Daniel Day-Lewis, one of the few actors in cinema history to be a consummate box office draw by being a 'Capital-A Actor' rather than "movie star," has found his true cinematic soulmate in Paul Thomas Anderson, a kindred obsessive perfectionist whose craft is so refined it verges on the sublime. If Phantom Thread is genuinely to be Day-Lewis' swan song, there couldn't be a more apropos note for him to retire on - a gruelling, winsome character study of the ripple effects of savant-level precision and control in the name of artistic perfection, and how it all unravels when the idiosyncrasies of something as blasphemous as another human's desires factor in. The fact that it's one of the most riveting, hauntingly beautiful films of the year should come as no surprise. What does come as a surprise is that Phantom Thread is also the closest thing to DDL and PTA making a romantic comedy(!) that we're ever likely to see - and the film is both slyly funny and deceptively romantic in its high culture austerity. Yes, really.
For those expecting the harrowing, existential despair of There Will Be Blood pitted with the world of haute couture - or, even worse, a more dour My Fair Lady - your favourite three-named gents are one stitch ahead of you. The cheeky irreverence of a protagonist named 'Reynolds Woodcock' is a hat tip towards the film's sly bawdiness peeking under the proverbial skirt of its prim veneers of ball gown elegance and severity. For, although Phantom Thread is 'about' fashion, muses, and breaking down the obsessive temperaments of auteurs who see any sacrifice and cruelty as worthwhile in the name of art, it's, at its thematic bedrock, really 'about' love. If, by 'love,' you mean a Freudian deconstruction of socialized imbedded neuroses and trauma, and the false illusion of closure from them. And who wouldn't?
Granted, it's a far cry from the vacuous pandering of your average Hollywood rom-com romp (although, in a movie about monolithic precision and control, Woodcock's foil, Alma, literally stumbles into the scene, in a delicious riff of a Hallmark-worthy meet-cute). Here, love and power - the loss, exchange, relinquishing, and struggle thereof - are inextricably intertwined. In Anderson's no-holds-barred study of subjugation, the immutability of two people's needs and wants crashing into each other like waves against a cliff face takes on an almost poetic level of allegory - a couture fairy tale, if you will. This is not to say that Reynolds and Alma have a healthy relationship; it's anything but. But, in the thick of Woodcock's histrionic flurry of standoffishness, selfishness, explosive fussiness, and every gradient of emotional abuse, there's a spark of surprising purity and sweetness at the heart of their maelstrom of incompatibility that is teased out and painted so immaculately that, in spite of itself, it's enough to make you believe there just might actually be somebody for everybody. And all without a single pop music makeover montage.
Appropriately, for a film whose protagonist utters the word "chic" with the vitriolic disgust of having just thrown up in his mouth, Phantom Thread has a classical elegance bar none. Here, Anderson manages to have his cake and eat it too, spinning a film that works equally well as a dazzling immersion into the world of high fashion as it does as a subtly snickering p*ss-take at its own outrageous pomposity. Anderson's cameras sweep over the film's array of exquisite dresses, ballrooms, and lush food spreads, almost pornographic in their jaw-dropping opulence, with a swooning, unsettlingly shark-like creep. Similarly, Jonny Greenwood's Age of Innocence-esq piano score is an exquisite simulacrum of claustrophobically swooning elegance, as beautiful as it is maddeningly fawning and slyly parodic. Still, the film's standout technical element is its hysterically hyperbolic sound editing, gleefully accentuating the most innocuous sounds to intolerable levels to ironically empathize with Woodcock's waning, condescending thresholds for interpersonal interaction. You'll never look at toast the same way again.
Interestingly, Day-Lewis may be the initial draw, but it's a trio of equally formidable performances that give the film its life. Naturally, Day-Lewis is so inherently magnetic that even a fleeting shot of Woodcock fastidiously plucking his nose hairs is (somehow) both riveting and revealing. Still, he weaves a playful twinkle in throughout, making Woodcock's soft-spoken tyrannical temper tantrums amusingly petulant, and softening the film's power imbalance. It's a immaculately controlled, but surprisingly lilting, funny, and perversely charming performance, and utterly unforgettable in its bizarreness. Incredibly, relative newcomer Vicky Krieps easily matches, if not outperform him, her Alma driving the film with a disarming calm in the face of Woodcock's histrionics. Her face a perennial mask of sphinx-like half-smile, Krieps delivers a masterpiece of the subtlest emotions and most microcosmic epiphanies. Contorting into the most inappropriate circumstances and slyly bending them to work in her favour, Krieps' eerie, ethereal pleasantness is as haunting as it is unpredictable. Finally, Leslie Manville as Woodcock's ferociously steely sister is truly remarkable, punctuating her monolithic rigidity with the most revealing tiny twitches in eyebrow or corner of the mouth that somehow tell more than a soliloquy. She's the least showy of the three, but just as unexpected, and searingly unforgettable.
