Analyzing Evil: Daniel Plainview From There Will Be Blood

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to the 31st episode of analyzing evil featuring our patron pick for the month of june daniel plainview from there will be blood daniel day lewis as daniel plainview provides a stellar performance that leaves us with an emotionally and psychologically complex character whose devolution over the course of this film is a fascinating study into the detrimental aspects of one's personality that can lead to severe consequences when one's ambitions are left unchecked to get an accurate picture of just who daniel is this video will begin with an overview of his traits and skills before we move on to discuss the many nuances to his personality that have an effect on his goals in life and the unfortunate circumstances we see unfolding throughout the film that ultimately bring daniel to a self-made ruin there's a lot to cover here so without further ado let's begin now one of the best scenes to give us a starting point in analyzing daniel plainview actually occurs midway through the film and that's the iconic scene where he gives a speech to his false brother about the competition that resides within him a speech i'll be referring back to multiple times throughout this video we'll start by covering the components of this speech that are the foundation of daniel's personality and the man he's become i have a competition in me i want no one else to succeed i hate most people there are times when i look at people and i see nothing worth liking i want to earn enough money that i can get away from everyone i see the worst in people i don't need to look past seeing them to get all i need i've built my hatreds up over the years little by little to have you here gives me a second breath in life i can't keep doing this on my own with these people now that i've given you a refresher on this speech there's no better place to start looking at his skills and traits than the introductory scene of the film this introductory scene shows us two of daniel's most important traits right from the get-go that are backed up by his intrinsic desire to compete and succeed those being his determination and his resolve many individuals who find themselves at the bottom of a mine shaft with a broken leg miles from civilization would after a certain amount of effort to free themselves abandon all hope and accept their fate but a man who toils in a self-dug mine shaft for who knows how long is not one who abandons hope easily especially considering this broken leg is a direct result of his discovery of a vein of silver though this event may have had an impact on his sense of self-preservation whether or not he had discovered this silver would have likely made little difference to daniel as a man who was willing to drag himself for miles through bleak desert is one who is no stranger to adversity and one whose will to survive surpasses any fear that might have surfaced in the moment he felt his leg snap concurrent with his views of people and his ability to extract what he needs from them in the scene where he and his son are holding a town hall meeting of sorts we get to see another crucial aspect of daniel his silver tongue though it gets him nowhere here we get to see daniel employ tactics in his speech that are common tools used in the art of persuasion first he establishes who he is what he represents and what he's accomplished here speaking about what his company has accomplished and the current success he is having in his endeavors next he mentions the potential of the situation being discussed in this case the opportunity for great wealth through extraction of the oil beneath this community and then he immediately presents a problem and the obstacles that can stand in the way of this opportunity which here he identifies as speculators and scalpers who are looking solely at making a profit for themselves and not the people who hired them when presented with a question about a solution to this problem he circles back to his own qualifications stating his expertise hands-on approach to his business and his ability to quickly and efficiently begin producing for this community all while he simultaneously highlights the errors and mishaps that are prone to his competition peppering in mention of his values and moral standing by highlighting himself as a family man someone ordinary a man who's much like the people he's speaking to you can often find this method of persuasion and negotiation in both business and politics and the way daniel is highlighting his own accomplishments without overtly boasting about them while simultaneously undermining his competition shows us that he has a firm grasp of the art of conversation and the ability to empathize with the people he's trying to persuade appearing to them as a man whose intentions are pure and one who's on their side as opposed to the seedy entities that are his competition his posture and mannerisms also play a part as he reflects a calm confidence and the way he moves and speaks is reassuring and firm yet not so much so as to be intimidating contributing to the image he's trying to project as a competent and capable businessman with an eye set towards helping the people who partner with him the following scene reflects much the same but as this is a more personal conversation he adds another component into this negotiation that of a careful prodding at the important things in a person's life a small reminder of why they're engaging in this negotiation in the first place here he reminds the couple he's speaking to of their children a small misdirection of the conversation that serves to bring their focus back to their priorities rather than any discrepancies they find in the proposal daniel has laid out for them these traits are the tools daniel uses to realize his ambitions and his use of the resources available to him and the understanding he has of the desires and morals of other people and how to turn them to serve his own ends is frequently employed by daniel as we often see him invoking family values and a belief in god to back up the claims he's presenting to his potential business partners however this image of a benevolent business partner is nothing but a carefully crafted facade there's no doubting that with a booming business comes booming communities but the profits daniel provides to the people he does business with is nothing but an afterthought and we see this notion in the scene where he's confronted by paul sunday with information about a potential reserve of oil that lays untapped under his family's ranch here he's much more terse and vague and this conversation reflects the businessman he actually is a much