What There Will Be Blood's Title Means (& Why There's So Little Blood)
The title of There Will Be Blood gives an explicit promise of gore, yet blood is absent for almost the entire movie. The film, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, is inspired by the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair. While the adaptation deviates from the narrative of Sinclair’s book, it does share its setting: the Southern California oil boom at the turn of the 20th century.
Daniel Day-Lewis stars in There Will Be Blood as prospector Daniel Plainview, who shifts the focus of his search from silver to oil. He travels with his adopted son, H.W., whose father dies working at Daniel’s first oil well. Daniel uses H.W. to promote his business as a “family enterprise,” but Daniel is clearly more of an “oilman” than a family man. He frequently spikes H.W.’s milk and even sends him away when an oil derrick accident causes the child to become deaf. Daniel is a malicious and brutal central character, yet There Will Be Blood only explicitly enacts the violence that its title suggests in brief moments.
Related: There Will Be Blood Ending Explained: What Daniel Plainview's Milkshake Speech Means
The meaning ofThere Will Be Blood'stitle is more nuanced than is typically assumed. It is not until the film’s conclusion, after around two-and-a-half hours, that blood is clearly displayed on-screen. Until then, the signs of violence and tragedy are usually masked, or even displaced, by oil. Daniel Plainview finds the natural resource in abundance but, as the film’s title suggests, it is another liquid that is the truly inevitable consequence of his pursuit: blood.
In the first accident, where H.W.’s father is killed, the wooden frame of the derrick breaks and falls into the oil well. There is a brief splatter of blood as he is struck
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