Phantom Thread

Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread stars Daniel Day-Lewis as a fictional, renowned 1950s fashion designer named Reynolds Woodcock.  Haunted by memories of his late mother, the London couturier lives a secluded life with his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) and staff, creating exquisite garments for society elites. Late in midlife, Reynolds enters into a relationship with a young immigrant named Alma (Vicky Krieps). Promptly installing her in his home and making her his latest model and muse, Reynolds struggles to maintain the rigid routine he and Cyril have concocted, while still carving out space in his life and his heart for Alma. But while Phantom Thread appears at first glance as a character study of an obsessive, cruel, antisocial “genius,” it reveals itself to be the story of a seemingly ordinary young woman with a unique ability to create ways of taming and coexisting with the formidable man she loves.

Viewer’s enjoyment of Phantom Thread will depend greatly on their ability to appreciate its aesthetic qualities over its narrative, its limited ability to cast a cinematic spell, or even the excellent performances of its three leads.  These individual strengths are insufficient to the task of supporting such an ornately decorative mood piece.  Phantom Thread is a cold, sterile picture that one looks at more than one enters in to. As in his period drama The Master (2012), Anderson prefers to explore intellectual ideas and character dynamics on film without having to resort to something as contrived as a traditional narrative. The movie is deliberately paced, with a claustrophobic and circular quality that befits its theme of a difficult relationship undergoing gradual, tenuous development.  The dialog and subtle physical actions are exacting. We are invited to question and reflect on the meaning of each line, gesture, glance, and reaction, from the stitching of a lining to the buttering of toast.

The story, such as it is, appears to revolve around the self-absorbed aesthete Reynolds because everything in the world of the movie centers on him. Alma, at first glance, could be a minor supporting player, one of many disposable women in his life.  In contrast to the detailed backstory provided about Reynolds, we learn nothing about Alma’s, home, family, friends, or anything about her life before or outside of their relationship. But we don’t see her through his eyes; in fact we experience most of this movie from her perspective.  Phantom Thread explores the power dynamics between all three main characters, and by the end, we realize Alma is our protagonist.  Anderson has cited several films by Alfred Hitchcock as influences on this picture—Rebecca and Vertigo most obviously (and I doubt it’s a coincidence that Alma shares the first name of Hitchcock’s own wife and principle behind-the-scenes collaborator). But where Hitchcock explored his characters by placing them into carefully crafted plots, Anderson forgoes narrative contrivances in order to fixate on surface details and the emotions that lay behind them.

As far as those surfaces go, we’re requested to admire and applaud the costume design by Mark Bridges, the production design by Mark Tildesley, Jonny Greenwood’s stirring score, and Anderson’s own (uncredited) 35mm cinematography. All of which are first-rate, though hardly awe-inspiring. While not shot in 70mm like The Master, Phantom Thread is given a limited 70mm release, the pleasures of which lay more in the sparse but superb sound design than in the resolution of the images. And while Anderson is one of the contemporary directors known for championing celluloid over digital photography, he doesn’t treat his chosen medium with the kind of obsessive fidelity that his main character treats fabric. Indeed the 70mm print I saw was made from a digital intermediate, not photochemically produced directly from the camera negative.

Daniel Day-Lewis has claimed that Phantom Thread will be his final film. That would be a shame if true. With all the dynamic, complex, passionate performances he’s given us over the years, it would  be sad if the cold, cerebral Reynolds Woodcock was the last role he inhabited on screen.