I've been saying this since the movie came out almost 20 years ago and I saw it in the theater. Paul Thomas Anderson goes out of his way to show you that Plainview has earned his money. He even shows a scene where Plainview, with a broken leg, drags himself across the desert until he gets to the next town. When he gets to the next town, he still holds his head up to make sure the men counting his silver aren't cheating him.

Plainview is the one who understands oil drilling. He's the one who has the means and the knowledge to properly utilize the Sunday ranch. There are a few parts where Plainview does bad things. When he turns to H.W. and says "We'll give them quail prices." That was bad. He kills that man because he was pretending to be his brother.

And yes, at the end, Plainview shouldn't have bashed Sunday's head in with a bowling pin, but I think the real message that Anderson is trying to convey is that religion is the true enemy.

>he was the good guy if you ignore the multiple murders in cold blood

>>211458924 (OP)
>the movie came out almost 20 years ago
what the fuck ah fuck you man I was having a chill day

>>211459046
Because the man pretending to be his brother and Eli Sunday were the true villains of the movie.

>>211458924 (OP)
I see no "good guys" in the movie besides the deaf kid and his wife.

>>211458924 (OP)
>THE PROTAGONIST OF THE FILM IS ACTUALLY THE GOOD GUY
No way!

>>211458924 (OP)
There’s no message, the movie is a playground for DDL and Paul Dano (who’s wildly outclassed btw) to aggressively masturbate at each other.
The audience is fooled as if by the magicians sleight of hand that there was ever anything meaningful to be said, the whole thing is a masturbation trick.

>>211459181
You're thinking of The Master.

>>211458924 (OP)

He was both an atheist, and the best kind of capitalist: one who works up and provides a good of real, objective value which literally extends and improves human life (oil, and fossil fuels more broadly). He does not peddle meaningless bullshit like a Mark Zuckerberg or an Eli Sunday. His worldview is fundamentally correct in both the religious and economic domains, and despite the filmmaker's best efforts to make him out to be a villain and a broken man (they largely succeed in this), he is nevertheless praiseworthy for having the correct attitudes toward the world. And he is, in fact, surrounded by a bunch of predatory scumbags who will fuck him over at the first chance, given the opportunity (Eli does).

He also recognizes that he needs to give back to the community, and he gets the Sunday father to stop beating his daughter.

>>211459181
/thread

>>211459224
Couldn't have said it better myself. Well done.

>>211459181
>the whole thing is a masturbation trick
>"I'm finished"
:O it all makes sense now

>>211459181
It might as well be a Tarantino movie. The point is how fucking cool and badass Daniel is.

>hw gets permanently fucked
>YOURE A BASTARD FROM A BASKET
hes just like your dad

>>211458924 (OP)
>PTA adapted a book written by a socialist to say the capitalism good and religion bad
You're a retard. The fact that Plainview is ruthless and driven doesn't mean he's a good guy. He's an egotistical sociopath, a bloodsucking Vampire. In other words, he's a great capitalist. But that doesn't make him good. The only good guy is HW. He became deaf because he shouldn't have to hear Daniel's lies. Daniel seduces and tempts with his lies. He's Daniel/the Devil Plainview/in plain sight.

>>211459224
He steals and exploits people. He doesn't give back to the community, he leaves them crumbs and builds churches for a false prophet who's more or less blackmailing him. He ends up alone and constantly drunk. He's a piece of shit. A great character but a scumbag.

>>211459224
>He does not peddle meaningless bullshit
He was made to appeal to the beliefs of the townsfolk during the blessing of the well, also using the name of God to camouflage his meaningless ego trip against Eli. But the God of the TWBB universe saw thru Daniel's heart and smote him down, leaving his tower of vanity in ruins and him cut off from his last tether to humanity, his oilboy in a not so overt Tower of Babby Lone parallel.

>>211459150
What about the devil dude from ghost rider 2

>>211459150
I'd say Bandy and the Sunday girl are the only two characters who are unequivocally good. It's implied that H. W., by himself becoming an oilman in Mexico, is starting on the same path as his father, and will become him one day.

>>211462988
Bandy isn't a good guy because he forces his religion down Plainview's throat.

>>211463056
But Bandy is a true believer, unlike Eli. Bandy believes he is literally saving Daniel from burning in hell for Eternity for murdering the stranger. It's unironically the kindest thing anyone does for Daniel in the whole film, even if Daniel sees it as the opposite.

>>211458924 (OP)
yeah

>>211459181
filtered

>>211460423
>scumbag
hardly, why did he go out of his way to stop the father from beating his daughter

>>211458924 (OP)
*sips*

>>211467786

It's very clear that he was abused as a child (this abuse may or may not have had a sexual component). Either way, it explains absolutely everything about his character: his basic distrust of others (if you can never learn to trust your own parents then you can never learn to trust anyone else), anger issues, alcoholism, strong desire to get back at others/to defeat others, near-total inability to love (he did develop healthy, loving feelings toward H.W. around the time they entered Little Boston, but this capacity to love was destroyed in the drama surrounding H.W. going deaf and killing the imposter brother). Also he comes from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, in the center of the continent, so naturally he wants to get as far away from dad as possible. The southwest is as good a place as any.

Still a fundamentally good person for being both an atheist and a capitalist. Too bad about those guys who got killed in his wells (Joe Gundha was becuase he didn't allow the well to be blessed). If god is annoyed that he was shut out of the grand opening, then that's god's problem, not Daniel's.