The merging of Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Thomas Anderson felt prophetic when it happened ten years ago – with the masterful There Will Be Blood – and together they made one of the most influential American films of all time. I don’t know what any of us have ever done to deserve a second helping of this duo, but they’ve deigned to give us Phantom Thread, a breathtakingly beautiful film that manages to be both about love and hatred, that stretches impishly through its story with cameo appearances from fashion, romance and the occasional wild mushroom. The ferocity of There Will Be Blood is not here, instead we have a steady intensity posing as tranquility. Anderson has made a film with the look of Merchant-Ivory, but with a much more sinister motivation. It’s hard to prepare for what exactly Phantom Thread is, but it is indeed one of the very best of the year.
The film has gotten attention prior to its release with Day-Lewis announcing his retirement from screen acting after production wrapped. He has been dutifully doing press for Thread, but he continues to say that this will be the last time we see him in a movie. It’s fitting that Day-Lewis’ retirement would be so dramatic and grandstanding. He’s a tense, meticulous performer who makes the job seem agonizing and has the stories to back it up. His particular form of method makes for good press clippings, but I found those stories far less interesting than what we get on the screen, which is often extraordinary. In Phantom Thread, we get the entire spectrum of what Day-Lewis can offer: there’s the standard intensity, the bold seriousness, but also his much more underrated gifts for charm and humor. There are even moments where Day-Lewis gets to show off a sensuality that he so seldom gets to showcase. A generational talent, Day-Lewis will be missed – for as long as the retirement happens to last.
Day-Lewis plays Reynolds Woodcock (a verbose, ballsy choice of a character name that Anderson and Day-Lewis only pull off because they’re doing it together), a world-famous dressmaker living in post-war London. He dresses all the greats, from the Royals and film stars to drunken, rich socialites. His life is scheduled in strict patterns and routines, all in service to a maniacal work ethic. His sister and business partner, Cyril (Lesley Manville), keeps track of his life, his appointments, and his relationships. Her hold over the house where he designs and produces all of his dresses, is strict and regimental; she’s the authority figure so Reynolds doesn’t have to be. A confirmed bachelor, Reynolds’ fame and esteem can get him any woman, but they often fall second to his work. When he meets Alma (Vicky Krieps), a foreign waitress in a country restaurant, he is immediately taken. He takes her home to live with him in London, uses her to sample dresses. He’s completely infatuated – until he’s not.
Woodcock is another one of Anderson’s patented tyrannical male protagonists, one of those men who think the price of genius is a lack of decency. He accepts that his lifestyle strains romance, but also believes he is cursed in some strange spiritual way. His obsession with his dead mother no doubt plays a role there, and it’s that one-sided relationship that jump-started both his obsession with fashion, and his disdain for any other woman. But Phantom Thread differs from Anderson’s other tales of male volatility runneth over. Mostly because of Alma and the Luxembourger actress’ performance of her. Alma fights against Reynolds’ fierce distance, and the ecosystem led by Cyril that keeps that distance in place. Thread becomes a fascinating, peculiar battle between the two incredibly emotional beings, each trying to find the upper hand in their romantic push-and-pull.
That Alma ends up being a formidable opponent shocks him. He is so unused to this kind of persistence, he nearly goes to pieces. That Krieps ends up being a formidable companion to the legendary Day-Lewis may surprise the audience. It’s a performance that should get her more work in American films. Krieps’ Alma is graceful but awkward, from the start she is unafraid of Reynolds’ austere techniques at intimidation. Alma and Reynolds feel like a doomed love from nearly the beginning, but Anderson makes a troubled romance worth rooting for, soaking their passionate love (the movie is noticeably chaste) in Johnny Greenwood’s lush, intoxicating score. Oftentimes, Anderson limits the action so much that only Greenwood’s gorgeous music gives the film any movement, and that patience and trust in his actors pays off beautifully, as this unorthodox relationship takes shape.
Without Robert Elswit, his usual cinematographer (the film has no credited director of photography) Anderson still manages to fill the film with his usual taste for beauty in strange places. Phantom Thread has an obsession with faces, whether it be Reynolds’ stern but thoughtful gazes, Alma’s longing looks, but especially Ceryl’s gruff, unreadable stares. Manville, the spectacular English actress and veteran of the great Mike Leigh, is given a character so difficult to read, so open to interpretation. Her motivations and allegiances are so purposely left a mystery, it’s hard to know if she’s protecting Reynolds from the world or the other way around. Anderson’s camera, so obsessed with Manville’s unflinching observation, doesn’t give you any help in that department. What Manville is doing here is essentially the opposite of Day-Lewis’ entire career: it’s a performance of restraint, of agonized reactions and unpredictability. Cyril’s swaying behavior is Phantom Thread‘s most compelling side plot.
Thread‘s seeming disregard for audience understanding, its apparent aloofness for keeping the audience afloat in trying to comprehend its very plot, mirrors Anderson’s The Master, a problematic masterpiece that really stretched the audience’s capacity for observing disturbing character behavior. This film is not as irascible as The Master, it isn’t as ambitious in its themes nor as vast in its scope; but it does have that film’s enchanting sense of mystery, its love for odd performances and even odder character conduct. Many legendary filmmakers have dabbled in this kind of loose, detached storytelling, but most of those (your Antonionis, your Kubricks) do so with a disdain, a cynicism toward society and the movie-watching public. Anderson’s film always come from love, daring the audience to admire them even in their seemingly deformed state. It’s a type of vain filmmaking that challenges, but also rewards tremendously.
Paul Thomas Anderson is often called our greatest living filmmaker, a title that probably means nothing to him since nearly all of his films go unseen by the mainstream public. I wasn’t even in high school when I watched Magnolia, and ever since then I have been willing to follow him anywhere. I don’t pretend to be a non-partisan when it comes to his films, I do not feign objectivity. There’s no other director that compels me to feel the way that Anderson does, whose films make me so badly want to be in their world, to live inside them. Phantom Thread is another one of these films, a thing of complex beauty and astonishing grace. A volatile, imperfect thing crying out to the audience with vulnerability. There’s a certain unexplainable thing that all his films possess, though that thing is not perfection. In a lot of ways, his stories fitfully burst free from perfection, toward something even better, something honest.
Written and Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson