[kid cue]

i thought there was a point to the film -- not to give a reason for why the characters did what they did, but to systematically break down what definitely *weren't* the expected reasons. i think the ending drove home the film's sort of existential core -- it's not that the things that happen to us are completely random, it's that the way we act fundamentally is?

pasted this from an email exchange i had ... SPOILERS AHEAD
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I thought a central message in the film was that life-defining decisions aren't influenced necessarily by the usual Big Ideas such as love, friendship, spirituality, financial success, etc., but rather by the subconscious or automatic tiny connections performed by the brain in (programmed?) response to idiosyncratic personal urges or needs--for instance, Plainview's pointlessly competitive streak, Eli's overconfidence or narcissism--much more character defining than his apparently incidental spirituality, the father-son bond falsely (!) perceived by H.W.

To me it seemed Plainview had come to love his "son" around the time he went deaf--but this feeling was a function of their having spent time together, and the false relationship he'd projected over the two of them. As soon as his son had grown and no longer served Plainview's own business, the relationship seemed to be one of strangers. Likewise, the son's love for his "father" seemed to disappear as soon as the words "you are not my son" (paraphrased) were spoken aloud. The thesis seems to be that the big Feelings come after the little ones that serve our various personal interests--a sense of self (Plainview's competing), a sense of belonging ( H.W.'s devotion to family), a sense of purpose (Eli's Christianity, basically secondary to what turned out to be his monetary needs--we saw these earlier in his dinner-table dealing with Plainview). I thought it was really cool that we (or at least I) grew fond of Plainview's supposed brother, after the film seemed to depict the two of them getting well on, implying some great future sibling partnership ... until we realized we'd been we'd been subject to the same emotional magic trick as Plainview himself! And then our (my) feelings of attachment for that guy disappeared in an instant.