Catalina

daniel was a fucking vampire all along, obsessed with taking blood out of the earth and from people. ambition is his strength but it’s so strong it becomes stronger than him, turning into his weakness. even though he sounds like a man of reason, he takes every decision with paranoia and pride since he never wants to be second, but always first. he not only hates people, he despises everyone because his hunger to achieve everything for himself and share nothing with anyone else is much bigger. he used his own son, adopted him, to use him as a bargaining tool. i even thought he loved him, maybe he did, but his hunger for ambition was bigger than the love he had for his son. when his fake brother came in, he prioritized him, his own blood, over his adoptive son, abandoning him. that was until he realized he wasn’t his brother, instantly bringing back his son, demonstrating for the first time how he was actually using him for his own good. later, he demonstrated his indifference for him once again when he grew up as H.W. tried to tell his father about his own goals: to start his own business. however, daniel instantly saw it as a sickening ambition just like his, quickly naming him his competition and discarding him as his son. he threw him away as soon as he entered this state of paranoia that happens when he identifies that someone is trying to be better than him, but H.W. didn’t pursue a business with that same poisonous ambition that daniel had, but because he missed doing honest work on land. he made eli, a priest, his biggest rival because he recognized that same ambition in him, that he was playing the same game, even though he embodied everything daniel wasn’t: a religious man with values from the church. in daniel’s eyes, eli wanted to grow an empire just like he did, but using a weak initiative: not being masculine and direct like him, but showing himself as weak to manipulate people into believing they needed to give themselves to the lord, and he hated him for trying to obtain power like that.  this was my little movie analysis :) ambition diggs through the soul.