looking for other reactions to the movie, i had no idea that the ending was so controversial. i can't see how it doesnt make sense or that it isnt fitting. it wasnt jarring at all, and if you didnt see it coming while watching the movie, you could at least have seen it coming in hindsight.
but i guess not. yes, the scene itself is bizarre, but not in the way that it doesnt make sense.
i found this excellent article someone wrote about it that explains it better than me here:
http://www.thesimon.com/magazine/art..._hysteria.html
...this shift in venue is vital for making sense of the end. We’ve never seen Daniel completely enclosed in these kinds of ornate, wealthy surroundings. He’s always been either in a mine, in an oil field, making a play for someone else’s property, or ever so briefly in the small shack where he slept and the roughly built church where Eli preached. He’s been in process, outdoors, claiming the final frontier. Now he owns everything. He has nothing left to carve out and conquer. A mansion is not his natural habitat, and so he amuses himself by shooting his rifle at a stuffed buffalo head—when he’s not getting snockered in an indoor bowling alley one suspects has never been used. The monomaniacal energy for empire building, and the hatred he feels for just about everyone on earth, have nowhere “productive†to go. And when that kind of inner sewage builds up, well, think of what happens with that flaming oil geyser. Yep, it explodes over the top. His first confrontation with the adult H.W. reveals how any affection he may have felt for his son has been curdled by his circumstances. Daniel is a man who has become accustomed to having his way and getting whatever he wants. He’s also deeply invested in how his personal father-son myth is as key to his identity as his business. H.W. getting married and leaving Daniel’s company is a double betrayal. He puts his wife, a Sunday, first, and dares to become the competition. Daniel lashes out accordingly. That he doesn’t inflict violence on H.W. is, perhaps, just plain luck. Eli, of course, isn’t so lucky. Kudos to Paul Dano for both holding his own against Day-Lewis, and making Eli such a baby-faced and believable snake in the grass (and snake oil salesman, I suppose). When he shows up in Daniel’s bowling alley, you just know this isn’t going to end well. Daniel’s been primed: he’s been waiting (and wanting) to crush Eli for years. He’s also lost his hope for a family man tycoon legacy with H.W. He’s pissed (in all senses of the slang term). And anyone who gets his jollies by firing his shotgun inside his house isn’t going to respond with rationality and self-control when he finally gets his chance to take out all of that pickled rage on Eli. Daniel plays it straight at first, stringing along Eli in a manner that recalls their baptism face-off. Once again, he gets his last financial laugh. This time, however, there is nothing and no one to hold him back like the first time Daniel shoved Eli in the mud years earlier when he asked for money. No bystanders to grab him. No son he must consider. No business to build. No community to woo. No “civilization†he must abide. Needless to say, he goes absolutely off-the-rails, head-over-heels, batshit crazy. And what better way to viscerally convey madness than with a jarringly lunatic ending featuring a truly horrifying murder with a bowling pin? The bizarreness of Daniel and Eli’s fight in the indoor bowling alley becomes a metaphor for Daniel’s cracked psyche, complete with his deceptively simple response when his unflappable butler comes to check on him. For all the damage and exploitation his fanatical drive for success has engineered, Daniel Plainview does not deserve anything resembling a triumphant or happy ending.