Use of Color in There Will Be Blood

Perhaps the most astounding achievement of cinematography in There Will be Blood is the deliberate use of color. Set design, lighting and color grading were used together to create certain colors for each scene. The film uses color to help establish certain emotions of the audience, reinforce certain qualities of characters, and even help the audience make judgements on the righteousness of characters' decisions.

The majority of the film occurs in the desert town in which Daniel is drilling and consists of a pallet of two contrasting colors: blue and brown-orange. The colors are typically fairly desaturated and there is low contrast among that on the ground as mid-tones are usually fairly dark and shadows bright. The only large contrast exists between the ground and the vivid blue sky.

As a result, the scenes with this color are plain and bare. The viewer is not typically expected to feel an incredible amount of emotion during these scenes, and this matches the pacing created by the editing, which is usually fairly slow. However, these muted colors form a blank slate for other colors later in the film.

Renaissance painters such as Caravaggio painted in light paint on dark paper to create strong contrast between light and dark, a style of painting called Chiaroscuro. In many Chiaroscuro paintings, the light source is a single candle or fire. The fire scene is very much in this style: the contrast between the dark soot-filled sky and bright faces and blazing fire, the only light source, is immense.

This scene has perhaps the most radically different color from the rest of the film because it is in this Chiaroscuro style. This scene has two colors used, but rather than orange and blue, they are red-orange and black. The contrast is now huge; the frame is filled with both pure black and glowing faces or fire. The formerly tranquil desert becomes a hellish landscape so dark it might be confused to be indoors; not even nighttime becomes so dark. The only remaining forms through the darkness become the overarching but decaying blazing derrick and the dark silhouettes and red lurid faces of the oil miners.

The result of this use of color is a a feeling of intensity and fear. It is unknown as to weather the problems of drilling will escalate further not only in the short run as the derrick burns to the ground but in the long run as well as Daniel continues his dangerous endeavor. The color of this scene also describes the righteousness of drilling for oil; red and black are evil colors and are symbolic of hell. The color indicates that perhaps the death of workers, the deafness of H.W., and exploiting of Eli are not justified.

After the flash forward, the color pallet stays the same compared to the desert pallet, but rather than being bright with mostly warm colors with accents of blue as in the desert, this scene is low key and has mostly cool colors coming from daylight side light from the windows with warm accents from desk lamps and sconces.

The color brings a vastly different feeling than the color of the desert. Not only are the colors dark and cold; the disposition of  Daniel is dark and cold as well, especially compared to earlier in the film. Daniel is now alone except for his servant in a huge mansion and he bitterly disowns H.W. as his son. The difference in color between this scene and the rest of the film reinforce that Daniel has changed during the flash forward.

The color of the milkshake scene is composed primarily of the white of the walls with accents of brown. The color used here is the inverse of the colors of the fire scene; the color here is almost heavenly. What's interesting is that during their conversation Eli sits in front of a dark brown background while Daniel sits in front of the blank white wall, and a merciless murder is carried out in soft even light by a tranquilly colored background. Perhaps the film is once again using color to describe righteousness. By keeping Eli with dark color and Daniel with light, the film says that Eli is the true sinner and aids in the reversal of roles as Eli is “baptized” by Daniel just as Daniel was baptized earlier in the film. By having the murder occur with such heavenly light and color, the film says that Daniel's murder may be justified this time.

Director Paul Thomas Anderson and the rest of the creative team for this film were able to precisely pick the colors used for each scene, and these choices was not at all arbitrary. By keeping color in mind during set design, lighting, and color correction, the filmmakers are able to tell the narrative not only through dialogue and action but also through the look of the film itself.