There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood is a 2007 film about an oil prospector. Themes included family, religion and hatred.
 * Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, inspired by Upton Sinclair's novel Oil! (1927).

There Will Be Greed. There Will Be Vengeance. Taglines

Daniel Plainview

 * I'm an oil man, ladies and gentlemen. I have numerous concerns spread across this state. I have many wells flowing at many thousand barrels per day. I like to think of myself as an oil man. As an oil man, I hope that you'll forgive just good old-fashioned plain speaking. Now, this work that we do is very much a family enterprise. I work side by side with my wonderful son, H. W.—I think one or two of you might have met him already—and I encourage my men to bring their families as well. Of course, it makes for an ever so much more rewarding life. Family means children, and children means education, so wherever we set up camp, education is a necessity, and we're just so happy to take care of that. We'll have to build a wonderful school in Little Boston. These children are the future that we strive for, and so they should have the very best of things. Now, there's something else, and please don't be insulted if I speak about this: bread. Let's talk about bread. Now to my mind, it's an abomination to consider that any man, woman or child in this magnificent country of ours should have to look upon a loaf of bread as a luxury. We're going to dig water wells here, and water wells means irrigation. Irrigations means cultivation. We're going to raise crops here where before it simply wasn't possible. You're going to have more grain than you know what to do with! Bread'll be coming right out of your ears, ma'am. New roads, agriculture, employment, education: these are just a few of the things that we can offer you, and I assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that if we do find oil here—and I think there's a very great chance that we will—this community of yours will not only survive. It will flourish!
 * I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.

Eli Sunday

 * Oh, Daniel, you've come here and you’ve brought good and wealth, but you have also brought your bad habits as a backslider. You've lusted after women and you have abandoned your child. Your child that you raised, you have abandoned, all because he was sick and you have sinned, so say it now: "I am a sinner."

Dialogue

 * H. M. Tilford: Where you gonna put it all? Where? Build a pipeline, make a deal with Union Oil? Be my guest, but if you can't pull it off, you've got an ocean of oil under your feet, with nowhere to go. Why not turn it over to us? We'll make you rich. You spend time with your boy. It's a great discovery. Now let us help you.
 * Daniel: [after long pause] Did you just tell me how to run my family?
 * Tilford: It might be more important now that you've proven the field and we're offering to buy you out.
 * Daniel: One night, I'm gonna come to you, inside of your house, wherever you're sleeping, and I'm going to cut your throat.


 * Daniel Plainview: You're not my son. Never have been. You're an... you're an orphan. D'you ever hear that word? [to George] Tell 'em what I said! You operated here today like one. I should have seen this coming. I should have known that under this, all these past years, you've been building your hate for me piece by piece. I don't even know who you are because you have none of me in you. You're someone else's. This anger, your maliciousness, backwards dealings with me. You're an orphan from a basket in the middle of the desert, and I took you for no other reason than I needed a sweet face to buy land. D'you get that? So now you know. [whistles mockingly] Look at me. You're lower than a bastard. You have none of me in you. You're just a bastard from a basket.
 * H. W.'s Interpreter, George: I thank God I have none of you in me.
 * Daniel: [H.W. and George get up and begin to leave the room] You're not my son. You're just a little piece of competition. Bastard from a basket. Bastard from a basket! You're a bastard from a basket!


 * Eli Sunday: You are a stupid man, Abel. You've let someone come in here and walk all over us. You let him in and do his work here, and you are a stupid man for what we could have had.
 * Abel Sunday: I followed His word, Eli. I tried.
 * Eli: You didn't do anything but sit down. You're lazy and you're stupid. Do you think God is going to save you for being stupid? He doesn't save stupid people, Abel.


 * Eli Sunday: Daniel, I'm asking if you'd like to have business with the Church of the Third Revelation in developing this lease on young Bandy's thousand acre tract. I'm offering you to drill on one of the great undeveloped fields of Little Boston!
 * Daniel Plainview: I'd be happy to work with you.
 * Eli: You would? Yes, yes, of course. That’s wonderful.
 * Daniel: But there is one condition for this work.
 * Eli: All right.
 * Daniel: I'd like you to tell me that you are a false prophet. I'd like you to tell me that you are, and have been, a false prophet, and that God is a superstition.


 * Daniel Plainview: You're not the chosen brother, Eli. 'Twas Paul who was chosen. See, he found me and told me about your land. You're just a fool!
 * Eli Sunday: Why are you talking about Paul? Don't say this to me.
 * Daniel: I did what your brother couldn't. I broke you and I beat you. It was Paul who told me about you. He's the prophet. He's the smart one. He knew what was there. He found me to take it out of the ground. You know what the funny thing is? Listen, listen, listen! I paid him $10,000 cash in hand, just like that. He has his own company now — prosperous little business — three wells producing $5000 a week. Stop crying, you sniveling ass! Stop your nonsense! You're just the afterbirth, Eli —
 * Eli: No...
 * Daniel: — that slithered out in your mother's filth. They should have put you in a glass jar on a mantelpiece. Where were you when Paul was suckling at his mother's teat, eh? Where were you? Who was nursing you, poor Eli? One of Bandy's sows? That land has been had. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s gone, had.
 * Eli: If you would just —
 * Daniel: You lose.
 * Eli: — take this lease, Daniel!
 * Daniel: [yelling] Drainage! Drainage, Eli, you boy! Drained dry. I’m so sorry. Here: if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw — There it is. That's a straw, see? Watch it. Now my straw reaches across the room, and starts to drink your milkshake. I drink your milkshake! [slurping noise] I drink it up!
 * Eli: Don't bully me, Daniel!
 * Daniel: [throws Eli the floor] Did you think your song and dance and your superstition would help you, Eli? I am the Third Revelation. I am whom the Lord has chosen. [throws bowling balls at Eli]
 * Eli: [dodging the bowling balls] Daniel!
 * Daniel: Because I'm smarter than you! I'm older!
 * Eli: I'm your old friend, Daniel! Help me! Help me, please!
 * Daniel: I'm not a false prophet, you sniveling boy! I am the Third Revelation! I am the Third Revelation! I told you I would eat you!
 * Eli: We're family!
 * Daniel: I told you I would eat you up!

Taglines

 * There Will Be Greed. There Will Be Vengeance.
 * When Ambition Meets Faith

Cast

 * Daniel Day-Lewis - Daniel Plainview
 * Paul Dano - twins Paul Sunday and Eli Sunday
 * Dillon Freasier - H.W. Plainview as a child
 * Russell Harvard - H.W. Plainview as an adult
 * Kevin J. O'Connor (actor) - Henry
 * Ciarán Hinds - Fletcher Hamilton
 * Sydney McCallister - Mary Sunday
 * Colleen Foy - older Mary
 * David Willis - Abel Sunday
 * Hans Howes - William Bandy
 * Paul F. Tompkins - Prescott
 * Jim Downey - Al Rose
 * David Warshofsky - H.M. Tilford