There Will be Blood: History in a Single Camera Movement Timothy Sexton College

Some audiences have trouble with There will be Blood because they are not entirely certain of the stakes. What is really at stake in the portrait of Daniel Plainview’s single-minded devotion to ambition? There will be some occasions—among the rarest in film history—in which one single shot informs the viewer about everything which is at stake in the film. The single most famous instance is almost certainly the shot at the end of Citizen Kane in which the answer to the narrative’s driving question is answered. Spoiler alert: Rosebud is Kane’s childhood sled. Another excellent example is the final haunting image of Memories of Murder which is probably only just the single most perfect way to end a serial killer movie in which the killer is never caught or even identified.

Both those examples come as conclusions to their stories, however, and serve to punctuate what is stake by also offering a bit of closure (although the extent of this closure is perhaps not really that so much fuller in Kane than it is Memories of Murder than some might think). It is a lot to ask of a single shot—even one with camera movement and some complex composition—that it be capable of delivering the wealth of information necessary that provides the kind...