Dawn.

I'm so not normal about Eli's radio preacher era

I love this simple yet striking shot from There Will Be Blood of Daniel Plainview’s oil-covered hand raised to the sky. It can be read in a number of ways, but one of the most compelling is as a grotesque inversion of divine creation. The central conflict of the film,between capitalism and religion, is distilled into this single shot. We see man reaching toward God with a hand soaked in oil. This reversal captures the film’s central idea: the substitution of religion with capital, of divine aspiration with greed. Oil becomes Daniel’s god, and this gesture his act of worship.

The oil-covered hand also recalls biblical imagery of original sin, the stain that cannot be washed away. Even as Daniel ascends in power, the oil on his skin marks him as morally tainted. His success and damnation are bound together; every triumph deepens his fall. The moment equates progress with destruction, showing that the same act that makes Daniel powerful also corrupts him irreversibly.

This shot also literalizes the physical price of ambition, a moment of perverse exaltation. The gesture conveys both triumph and desecration: he has found his fortune, but it has also consumed him.