I thought the same thing at first: Oh no! A Time Bloop! But then my friend and I had a discussion about PTA films and really decided that he’s too much of a “maticulyst” (if you will) to allow something like that to slip into one of his films. It probably deals with the fact that either, A. The Lord and his faith keeps him/his soul steady which is hard to agree with because we (at times) see the inner conflict of the character struggling with his faith or keeping his faith for unrighteous reasons. B. His character robs Plainview of his youth/life, thus remains the same age as the time when Plainview met him.
I’m glad you posted this.
Great question. This is a really hard question to answer, however… One other possibility that just came to me, might be that; could it not just all a dream? Daniel is sleeping on the floor of the bowling alley, maybe he is simply dreaming that we was awoken by Eli? Also, the butler doesn’t seem to surprised when he walks in on Daniel at the end, maybe there really is no bleeding corpse in front of him? I’m just guessing like the rest of them. That would give a completely different spin on the ending. But I don’t know – I suppose we could speculate several reasons why he looks so young, but to be honest it didn’t really bother me. I love the movie. I think it’s one of the best movies produced in the last couple of years, if not more.
@Kenrick
I hate the whole “It was just a dream” concept, but that’s very interesting.
@Honey Bunny
I tend to agree with you on this. I agree more with the second part. I think Eli is killing Daniel. By killing Eli Daniel is allowed to live. Not live but go on.
Well, in a way Eli has sold his soul to the devil, so it would make some sense that he hasn’t aged that much. Daniel was, for once, telling the truth when he said that Eli was a false prophet.
Paul Rankin
I’m interested in people’s opinions on the end of There Will Be Blood, specifically that the penultimate scene reintroduces Daniel Plainview’s grown adopted son, and straight after we see Eli Sunday, still looking as young as the day the two characters met. My first reaction to this was that it was a blemish on an otherwise brilliant film, but upon second viewing I found the film more metaphoric, or perhaps symbolic, and thus Paul Dano’s constant age didn’t bother me. I suspect that this was intentional on the part of PTA.
Thoughts?
P.S. Apologies for the ambiguous topic title, this post is linked to There Will Be Blood.