DDL’s performance is both granular and angular, spectacle and ostentation, the only subtleties he leaves are for Plainview’s various fits with his own humanity left behind in his ambitious pursuit of vainglorious manifest destiny. It needs be that these things all exist for Daniel Plainview is no lover of man, far from it, the man despises every interaction. Every word out of his mouth is a boldface lie, from his repetitious statement of his affinity for plain-speaking - to his affected vocal inflections, not merely ornament for a shrine to Daniel Day Lewis’s greatness and skill, but fully in service of his character as a man made whole cloth of the collective imagination of the American power and virile masculinity. But the lie in and of itself is a bit of an affect, because what Daniel Plainview betrays in words, and Daniel Day Lewis in body language and eye contact, is a deep need for the very bonds he so furiously burrows in and destroys. Plainview is a man in search of validation, of family, maybe even of something to believe in, or else why would be blister so at those men who paid him no mind, who sit at tables together presumably minding their own business? Even while clearly these men did indeed look to pay Plainview out , to them it was merely part of the game, but to Daniel it was personal insult and rejection, and their slightly intentional slight about his boy - mostly an angle to persuade Daniel of their logic - produces such an outrageous fit precisely because family means so much to Daniel, and the the guilt of sending HW away knawed at his very soul because he saw in him family. Daniel's relationship with H.W. is one born out of guile, but by then one made of real connection. Years of play have confused poor Daniel. He is an actor stuck in a role, a cop deep undercover who starts to confuse the lines, because they were always bit hazy in the first place. When H.W. gets hurt in the rig incident Daniel Day Lewis frets over him with genuine passion, hurriedly, excitedly, pleading with H.W. to tell him where it hurts. It’d be the most tender scene in the film if not for a subsequent scene where he and H.W. lay on floor in almost embryonic embrace, Daniel softly stroking his hands through H.W.’s bushel of soft black-lace hair as H.W. hums desperately to hear his own voice as he has gone deaf as a result of the accident. This is the second guilt Daniel feels if one like me, argues that to some extent he took H.W. in out of some (exotic to Plainview) sense of guilt, a sense of shame about the accidental death of H.W.’s father. The third guilt is sending H.W. away because he cannot deal with his handicap, his weakness, which is an affront to Daniel, which shows in his lack of patience, and his focus into his work, and more importantly serves as a reminder that H.W. is in fact not his. When he abandons H.W. on that train Daniel Day Lewis's hurries off as if he's had to walk through a gauntlet hammered by his own guilt. His gait largely affected by the blows, his face much like that hole in the ground geysing up pressure and lubrication. His face trembles and twist as he furiously fights back the wells eruption, even then his masculinity ossified in its own obsession, can cede little ground, and it’s devastatingly effective acting by Daniel Day Lewis once again powered by his face. It is near providence then that at this very time he had found a long lost brother, “Henry Plainview”, whose arrival makes H.W. equal parts suspicious and jealous - and yet more evidence of Daniel’s need for familial bonds, his secret longing for some connection, to be seen and understood by someone other than himself. “Well if it's in me it's in you”, “At times I look at other people and I see nothing worth liking”, said in extreme close up, Daniel’s face half drenched in darkness, though just enough to see the earnest desire for some relation and by consequence relationship, and then his sadness at the next thought about his inability to connect. Lewis alternates between an empty vessel hollowed and full of cold dead air, and then softness, (both mostly seen in his glistening eyes) and then pained suffering. When “Henry” asks him what he will do about his son, he tosses his head back and takes a swig from his cantine of alcohol so full of tension it seems his head might cave in, and when he comes back down he lets the alcohol sit in his mouth burning his cheeks full, finally gusting out all of the air that question took up. A beat, and then “I don't know”. “Maybe it'll change, does your sound come back to you? I don't know” Lewis's eyes half pleading. “Where's his mother?” asks Henry, Plainview goes silent DDL contorts his face (a sure sign of confoundment) one eyebrow raised, the other shifting, until eventually teeth show, clenched, if not bared, hurting if not angered. The scene is arguably the most honest Plainview will be in the movie, the most self aware for sure, and Daniel Day Lewis meets the moment with such frightening brilliance it challenges the alabaster eerieness of Sir Anthony Hopkins most unsightly line readings of Hannibal Lecter in “Silence of the Lambs”. “Having you here gives me a second breath, I can't keep doing this alone with these ..People” is a hideous thing to see, one of the ugliest I've ever seen on celluloid. Quiet as the scene is, subtle as DDL is, it is quite loud with its animus. Daniel's face, the truth in it, of it, the scariest part by the margins between North and South poles. There's a resolutness to Daniel’s expression when he says “I can't keep doing this alone, that reinforces the brief moment of contentment in his previous statement; “Having you here gives me a second breath of life”. These set the table for the absolute nature of the breakdown when he says “People”. As he speaks the word a smile comes across his face, it's one of miles and miles and miles of paved disgust, the same strange mixture of self loathing and fiendish bemusement one might see from a child burning ants with a magnifying glass. In that moment it becomes clear just how alien and apart from humanity Daniel Plainview, and Daniel Day Lewis's face are becoming, arguably the movies most powerful and resonant instance of Mise-en-scène. These two scenes, Daniel’s brief abandonment of H.W., and this sharing of some of his most guarded thoughts, his truest face, with his fake brother, the former taking place almost right after the latter, foreshadow Daniel’s destruction, which is mostly shown to us by way of the rapid devolution of Daniel Day Lewis's face.
