First, although the film certainly doesn’t declare this in an unambiguous way, I don’t see Plainview as having no love for his adopted son. Just because he says so, during a moment when he feels betrayed, doesn’t mean we have to accept it. The fact that he’s truthful about H.W.’s origins doesn’t mean he’s truthful about his feelings — in fact, I’m not sure Plainview has much access to his own emotions. They explode out of them, and he would be at a loss to explain them. His moment of greatest insight is in talking to his “brother”, but even there, although he diagnoses his hatred and competitiveness, he regards them simply as natural phenomena, beyond his control and beyond investigation. So when he’s angry at H.W. it probably seems perfectly clear to him that he never loved the boy.

As to sexuality, the suggestion of going to the dance feels like Plainview is playing a part, making a “normal” suggestion about the kind of entertainment “most men” enjoy. One can’t really picture Plainview the misanthropist getting a kick out of the gathering. The film is careful to render Plainview’s sexuality as a big “?”, like much else about him.

What makes Eli Sunday and Daniel Plainview good opposite numbers is the lack of access they have to their own inner workings. Eli seems to really believe himself honest and virtuous and godly, Plainview sees himself as rational and driven by simple goals. They are both quite, quite mistaken.

Regarding Plainview’s interest/lack thereof in women, I think you may be analyzing this a bit too much. He is so self-obsessed, so narcissistic, I don’t think he has room in his heart (or loins) for anyone else but himself. Certainly no real love for his son as we find out in the end. After he sends the “basket bastard” H.W. away, it was painful to watch the silent flashbacks of he and his son at the Little Boston gusher. As for the prostitutes…well, he obviously had another obsession working on his brain at that point, a perceived betrayal of trust. Immediately prior to the incident on the beach where his suspicions were aroused, Plainfield was the one who suggested to Paul, “We’ll get liquored up, get some girls and take them to the Peachtree dance.”

But my favorite part of the story has to be the ending. After his “Milkshake” speech to Eli and his subsequent (I would argue, deserved) bludgeoning of the preacher-boy, he simply says to his dull manservant, “I’m finished” in the same polite but patronizing tone that suggests, “come clean my mess now. Thank you so much.”

It does seem like you have to either throw in a woman to “prove” the character’s straight, or make a big song-and-dance about him not being straight, and PTA avoids both courses. That, along with his refusal to tell us much of anything about Plainview’s upbringing closes off areas of psychology that the film otherwise seems to urge us to care about (It’s a “character study”, is it not?, which makes it all the more fascinating.

Glad you’re coming round to PTA, Chris! Even if you hate Magnolia, it showed ambition, and it looks like he’s become capable of fulfilling some of that.

The Huston thing is so noticable (they could have used somebody less famous as a model) that I like to think it has some REASON, unless it’s meant to distract us from something else. I only know that one of the things the film made me think about was Huston himself.

Can’t think too much about “if Dobbs succeeded” because it always seemed inevitable to me that he wouldn’t — Walter H predicts failure right at the start. Dobbs seemed pretty healthy until gold got into his system — Plainview strikes me as damaged goods long before he becomes truly rich.

I’m reminded a tiny bit of Roeg’s Eureka.

Agree that the scale and energy of D-Day’s performance is astounding, and happy for him to win his golden homunculus. Paul Dano and Jonny Greenwood should have been up there too and it should have won best film and director, but I expect the Academy to get these things wrong.

>What’s most remarkable about the character is the absence of any sexuality.

If I recall correctly, even point blank rejecting the offer of female companionship at one point (when his false brother arrives)?

Far too much has been made of DDL’s Huston voice. Everybody does Huston. The best was Robert Mitchum, who was a superb freelance mimic (his George Cukor was uncanny) . What impresses about DDL in TWBB is the sheer size amd scope of the performance. You have to go back the Cherkassov in Ivan the Terrible to find anything remotely like it.

Sinclair fans have complained the Anderson jettisoned all the political references, commentary, and much else from Oil! to make the film entirely about Plainview’s character. But in this he makes what I would call political cinema by other means. Had he been more faithful to Sinclair he would have ended up with a film that cou;d and WOULD have been dismissed as mere “Liberal” dogma in today’s American Neo-Fascist climate. Instead he paints a portrait of what it would be like to want all that money and property so much. Plainview is Nosferatu, this the horror film title is perfect.

What’s most remarkable about the character is the absence of any sexuality.

THERE IS NO WOMAN IN THIS FILM.

In Hollywood that’s against the law.

Is Plainview impotent? Queer? Anderson deftly refuses to say, thus forcing us to take stock of him outside of the sexual matrix that ALL other film characters proceed from.

And it’s the best film score since Psycho