***Warning: Big stinking spoilers throughout. Read at your own risk.***
Roger Ebert wrote this recently in his positive review of There Will Be Blood concerning the
ending: "Those who hate the ending, and there may be many, might be asked to dictate a different one. Something bittersweet, perhaps? Grandly tragic? Only madness can supply a termination for this story."
The ending of There Will Be Blood is indeed insane. I laughed throughout. I don't know if that offends Paul Thomas Anderson or if he intended people to laugh at the ending but I was not laughing in a mocking, condescending way. It was more of a "giddy with delight" kind of laughter. If you haven't seen the film and don't want it spoiled for you then stop reading now. If you don't care about spoilers, read on. To sum it up quickly and cleanly, the movie follows the life of Daniel Plainview and his selfish, megalomaniacal descent into madness. He is a cold businessman who hates people and takes offense where none was intended. He has dealings with Eli Sunday, an evangelist who uses Plainview's success to build his church. All of this is told in a sweeping manner among the dust strewn wastelands of the oil fields. Then suddenly, after two and a half hours of slow burn, we are jettisoned sixteen years forward, Eli comes to see Daniel in his mansion, Daniel humiliates Eli, chases him around his bowling alley and clubs him to death with a bowling pin. Daniel's butler walks in, presumably to collect Daniel's breakfast tray, and Daniel says, referring to the breakfast tray and his meeting with Eli, "I'm finished." The End.
Okay, let's be frank: That's crazy. And to many viewers it is a disconcerting and bizarre way to end the movie. But I enjoyed it (obviously - I've since watched the closing scene on YouTube several times and just laugh and laugh when I see it - Paul Thomas Anderson hates me right now). It's even funnier than Dirk Diggler wagging his rubber dick in front of the mirror. The truth is I usually like understated films. If you look at what I've reviewed on Unseen Images (Luck of Ginger Coffey, So Big, Walkabout) you can get a good idea of what I prefer in a movie, and it's usually not something like There Will Be Blood. But occasionally I like something big and sloppy and messy and this movie is as equally full of flaws as it is ambition. But the real point is the ending.
Ebert suggests those who don't like it write another ending for it. This is unnecessary as there 
already is another ending for it, written some thirty four years ago by Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo. The ending I'm referring to is the ending of The Godfather, Part II.
I have a hunch that many people who don't like the ending of There Will Be Blood were subconsciously hoping for the ending of The Godfather Part II Redux. Daniel Plainview slowly but surely isolates himself from everyone around him and finally rejects his own family (his adopted son). At this point it would be perfectly understandable and fitting if a filmmaker decided the best way to end the story was to have Plainview's son walk out and the camera fades to a day or a week later. The camera then slowly zooms in on a lonely and empty Daniel Plainview staring coldly ahead, his whole life reduced to this, to nothing, to meaninglessness. Slow fade to black and silence as the credits slowly crawl up the screen. After all, there really is little reason or motivation to even bring Eli Sunday back into the story. He's been absent for quite some time at this point and practically forgotten. He never made much of an impact as far as the story arc is concerned in the first place except for providing some juicy embarrassment at the baptism of Daniel. So why not give the movie a tragic dignified ending?
I don't have the answer to that question but I'm glad Anderson didn't. This may sound insulting, but I am vaguely reminded of Kevin Bacon pitching his stark winters tale to the studio executive in The Big Picture until it is finally reduced to Beach Nuts! I have this fantasy where 
Anderson is pitching the movie and describing Plainview's bitter loneliness in the snow as the camera fades to black. The studio executive stares at him blankly.
Anderson quickly realigns himself and says, "But then Plainview realizes his tragedy and reunites with his son."
Nothing from the studio exec.
"Uh, um, okay maybe Plainview joins forces with Sunday and decides to become a new man."
Still nothing.
"Okay, I got it, Sunday comes by, Plainview goes batshit insane, chases him around the bowling alley hurling bowling balls at him while screaming, 'I am the Third Revelation' then beats Sunday to death with a bowling pin!"
BINGO!
"We'll call it Oil Nuts!"
I think there could have been straighter played, more dignified, more overtly tragic endings to this movie but I don't think there could have been a better one. I have seen many a stoic character study that ends in understated silence. I believe many are excellent (such as The Godfather Part II, although I am not its biggest fan) but every now and then it makes me feel good to know that there is a filmmaker as reckless as Paul Thomas Anderson (rubber dicks, frog downpours, bowling pin clubbings). I have a feeling as he makes more movies he will become more sedate and subdued and learned in the wise ways of constructing a stoic character study in which Burt Reynolds, Marky Mark and the music of E.L.O. have no place. There will be no room for hyper-acted scenes where characters scream phrases like "Drainage Eli!" and "I drink your 
milkshake! I drink it up!" or biblical plagues in the middle of Los Angeles. There will be more Godfather, Part II and less Apocalypse Now. And certainly no room for One From the Heart.
Perhaps it's because I like understated smaller films that when I see a big drama I want it to just barely graze this side of a train wreck. If I'm going to spend three hours on a character study when I believe most good ones can be done in two, I want some goddamn spectacle. I want some madness. I want the filmmaker to do the equivalent of ordering a bunch of Peruvian natives to haul a 320 ton steamer over a mountain. And dammit, I want Michael Corleone to get off that damn bench, run inside the boathouse, call Tom Hagen a "basket bastard" and then club Al Neri to death with the row boat anchor. I'd drink that milkshake! I'd drink it up.