Seldom has such a cauldron of tumultuous emotions been conveyed with such irreverent gentleness and loveliness, but Phantom Thread is a gleeful masterpiece of the unexpected, traversing its formidable cultural critique, ravaging character study, and philosophical treatise on gender, power, and compatibility with deadpan teasing and disarming sweetness. Its swooning dichotomy of lush, romantic trappings and flagrantly unromantic character interplay belies the fact that it may be the most revealing and unforgettable film about romance in years. Just like the private, achingly intimate messages Woodcock sews into his designer works, Phantom Thread nestles into the back of your brain, and it's a work of genius you will be proud and moved to sport and revisit for years to come. -9.5/10
For those expecting the harrowing, existential despair of There Will Be Blood pitted with the world of haute couture - or, even worse, a more dour My Fair Lady - your favourite three-named gents are one stitch ahead of you. The cheeky irreverence of a protagonist named 'Reynolds Woodcock' is a hat tip towards the film's sly bawdiness peeking under the proverbial skirt of its prim veneers of ball gown elegance and severity. For, although Phantom Thread is 'about' fashion, muses, and breaking down the obsessive temperaments of auteurs who see any sacrifice and cruelty as worthwhile in the name of art, it's, at its thematic bedrock, really 'about' love. If, by 'love,' you mean a Freudian deconstruction of socialized imbedded neuroses and trauma, and the false illusion of closure from them. And who wouldn't?
Granted, it's a far cry from the vacuous pandering of your average Hollywood rom-com romp (although, in a movie about monolithic precision and control, Woodcock's foil, Alma, literally stumbles into the scene, in a delicious riff of a Hallmark-worthy meet-cute). Here, love and power - the loss, exchange, relinquishing, and struggle thereof - are inextricably intertwined. In Anderson's no-holds-barred study of subjugation, the immutability of two people's needs and wants crashing into each other like waves against a cliff face takes on an almost poetic level of allegory - a couture fairy tale, if you will. This is not to say that Reynolds and Alma have a healthy relationship; it's anything but. But, in the thick of Woodcock's histrionic flurry of standoffishness, selfishness, explosive fussiness, and every gradient of emotional abuse, there's a spark of surprising purity and sweetness at the heart of their maelstrom of incompatibility that is teased out and painted so immaculately that, in spite of itself, it's enough to make you believe there just might actually be somebody for everybody. And all without a single pop music makeover montage.
Appropriately, for a film whose protagonist utters the word "chic" with the vitriolic disgust of having just thrown up in his mouth, Phantom Thread has a classical elegance bar none. Here, Anderson manages to have his cake and eat it too, spinning a film that works equally well as a dazzling immersion into the world of high fashion as it does as a subtly snickering p*ss-take at its own outrageous pomposity. Anderson's cameras sweep over the film's array of exquisite dresses, ballrooms, and lush food spreads, almost pornographic in their jaw-dropping opulence, with a swooning, unsettlingly shark-like creep. Similarly, Jonny Greenwood's Age of Innocence-esq piano score is an exquisite simulacrum of claustrophobically swooning elegance, as beautiful as it is maddeningly fawning and slyly parodic. Still, the film's standout technical element is its hysterically hyperbolic sound editing, gleefully accentuating the most innocuous sounds to intolerable levels to ironically empathize with Woodcock's waning, condescending thresholds for interpersonal interaction. You'll never look at toast the same way again.
Interestingly, Day-Lewis may be the initial draw, but it's a trio of equally formidable performances that give the film its life. Naturally, Day-Lewis is so inherently magnetic that even a fleeting shot of Woodcock fastidiously plucking his nose hairs is (somehow) both riveting and revealing. Still, he weaves a playful twinkle in throughout, making Woodcock's soft-spoken tyrannical temper tantrums amusingly petulant, and softening the film's power imbalance. It's a immaculately controlled, but surprisingly lilting, funny, and perversely charming performance, and utterly unforgettable in its bizarreness. Incredibly, relative newcomer Vicky Krieps easily matches, if not outperform him, her Alma driving the film with a disarming calm in the face of Woodcock's histrionics. Her face a perennial mask of sphinx-like half-smile, Krieps delivers a masterpiece of the subtlest emotions and most microcosmic epiphanies. Contorting into the most inappropriate circumstances and slyly bending them to work in her favour, Krieps' eerie, ethereal pleasantness is as haunting as it is unpredictable. Finally, Leslie Manville as Woodcock's ferociously steely sister is truly remarkable, punctuating her monolithic rigidity with the most revealing tiny twitches in eyebrow or corner of the mouth that somehow tell more than a soliloquy. She's the least showy of the three, but just as unexpected, and searingly unforgettable.
Seldom has such a cauldron of tumultuous emotions been conveyed with such irreverent gentleness and loveliness, but Phantom Thread is a gleeful masterpiece of the unexpected, traversing its formidable cultural critique, ravaging character study, and philosophical treatise on gender, power, and compatibility with deadpan teasing and disarming sweetness. Its swooning dichotomy of lush, romantic trappings and flagrantly unromantic character interplay belies the fact that it may be the most revealing and unforgettable film about romance in years. Just like the private, achingly intimate messages Woodcock sews into his designer works, Phantom Thread nestles into the back of your brain, and it's a work of genius you will be proud and moved to sport and revisit for years to come. -9.5/10