned my son, you know, over and over again. Yeah, it seems. It seems like Eli has quite different. I don't know what he's been doing out there. And Would you say he's trying to do a radio show? The podcast? What? 38:25 Erin: Yeah, he's trying to be one of these. Yeah, exactly. No, he's. He's been trying to be one of these faith healer celebrities, you know. Do you know the story of Aimee Semple McPherson? This is a. No, you got it. You just got to read this woman's Wikipedia page. That's all I have to tell you. It would take way too long. But basically, one of these people who becomes famous for being a kind of like a revival church, slash cult leader, slash, give me your money and I will, you know, keep performing miracles for people, et cetera, you know, the very, very earliest forms of a kind of a televangelist made popular by radio. And there was always this charismatic Protestant element to it with supposed healings and stuff like that that they could perform, you know, which is. Which is the heart of Eli's supposed gift, you know, the gift of healing. And that's one of the things I actually wanted to talk about in relation to HW but in that final scene, you know, God is a superstition that's related to luck. But when he comes into the house, he says, your. Your home is a miracle, right? Perfectly designed. And maybe, maybe he doesn't even know it, but perfectly designed to really rankle Daniel, right? Like it's a miracle. It just appeared out of nowhere. You know, you didn't do anything to earn it. That's just great way to get Daniel to already be. I mean, he's already pissed at everybody, especially Eli. But, you know, every. Everything is about this supposed communication with God, which he is special for being privy to. So in the same way that Daniel is special because he's better than everybody, he's more skilled than everybody. Eli is special because he has this gift, because he. Because God talks to him, God tells him things. But also God has mysteries and that. That causes him some problems, as he says. 40:16 Wes: I hadn't thought about this. You know, why Daniel gets so angry at him and kills him. But this seems to be spot on about. By trying to sort of attribute Daniel's success to God in a certain way. 40:30 Erin: I wonder about Eli's flexibility, shall we say, as opposed to Daniel's. So Daniel's problem seems to be his inflexibility. Eli's problem, I think, is something a little bit different from that. Even though they're sort of mirror images of each other and they interpret things according to the same. According to similarly strict rubrics of how to interpret behavior, signs, events. They're very different rubrics, but they're very strict. But something Eli says when he. When he performs the healing of the old woman or what might be whatever, you know, the performance, which is one of the things that Daniel hates about him is that he's all show. He doesn't actually do anything. Right. That was one hell of a show. But he introduces that by saying that God has given him a new way to heal or to cast out the ghost or however he. However he formulates it, that he's not going to cast it out with fire, but it's a gentle voice that God has given him. I thought that was really interesting in light of the fact that Daniel won't change his. His mode of communication. So this is what I'm relating to HW Daniel won't learn sign language. He won't be flexible in his mode of communication. And if you can't hear his message, he wants nothing to do with you. You're not somebody who. He's going to Talk to like he walks away from the town that is fighting with each other because he doesn't need it, he doesn't need the trouble. And I'm certainly sympathetic to that moment when he, when he walks out because they're all fighting over who has the rights to the land and who's gonna get more money and stuff like that. But he walks away. He doesn't try to negotiate with them. I, like I said, I see that as, you know, probably a useful tactic to walk away, but he won't try a different way in. He has his way and that's it. Eli introduces himself to us in the arena of the church as someone who is changing his voice, changing his method of approach. I don't know if that makes, if that gives him maybe something that we could say about him that is positive, that we could put in the positive column. Because Eli to me tends to be a little bit more, I mean, if it's possible, a little bit less likable than Daniel. 42:41 Wes: Yeah, he is. 42:43 Erin: And maybe that's why I think that Daniel comes out better than he does. Yeah, he's really creepy. Maybe that flexibility, maybe that's another way that he is of that he works his flim flam. Maybe that's part of it. Maybe it's to show that he has multiple voices, that God gives him multiple gifts, multiple ways of manifesting the Holy Spirit or whatever. But just that flexibility. I thought there's a, there's a very clear difference being established between the two men in that statement. 43:12 Wes: In the statement of, in the statement 43:14 Erin: of I have a new voice, God has given me a new way to communicate. 43:18 Wes: Interesting. Okay, so pointing to his greater flexibility. 43:22 Erin: Yeah. Is that just a tactic? Is that just part of his inflexible belief in himself? 43:28 Wes: Yeah, I don't know. You know, I'm, I, yeah, he's quite. Eli is quite opaque to me, actually. I mean, in the end the veil falls to some extent and he seems self serving and cynical to some degree. But that, that seems like the place to which he's gotten at that point. But yeah, I find, I find Eli opaque. I don't know psychologically. 43:50 Erin: I know a lot of people felt maybe because of the stories around that casting necessity that Dano wasn't really up to the challenge of competing with Daniel Day Lewis. But I think as time has gone on, people have admired that performance more and more. And now I think it's, I think he's the equal of Daniel Day Lewis in the film. 44:11 Wes: Absolutely. 44:12 Erin: But it's, but it's Just such a very different kind of performance, too, which is, I think, like, really essential. It's so much more obviously about performing, though. Daniel is too performing all the time for these communities, at these public assemblies, et cetera. But I did want to say that that opening scene with the silver mine, you could say, is very evocative of the film industry as a symbol. Right. He's in that really, really dark shaft, and then he comes out to the blinking, blinding sun, and there's something of, like, coming out of the movie theater with the, you know, silver. Silver screen. It's 1898, so, you know, the infancy of films, the silver screen as a term I looked up and it says descriptions of a silver screen used in the presentation of films as early as 1897. So right around that time. And I think that drive to keep producing new things, that oil symbology is very much connected to art and the idea of, you know, sort of a dissatisfaction, always needing to be working on something. Maybe the sort of, like, egomaniacal tendency that it takes to be a film director, maybe. So a lot of. A lot of statements might be made there, but yeah, a lot of the film is just about. I think it's about sneakily, about performance and maybe about movies, too. And that, at least in that early scene. 45:35 Wes: Interesting. Okay, well, I think that is a good final word. 45:39 Erin: Okay, thank you. 45:41 Wes: Thank you, 45:45 Erin: and thanks to everyone who listened. For an easy way to do that, go to subtextpodcast.com patreon.com subtextpodcast please send your questions, feedback and episode requests to letters at subtextpodcast. Com. If we get enough questions, we'll do some bonus Q and A shows for subscribers. You can also find us on Facebook at Subtext Podcast and on Twitter at Enjoy Subtext.