more conventional one whose concerns lie with his profits and not the prosperity of the people he deals with this is further expanded upon when he arrives at the sunday ranch where he states to his son his intentions to lowball the sunday family all of these things seem to indicate that he's a manipulator and he certainly does employ manipulation as one of his tactics but i think it's more accurate to peck him as a sly smooth-talking salesman who has the credentials of hard work and reputation to back up any of the false promises he makes to people now that we've covered these crucial skills and traits let's move on to his personality a few things are evident from the way he conducts himself those being that he is without a doubt a highly envious narcissist with an overt superiority complex and fragile ego i'm sure this stems from the fact that his view of people is one of inferiority and distaste even the people he envies coupled with his view of himself as a hard-working well-informed and self-made man who need not bow to anyone that happens to cross his path daniel is a man who feels he has the right of every situation and though his outward boasting when he's making his case to prospective business partners is part of the game he plays he really does in truth believe that he is the man he tells everybody he is and nobody can tell him otherwise these high opinions of his own capabilities coupled with his negative view of nearly everyone around him causes daniel to be susceptible to even the smallest of slights either real or perceived and what plays into these highly detrimental personality traits is the intense rage that he harbors within himself causing him to hold grudges against those who wrong him in any way hatred for these individuals stored away in his memory to be used at a later date and his behavior towards these people is racked with spite and snide hostility which can devolve into violence when he's pushed too far we have many examples of this throughout the film and we first see this during his negotiations with the sundays here daniel is on the losing side of a deal that he has deemed to be fruitful and he becomes frantic the veneer of a calm and collected businessman slowly fading as his nefarious intent is brought forward and he becomes much more abrupt and dismissive in his speech patterns what we get to see now is his impatience and panic mixed with rage when he views an opportunity to further his success slipping between his fingers this is only a shadow of what's to come and his rage manifests an increasing measure as the film progresses from this point on though daniel's rage is nearly always accompanied by the spite and snide hostility that i mentioned before which while tied to his rage is more so tied to a superiority complex take for example the moment where daniel refuses eli's request to have daniel introduce him and bless the well now the reason that daniel did this is obviously because he dislikes eli but there's more to it than that eli is in a way just like daniel but his motivations contrast and conflict with daniels this makes it natural for the two of them to butt heads but what rubs daniel the wrong way in this moment is that eli someone who daniel believes is both ridiculous and beneath him deigned to tell daniel what to do and this is something that daniel cannot abide from anyone let alone this delusional superstition obsessed young man later in this scene we get another moment of spite from daniel when he displays disdain for abel sunday who daniel learned beats his daughter through his son and makes it a point to call him out in front of his daughter flashing his own power and stating that he'll be the one taking care of mary from now on we again see his rivalry and animosity towards eli in the scene where he asks daniel for the money that is owed to him here he abuses eli for again attempting to tell daniel what he needs to do this is the same thing that happens with tilford as in their first meeting daniel perceives that tilford is attempting to tell him how to run his family now he might have been doing so to a certain extent but not to the degree that daniel believes he is and the reaction daniel has here is beyond excessive especially for what is essentially a misunderstanding earlier i mentioned that daniel is able to empathize with the people he is negotiating with and that's only partly true as though daniel is able to feign empathy for the purposes of conducting business he has almost none when it comes down to it and he is much more concerned with his own feelings rather than the feelings of others his relationships suffer as a result of this and daniel finds himself without any true friends outside his own son and for a time his so-called brother but as we know both of these relationships end up crumbling the one with his false brother is understandable considering he had been deceiving and using him over the course of their relationship however that's no excuse for the way in which daniel ended this relationship and while he's completely justified in being angry with this man that doesn't give him cause to murder him as for his son the devolution of their relationship happens because daniel's narcissism gives him the distinction of being a narcissistic parent we see that daniel is clearly fond of his son and also of merry sunday but as we see towards the end of the film the love he has for his son quickly evaporates when his son expresses his independence and his desire to go his own way directly challenging the notion that the people daniel is involved with and who have benefited from his success owe daniel a debt of loyalty and gratitude and anyone family included who falters on this debt is not worthy of his time or energy a component of a superiority complex is daniel's disdain and discomfort towards religion we see this multiple times throughout the film and it's clear that daniel is a non-believer when it comes to anything spiritual which isn't a bad thing by any means but in daniel's case the reasoning for his non-belief runs deeper than theological or philosophical differences i believe the reason for his atheism is the fact that daniel is a self-made man and due to the life of determination and self-reliance that he's led so far he doesn't believe any sort of deity was present to help him along the way and he doesn't appropriate his success and good fortune to any god but rather to his own hard work and determination we can only speculate on what daniel's life was like before we met him in the opening scene of the film but i think it's safe to say that through all the hardship he likely experienced in his life he found no comfort in turning to god and found no results when he turned to