{"id":72199,"date":"2017-12-08T01:29:25","date_gmt":"2017-12-07T23:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ngradio.gr\/?p=72199\/"},"modified":"2017-12-08T01:29:25","modified_gmt":"2017-12-07T23:29:25","slug":"phantom-thread-review-paul-thomas-andersons-riveting-50s-romance-screwball-comedy-disguise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ngradio.gr\/en\/news-el\/entertainment\/phantom-thread-review-paul-thomas-andersons-riveting-50s-romance-screwball-comedy-disguise\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Phantom Thread\u2019 Review: Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s Riveting \u201950s Romance Is a Screwball Comedy In Disguise"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Thomas Anderson<\/a>\u2019s filmmaking swings between ambitions \u2014 sweeping riffs on history (\u201cBoogie Nights,\u201d \u201cThere Will Be Blood,\u201d \u201cThe Master\u201d) and peculiar, enlightening character studies (\u201cHard Eight,\u201d \u201cPunch Drunk Love\u201d). His ambling Thomas Pynchon adaptation \u201cInherent Vice\u201d tried to merge those modalities, but \u201cPhantom Thread<\/a>\u201d really pulls it off, with his most concise, endearing works in years, one that plumbs dark and mysterious Andersonian depths to unearth a surprising degree of warmth lurking within.<\/p>\n

It also surprises with his strongest female lead in two decades of movies. Though some of the hype around \u201cPhantom Thread\u201d stems from\u00a0Daniel Day-Lewis<\/a>\u2019 announcement of his retirement after this role, the world\u2019s most revered Method Actor meets his match alongside stunning discovery Vicky Krieps. There\u2019s no doubt that Anderson has crafted a memorable finale for his \u201cThere Will Be Blood\u201d collaborator in British dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock, a stern perfectionist in his mid-50s who plucks immigrant Alma (Krieps) from obscurity to be his model and muse. But Krieps, whose wondrous face bookends the movie, takes charge of this seemingly male-dominated narrative and makes it her own.<\/p>\n

Few American directors create such absorbing worlds with Anderson\u2019s efficiency, and it doesn\u2019t take long for \u201cPhantom Thread\u201d to follow suit: The movie charges into an operatic start, laying out the revered Woodcock House where Reynolds and his icy sister (Lesley Manville, a study in dismissive scowls) run a slick operation. Taking on cinematography duties himself, Anderson\u2019s camera captures the angular staircases and immaculate interiors as if establishing the gates of heaven itself, while Jonny Greenwood\u2019s wondrous orchestral score swoons. It\u2019s Anderson\u2019s most astonishing opening sequence since \u201cThere Will Be Blood,\u201d an elegant assemblage of imagery on par with the dressmaker\u2019s pristine technique.<\/p>\n

A world apart from the scheming oil baron of \u201cThere Will Be Blood,\u201d Day-Lewis\u2019 Reynolds is a humorless engine of passive-aggressive tics, muttering orders to the models at his disposal while his sister keeps watch. Despite his evident successes, and the refined nuances of his patchwork, he\u2019s a solitary figure lost in his process.<\/p>\n

However, his passion takes subtler forms outside of the workshop, which explains his ability to turn on the charm when he spots young immigrant Alma waitressing while dining alone one afternoon. It doesn\u2019t take advanced psychoanalysis to recognize Reynolds\u2019 biggest hangup: He can\u2019t separate his life and work, so an awkward dinner date with Alma quickly leads to a fitting in his studio. Rather than flee the premises, Alma\u2019s entranced by Reynolds\u2019 strange, insular world, and even rises to the challenge of his sister\u2019s watchful gaze.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, what choice does Alma have? Reynolds is on autopilot as he makes her his muse, bringing her further into his world without opening up, placing her at the the center of a system that homogenizes her role. She\u2019s another body to wear his clothes, even if she just so happens to sit next to him at dinner and presumably shares a bed. (Anderson\u2019s camera never follows the couple into their bedroom, leaving the specifics of their sexual chemistry hovering in a fascinating ambiguous state.) Krieps says little, but she looks \u2014 at Reynolds and the precision of his world, as well as the disconnect between the man who attracts her and the manic-depressive tendency that so often renders him emotionally unavailable.<\/p>\n

