Daily Dialogue — May 6, 2019

Eli Sunday: We have a sinner with us here who wishes for salvation. Daniel, are you a sinner?
Plainview: Yes.
Eli Sunday: Oh, the Lord can’t hear you, Daniel. Say it to him. Go ahead and speak to him. It’s all right.
Plainview: Yes.
Eli Sunday: Down on your knees and to him. Look up to the sky and say it.

Plainview gets down on his knees.

Plainview: What do you want me to say?
Eli Sunday: Oh, Daniel, you’ve come here and you’ve brought good and wealth, but you have also brought your bad habits as a backslider. You’ve lusted after women, and you have abandoned your child — your child that you raised. You have abandoned all because he was sick and you have sinned. So say it now — “I am a sinner.”
Plainview: I am a sinner.
Eli Sunday: Say it louder — “ I am a sinner! “
Plainview: I’m a sinner.
Eli Sunday: Louder, Daniel. I am a sinner!
Plainview: I am a sinner.
Eli Sunday: I am sorry, Lord!
Plainview: I am sorry , Lord.
Eli Sunday: I want the blood!
Plainview: I want the blood.
Eli Sunday: You have abandoned your child!
Plainview: I’ve abandoned my child.
Eli Sunday: I will never backslide!
Plainview: I will never backslide.
Eli Sunday: I was lost, but now I am found!
Plainview: I was lost but now I’m found.
Eli Sunday: I have abandoned my child!

Plainview glares at him.

Eli Sunday: Say it… say it!

— There Will Be Blood (2007), screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson, novel by Upton Sinclair

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Baptism.

Trivia: While on location in Marfa, Texas, No Country for Old Men (2007) was the neighboring film production. One day, Paul Thomas Anderson and his crew tested the pyrotechnical effects of the oil derrick fire, causing an enormous billowing of smoke, intruding the shot that Joel Coen and Ethan Coen were shooting. This caused them to delay filming until the next day when the smoke dissipated. Both this film and No Country for Old Men (2007) would eventually become the leading contenders at the Academy Awards a year and a half later.

Dialogue On Dialogue: It’s instructive to watch this scene, then the “I will drink your milkshake” ending scene. The power dynamic is completely reversed and in some ways, this scene sets up the psychological interplay between the two characters in the dramatic final scene.