M.A. Peel, over at her blog, has a big deal post explaining to the world the significance of the scene with the horses that ends the first segment, before the flashback, of Michael Clayton. She does a good job of it too. My point is, why was it needed? I mean, who did not realize what was going on? Lots of people, apparently.
Well, I may have a similar problem with There Will Be Blood. A few days after we saw it, The Squeeze raised the question whether Eli Sunday was also Paul Sunday, and she did not mean just that the two people were played by the same actor, Paul Dano. Some kind of schizo, psychotic, split personality thing. No way, was my instant thought. They were either twins or merely brothers, and using one actor was a neat trick. Luigi said as how it hadn’t occurred to him, but it was an interesting question. No way. They’re two individuals. Simple.
Daniel Plainview says as much, when he metaphorically beats Eli about the head with Paul’s modest success, shortly before he literally beats Eli about the head with a tenpin. I’m totally happy with my view of things, which is supported by the IMDB’s plot synopsis1 although I am willing to entertain alternative views.
No point now in saying anything else about the movie.
Rating: 
- The book seems to be bloody copyrighted over at Amazon. [↩]
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I think insisting that there is a satisfactory naturalistic response may miss the point. The casting of Dano is drawing attention to something — anderson’s not just messing around. The intention is probably to underscore the irreality of brotherhood, by making it in some (non-CGI) senses impossible for Paul and Eli to co-exist on screen — they are defined by the other being absent. That plays into questions about the reality of brotherhood in Daniel’s own life.
FWIW I think the independent reality of Paul is underdetermined. If Paul is indeed an aspect of Eli, then Daniel would have a suspicion of that, and his riff on how Paul has made out OK would be a way of messing with Eli’s head in a “path not taken” way. On only one viewing of the film I can’t say for sure, but it seems to me that the amount Daniel tells Eli he gave Paul ($10K?) surely doesn’t match the transaction we see at the beginning.
I agree that Anderson is not just messing around. The simplest reading is that Paul and Eli are, indeed, twins. Next, they are similar looking brothers; my reading. There are a couple of tricky points and, like you, on a single viewing I couldn’t go deeper, but …
Eli’s rant about Paul being dead I took, simplistically again, to be in the nature of a “He’s dead to me now” kind of thing. And Daniel’s comments at the end could be taken in a messing with his head way.
But I had not considered what the Sundays said about Daniel’s own relationship with his missing brother and the imposter. Thanks for that.
Nor, for that matter, do I understand how it was that the old man — William Bandy — when he wakes Daniel, hands him a gun and says something about his conscience, as if he knows all about the murder … which took place miles away on the coast.
All in all a fine, fine film. I’d like to read the book, now, and I predict a resurrection of Upton Sinclair. The Jungle is ripe for a re-read these days, that’s for sure.