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\u201cPhantom Thread\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Anderson\u2019s script burrows inside this unlikely pair with a startling calibration of moods, from the sweet dynamic of their initial courtship to the mounting discomfort as Reynolds pushes back on her attempts to take control of his life. \u201cI don\u2019t know what I\u2019m doing here,\u201d she says, after one heartbreaking attempt to give him a birthday gift gets a sour reception.<\/p>\n

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As she figures it out, the singular vision of \u201cPhantom Thread\u201d takes shape. Alma\u2019s a weapon against the very idea of the artistic muse, a rejoinder to a masculine conceit that she cannily transforms into her own tool. Whenever Reynolds attempts to dismiss Alma\u2019s intelligence, she\u2019s quick to fire back. As they lob one-liners in frantic attempts to get the last word, Anderson dares to transform their dynamic into a dark twist on the classic screwball comedy. When Reynolds tells Alma she has no taste, she spits back, \u201cI like my\u00a0own<\/em>taste.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their prickly back-and-forth showdowns turn funny or shocking with ease, the brooding discomfort veering to highbrow bitchiness with astonishing fluidity. Reynolds is ostensibly an older, more successful iteration of the dyspeptic head case Adam Sandler played in \u201cPunch Drunk Love,\u201d and Day-Lewis rises to the challenge of embodying such emotional immaturity after so many characters at the other end of the spectrum. Marriage counselors will study the combustible ballad of Reynolds and Alma for years to come.<\/p>\n

Anderson\u2019s just as adroit at digging into Reynold\u2019s fantastical relationship to his craft. \u201cYou can sew almost anything into a coat,\u201d he asserts to Alma, and in his case, it\u2019s a succinct manifesto: \u201cNot cursed.\u201d It\u2019s a sly hint at the spiritual underpinnings of Anderson\u2019s work. Notwithstanding the enigmatic finale of \u201cMagnolia,\u201d the filmmaker has never made an outwardly supernatural movie, but there\u2019s an ethereal quality to his storytelling that always seems to hover just a few steps above reality. \u201cPhantom Thread\u201d positions Reynolds\u2019 commitment to his work in near-religious terms as haunting and strange as Philip Seymour Hoffman\u2019s L. Ron Hubbard in \u201cThe Master,\u201d and Reynolds\u2019 crisis of faith emerges from Alma herself. If this truly is Day-Lewis\u2019 last role, he has chosen an appropriate window into the frustrations of throwing yourself into the work, only to realize that a greater world exists outside of it.<\/p>\n

As Alma\u2019s attempts to pierce Reynolds\u2019 armor reach alarming extremes, Anderson warms up the frame. The movie is at once a Hitchcockian thriller and a touching portrait of what it means to live alongside artistic passion, and commune with it, rather than being repulsed by its extremes. Anderson, a finicky director who controls every frame of his oeuvre, can surely relate.<\/p>\n

\""Phantom<\/p>\n

\u201cPhantom Thread\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The director\u2019s most outwardly accessible movie in ages, \u201cPhantom Thread\u201d is at once an evocative period drama and a magical fable about lonely, solipsistic people finding solace in their mutual sense of alienation. Reynolds refuses to see his artistry reduced to pure commercial terms (one comic highlight finds him flipping out over the use of the word \u201cchic\u201d), but he\u2019s more poetically inclined than he\u2019s willing to let on, and catches himself at times when he reveals his true feelings.<\/p>\n

The movie occasionally stumbles on prolonged exchanges, almost too enamored of its focused premise to care too much about plot, but it\u2019s never far from an enlightening encounter. One aside in which Reynolds expresses a desire \u201cto keep my sour heart from chafing\u201d illustrates just how well Anderson has gotten inside his protagonist\u2019s paradoxical headspace: He\u2019s all about self-expression through art, but never feels totally comfortable expressing himself. The astounding historical backdrop, a wonderland of hand-stitched creations courtesy of costume designer Mark Bridges, exists only as an expressionistic playground for the two-hander at the movie\u2019s core.<\/p>\n