prayer causing him to write off any notion of god or a higher power altogether replacing it with utter faith in his own will to survive and succeed all of these traits seem to indicate that daniel either suffers from antisocial personality disorder specifically sociopathy or narcissistic personality disorder however he doesn't have all the symptoms of either but he does display many of the behaviors that are present in a person with narcissistic personality disorder more so than the symptoms that are prevalent within a sociopath and those symptoms are his exaggerated sense of self-importance and exaggerated talents as we see when he claims he's the only person capable of doing certain jobs and how effective he is at completing them his preoccupation with fantasies of his success like when he enters into a trance-like state upon striking oil in little boston where we see that he is so mesmerized with the gold he sees spewing forth from the earth that for what seems to be an entire day he stands watching this fountain of wealth like a predator wholly unconcerned with the sorry state of his son lying deaf and broken right behind him then we have the way he monopolizes conversations and belittles people he views to be inferior to himself his expectation of unquestioning compliance with his own expectations as he expects with eli his son and prospective business partners the way he takes advantage of others to obtain what he wants his inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others as we see during his conversation with his son towards the end of the film the envy he states to have for others his dependence on alcohol significant interpersonal problems causing him to easily feel slighted and secret feelings of shame as we can see when he's questioned about his son as well as feelings of vulnerability which comes from his inherent loneliness that is apparent from his dependence on his relationship with both his son and falsified brother i'm hesitant to claim that daniel suffers from narcissistic personality disorder outright and the reason for that is because people with this disorder aren't capable of feeling true guilt or remorse but as we see a few times in the film daniel definitely is particularly after he kills his false brother when he admits to abandoning his son in the church of the third revelation and when he's reminiscing on the relationship he had with his son that has since been lost due to his own actions these three moments hit daniel in a similar way the murder and loss of his false brother coupled with the absence of his son in his life at that time crushes daniel in more ways than one in the run-up to this moment he realizes early in the day that this man is in truth not his brother and throughout this day he's torn on what to do about this revelation on the one hand you have a man who deceived him but on the other is the fact that this man is daniel's only friend in the world and this conflict is tearing daniel apart as the day goes on this problem is eventually solved by something that daniel frequently turns to for solutions alcohol a mixture of inebriation and rage envelope daniel and only after he's buried this man's body and reads the diary of his actual brother does the magnitude of what he's been subjected to and what he's done hit him the immense outpouring of grief we see here happens in part because daniel is mourning the loss of a brother he never knew and is so distraught over how thoroughly he was deceived and placated to a place of love and companionship that was nothing but a sham a momentary solution to the overwhelming hatred he felt for nearly everyone around him however this grief also comes from the fact that he's selfish and now that he's murdered his only friend he feels utterly alone and is racked with despair and guilt over what he's done realizing in this moment that though this man had deceived him he still valued the relationship they had i think the reason daniel felt so attached to a brother figure even a false one can be understood by looking at three things he said during his competition speech in that speech he tells henry that if daniel has certain traits they must be in henry too he then tells him that henry joining him in his endeavors gave him a second breath in life and then he goes on to say that he can't continue doing what he's doing alone now daniel has plenty of associates that he can rely on but what daniel sees in this brother is someone who might be just like him someone that understands him and will be able to support him in a way that others who don't share the same traits can finding this person was truly a second breath for daniel and though in actuality this false henry didn't naturally contain the same traits as daniel he still formed a bond with him and that bond was one of the few things outside of his own ambitions that daniel truly valued as for his abandonment of his son he had already felt guilty for sending him away and after henry's death his guilt over the murder amplifies the guilt he feels over abandoning his son and even though daniel is trying to power through his confession in the church and convince himself that he feels no remorse over his actions we can see the pain that manifests on his face as he's shouting that he abandoned his son following the return of his son daniel is very hands-on and loving with him holding him close to him as he realizes that he's the only thing in his life that has any real meaning and is someone who can yet become the partner that he's always desired now with all of this in mind i think it's fair to say that daniel has a borderline case of narcissistic personality disorder as he certainly displays quite a lot of characteristics of this disorder but the small amount of guilt and remorse he shows keeps him from having this disorder outright i could be wrong so if anybody has anything else to add to this overview let me know down in the comments now all of these traits within daniel fuel the most detrimental aspect of his entire personality his immense greed and desire to surpass all those around him which is the cause of all the misfortune that occurs in his life and what ultimately leads to him committing acts of evil the consequences of this greed are presented to us in every endeavor that daniel undertakes as the good that occurs from his greed is always tempered by a tragic event that mars his success whether it be personal or impersonal we see this when he hastens to extract the silver from his mind which causes him to break a leg when the shoddy construction of his first derrick results in the death of another man his negligent business practices that caused the death of yet another man and then only a short time after the