There Will Be Blood

to call daniel plainview “a bad guy” is to otherize him and to reject the banality of ambition.  and we should… with consideration and temerity. daniel plainview is the dream american. he is the literal representation of “pulling urself up by the bootstraps” or “getting out the mud.” far from being a stochastic anomaly or a thermodynamic low-probability possibility, plainview is the intended temperature. he’s ambition made pure, and the alienation he experiences throughout the film is both his fate and his design. in the beginning, there is tenderness. plainview holds HW close with the uncertain hands of a man who feels a duty, maybe even a desire, to love. this is plainview’s kantian obligation—the belief that he must care for the boy, that he must fulfill the role of father, not because it advances his ambition but because it is simply what must be done. we see plainview’s ambition flicker against this human instinct. HW is more than a symbol at first; he is a child, and plainview feels, however faintly, that he must provide for him in ways beyond oil wells and land deeds. the gentle way he cradles HW, the fleeting moments of tenderness, are the manifestations of a deeper human repulsion for the alienation that ambition promises. in one early scene, plainview stops abel sunday, eli’s father, from beating his daughter. it’s a moment where plainview’s power intersects with morality. it’s not just about control or asserting dominance. for a brief moment, plainview uses his strength for something other than self-gain. there’s a flash of a moral compass, a spark of empathy. even in his ambition, plainview seems to recognize the need for protection, for justice. but that morality, too, is fleeting, swallowed by the ever-growing hunger for more. plainview cannot afford to be a protector; he is, above all else, a conqueror. the film slowly, inexorably, reveals how plainview’s ambitions untether him from these obligations. HW becomes a tool, a prop to make him appear as a family man, a person grounded in the familiar images of love and kinship. plainview’s ambition is still tied to something human—his kantian duty to love his son—but it’s already beginning to unravel. even as he holds HW close, even as he cradles him in tender moments, there is something transactional about it, something utilitarian. plainview loves HW because he feels he must, because society demands it, and because it helps him acquire land and trust. the love is real, but it’s a love bound up in the machinery of ambition. and then comes the explosion. HW is injured, his hearing lost, and plainview’s tender embrace falters. the boy is no longer a tool to further plainview’s empire; he becomes a complication, a vulnerability. sending HW away for his safety, plainview tells himself it’s the right thing to do, that he’s protecting the boy. but in reality, it’s the moment plainview sheds his last connection to the kantian obligations of love and duty. HW’s absence frees plainview from the weight of those fragile moments of humanity, and with that freedom comes the descent into the pure, unchecked cycle of ambition. what was once a relationship tied to human tenderness becomes severed in the name of self-preservation and the endless propagation of success. plainview’s ambition mirrors the grand myth of manifest destiny—the belief that the land and all its spoils are there for the taking, that the right to conquer and consume is not just a right but a moral imperative. in plainview, we see this myth played out with devastating clarity. he is not merely a man chasing wealth; he is fulfilling what he sees as his destiny. the land, the oil, the people—all are resources to be bent and broken to his will. and in that process, he becomes something more than a man; he becomes the vessel for ambition itself, a force that cannot be stopped, cannot be satisfied. but that ambition is lonely, unbearably so. the tender moments with HW, the times when plainview holds him close, reflect an intrinsic human desire to resist that loneliness, to hold on to the connections that keep us grounded. those embraces are plainview’s last refuge from the alienation that ambition breeds, a small but potent reminder that he is still, beneath it all, human. yet as the film progresses, those moments grow rarer, and the machinery of ambition grinds away at the warmth and softness of those touches until plainview is left with nothing but his own emptiness. eli sunday, plainview’s foil, represents a different kind of ambition—one cloaked in the guise of faith and righteousness. where plainview is upfront about his hunger for wealth and power, eli hides his ambitions behind the cross, using religion as a tool to manipulate and control. but eli, like plainview, is driven by the same fundamental desire: domination. eli’s power is spiritual, plainview’s material, but they are both engines of the same destructive force. their rivalry is not born out of difference but out of similarity. they are both men who believe they have been chosen for greatness, who see the world and its people as means to an end. and yet, in their final confrontation, it is plainview’s raw, unfiltered ambition that triumphs. eli’s performance of faith is no match for plainview’s relentless, naked hunger. pta draws empathy for plainview because, in his ambition, we see ourselves. we all have desires, dreams, the need to carve out a space for ourselves in the world. plainview’s ambition, though extreme, speaks to something universal: the fear of insignificance, the drive to be more than what we are, to matter. his tender moments with HW reflect the tension between that ambition and the human need for connection. we understand why he sends HW away, why he abandons the kantian obligations of love, because we know how easily ambition can crowd out everything else. plainview’s story is not just his; it’s ours. in him, we see the painful truth that success, when pursued at all costs, leaves nothing but isolation in its wake. pta’s portrayal of plainview illustrates that love, duty, and connection are fundamentally incompatible with the kind of ambition plainview embodies. ambition requires the severing of these ties, the forsaking of obligations that demand vulnerability or compromise. plainview’s eventual isolation is not a tragedy—it’s the inevitable consequence of his ambition. he becomes the intended temperature, the product of a system that values individual success above all else. the film’s final act, where plainview violently rejects eli, isn’t just a culmination of their personal rivalry. it’s the final assertion of plainview’s ambition over any remaining vestiges of humanity. eli, like HW, represented something that could’ve softened plainview, could’ve tied him to something greater than himself. but plainview’s ambition demands alienation, and in the end, he’s left with nothing but the echo of his own greed. the film doesn’t pity plainview—it sees him as a cautionary figure, a man who achieves everything he ever wanted and finds that it’s all barren. in pta’s world, ambition is the intended temperature, and the blanket of human connection is what it burns away.