deafening of his son and in his later years the shattered relationship he develops with his son after his ambitions have come to fruition the way this greed affects daniel is comparable to the behavior of an addict where he experiences highs in the excitement and ecstasy he feels after his avaricious desires come to fruition and intense lows in the highly negative fallout these desires cause in the destruction of either those around him his own person or the people he loves and with this addiction comes a fatal flaw in daniel that puts him in a perpetual cycle of elation and misery his inability to understand that his greed is the direct cause of all the misfortune he experiences during his years as an oil man every drop of alcohol that enhances his emotions every moment of recollection of past events or understanding of the reality of his unfortunate circumstances is shown to us in the way his features contort into a mournful and grief-stricken countenance his demons haunting every memory that flits into his head but with this pain comes no realization that it's he who is the cause of his misfortune and not what he perceives as bad circumstance or the people who he thinks undermine his efforts it's this inability to accept the reality of his situation that causes daniel to increasingly rely on alcohol to the point where after his son comes back to him his alcoholism has bled into his public life and he proceeds to berate and humiliate tilford in a show of liquor fueled spite by the time we find daniel in 1927 we have a man whose successes have brought him great fortune but this seclusion has hardly brought daniel the happiness he so sought and has instead reduced him to a depraved and emotionally volatile alcoholic his encounter with his son shows us what unchecked greed can bring you we see the eyes of a madman behind which lies the selfishness we've come to expect from a narcissist like daniel and even here with his son pouring his heart out to him telling him that he loves him and that he wishes to keep his relationship with him a way to salvage the terrible conditions that daniel has put himself in right in front of his eyes and he still meets it with his characteristic spite and anger two years later in his castle of his own creation his solemn prison full of painful memories and drunken stupors we find for ourselves a daniel who spiraled even further into the hole he's created for himself a disheveled mess of a man passed out in his own filth on the floor of his bowling alley and now we see the truth of daniel plainview that he is like so many addicts a slave to not only his greed but to his own destructive narcissism a man who is so consumed with his own self that his efforts have brought him to a point higher than where he started but one much lower at the same time joy has been sapped from daniel's life and all that remains to him is a hunched convulsive body filled with nothing but liquor guilt and broken memories there is nothing left in daniel to break the man he's become and at this point he's far beyond any sort of redemption fully consumed by all the negatives that lay within his personality and now with eli sunday presenting himself to daniel once again the cruelest aspect of this abhorrent personality resurfaces his spite this spite is the only joy left to daniel and the elation we see daniel experience during his mental torturing of eli is likely the best he's felt in a long time and this joy is of course accompanied by his anger which has grown and grown during his years of isolation and alcoholism bursting in this moment as he loses himself to his worst impulses and advances like a madman on a cowardly and defenseless eli there seems to be a moment just after he's knocked eli unconscious that daniel considers what he's about to do and whether he should proceed but this flicker of hesitation is quickly overridden by every ounce of pent-up emotion that daniel has acquired over the last 18 years all of which is unleashed upon eli he remarks to his butler at the end of this altercation that he's finished and he is in every sense of the word as what is left for daniel in this world he's created for himself not family nor friends nor anyone to compete with daniel has achieved everything he desired he succeeded he's won and all that he's become is his reward this is who daniel plainview is he's a man who held within him an admirable amount of self-determination and force of will backed up by the desire to succeed in life and make something of himself however these traits would mean nothing when held within a narcissistic man whose focus was attuned solely on his own greed and his ambition to be first amongst his competitors a victorious warrior standing atop a pile of his vanquished enemies in his mad effort to build his own world everything he held dear would crumble by his own hand leading daniel toward self-destruction reducing him to nothing more than a hollow being filled with addiction spite and sorrow a spiteful avaricious misanthropic and narcissistic murderer daniel plainview was a malignant tumor that fed off the lives of not only those around him but his own soul as well reducing him to the sorry state we find him in at the end of the film and at this end he has only himself to blame as every terrible thing that daniel has done or that has been done to him is the direct result of a man whose intentions and ambitions were sabotaged from the very beginning by nothing more than his own evil thank you all for tuning in to this episode of analyzing evil and i hope you've enjoyed what are your thoughts on daniel did i miss anything let me know down below and leave a suggestion for a villain you'd like to see featured while you're at it if you liked this video and want to see more like it appearing in your feed click the subscribe button to keep up on the latest episodes and feel free to leave a like while you're at it thank you once again to all of my existing subscribers for your incredible support if you'd like to support the channel further consider signing up as a patron over on patreon you can find a link to patreon down in the description thank you to everyone who signed up so far and a most vile thank you to those whose names you're seeing on screen now join the channel's discord server to interact with myself and others in the community and follow me on the social media platforms listed in the description for occasional updates on the channel as always thanks for watching and i'll be seeing you soon [Music]

Channel: The Vile Eye

Views: 537,858

Keywords: villain, analysis, evil, there will be blood, daniel plainview

Id: dC0m7bXX6Yg

Length: 26min 19sec (1579 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 03 2021