Review: Phantom Thread (2017)

Posted on January 3, 2018 by sheila

I went deep and long in my essay on Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread for Film Comment.

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15 Responses to Review: Phantom Thread (2017)

  1. Marc says:
    January 3, 2018 at 5:59 pm

    Wow. Beautifully written.

    Reply
  2. Todd Restler says:
    January 4, 2018 at 9:41 am

    I can’t wait to see this.

    Reply
  3. Betsy says:
    January 4, 2018 at 8:38 pm

    so good (your writing)!!

    Reply
  4. Todd Restler says:
    July 23, 2018 at 4:19 pm

    Hi Sheila,

    Great review, and what a movie! I just saw it this weekend.

    This is a wild comparison, but the structure reminded me of the movie Audition (1999, Dir. Takashi Miike), in that it started out grounded in such reality (if eccentric reality) that it felt like an Ozu movie at first, only to turn on its head in the second half into a disturbing, “almost-horror” movie.

    The performances by the three leads were amazing, and I love this from your review: “Unlike the orchestral Boogie Nights and Magnolia, Phantom Thread is a chamber piece, featuring three instruments.”

    Great analysis, the movie plays like a piece of music where the different instruments take turns playing lead.

    It’s also incredibly interesting, and pretty much unavoidable, to see how this movie fits into PTAs filmography. As Altman once said about his own work, “In many ways I’ve been making one long film” – and PTA feels like that too. He is perhaps my favorite living director (along with Scorsese and The Coens).

    In particular I love the originality and spontaneity of his work. He has a wonderful gift for creating epic characters that are real, living, 3 dimensional people. Yet, as all humans are ultimately a mystery, his characters reveal just enough of themselves to seem real and inarguably human in their behavior, but not enough so we “get” them completely.

    It’s this sense of mystery that makes the characters linger I think. I’ve been thinking about his movies a lot after watching this, and while the settings vary (Vegas for Hard 8, San Fernando Valley, Old West Oil rush, Manhattan in the 50s, London in the 50s), and the stories are all very different, there is this mysterious undercurrent of weird, unknowable sexuality coursing through his movies.

    I thought it was revealing that PTA didn’t show the big “Love Scene” between Alma and Woodcock (what a name!). I actually wanted to see that, but I get what he’s doing. Was Woodcock incredibly giving as a lover, obsessed as he was with the female form? Was he repressed and awkward, preferring to dress woman than undress them? That mystery makes the character seem epic, unknowable.

    Let’s see how else he does that:

    Boogie Nights- What is up with Jack Horner? Does he ever actually touch the woman in his kingdom, or does he only prefer to watch? Was he always a pure voyeur, or did he become one? Can he still get it up even if he wanted to? Fascinating.

    Magnolia – I loved how you hit on the amazing ending of this film in your Phantom Thread review. That brief smile on Melora Walters’ face is the whole movie. All of the characters are sexually repressed, or unfaithful, or alone. But it’s Tom Cruise’s JT Mackey who wins the fucked up sexuality award, especially when you realize his whole act is full of shit. What a character, and Cruise has never done anything remotely like it before or since.

    Punch Drunk Love – I am not sure what is going on with Barry’s sexuality here, and I’m not sure I want to know. I’m terrified of that character. Of all PTAs movies, this one remains the most elusive for me to “get”.

    There Will Be Blood – Is Daniel Plainview gay? He at least seems asexual. He is rich but never marries; never has kids of his own, and in the one scene in the brothel, he seems totally disinterested in the women. He may not know he’s gay, drinking his self-awareness away as he does, but I think he is. Is his anger due to that repression?

    The Master – Joaquin Phoenix humping a sand mermaid pretty much says it all. The key scene for me is where he gets PSH drunk, because THAT’S actually why PSH keeps him around – for the homemade booze. Two fucked up soulmates.

    Phantom Thread is am amazing movie, it lingers in the mind, and is a worthy chapter in the work of one of the most mercurial filmmaking talents ever.

    Reply
    • sheila says:
      August 30, 2018 at 10:31 am

      // As Altman once said about his own work, “In many ways I’ve been making one long film” – and PTA feels like that too. //

      Yes, I agree. His work is very personal, in ways both obvious and not so obvious.

      You really get the sense that he makes want he wants to make when he makes it. There’s very little compromise.

      Reply
    • sheila says:
      August 30, 2018 at 10:42 am

      // Was Woodcock incredibly giving as a lover, obsessed as he was with the female form? Was he repressed and awkward, preferring to dress woman than undress them? That mystery makes the character seem epic, unknowable. //

      Yes, I absolutely loved this. Although we’ll never know – my take is that he is a classic Bottom. So controlling in his daytime life, he gives it all up in the sex realm, with whatever goddess he’s chosen to be with. But again, we’ll never know. and I wonder how Alma is different from the other women – less ambitious? But my God, she’s SO ambitious – she makes Cyril seem like a slacker. But whatever it is that went on behind closed doors was extremely powerful – for both of them. Otherwise why go through all the trouble with mushrooms and all the rest? And then there are those long long walks Woodcock takes at night. If you’ve mentioned this elsewhere, forgive me. Where does he go? Prostitutes? Male? Female? I honestly think it could be any or all or none. I love that.

      Like you, though, I love that we are left guessing.

      PTA is not a prude – hello Boogie Nights – but his work is not filled with sex scenes. It’s not his thing. and even the sex we see in Boogie Nights has this weird innocence to it. It’s like playing around. Naked. It can’t have been easy to create an environment for the actors where that would even be possible. Naked actors are always awkward.

      // But it’s Tom Cruise’s JT Mackey who wins the fucked up sexuality award, especially when you realize his whole act is full of shit. What a character, and Cruise has never done anything remotely like it before or since. //

      God, he was fantastic. “I’m sitting here judging you.” I want to watch that movie again right now.

      // Of all PTAs movies, this one remains the most elusive for me to “get”. //

      Ha, that’s fascinating. For me, it’s his most accessible. Like I said in the review somewhere – love after a certain time, after some miles on you, is not a particularly pleasant experience. If people found love at the right time and it worked out, I am truly happy for them, and I know many of them. Their lives are not perfect and relationships are hard – but they found a person before life got to them, changed them. (This can come with its own problems. As you grow, you may grow apart from your partner.) However: to those who have been denied the experience … to those who have endured loneliness for years, decades, even, love is terribly fraught with peril. It can save your life. It can break you. and etc. Punch-Drunk Love is the closest PTA has gotten to really stating that outright.

      I don’t know much about him – beyond what everyone else knows – but some people are meant to mate, settle down, have kids, do the domestic thing. Like, something in them NEEDS to do that. I think PTA was one of those people … and when he “found the right girl” – it was like “Oh yes. This is what I need. Total trust. I can relax now.” That’s the vibe I get – from his films, but more from how he speaks about his life and his relationship. He was extremely funny about it in the interview onstage after the screening of Phantom Thread I went to. He said one of the ways Phantom Thread was born was that he was lying sick on the couch one day, totally out of it – and he said Maya looked at him with such tenderness (everyone started laughing) – a look she NEVER gave him in their normal crazy life. He was such a funny beleaguered husband as he told the story – and that vibe suits him. I also got this vibe from him in the Marc Maron interview – which was fantastic.

      anyway: I think Punch Drunk Love is about that yearning to find “your person” – something PTA knows very well. It is not a pleasant experience.

      // He may not know he’s gay, drinking his self-awareness away as he does, but I think he is. Is his anger due to that repression? //

      Interesting! I hadn’t considered this but I think you’re right. I think there’s also a pretty brutal critique there about what ambition for power and wealth does to the male libido.

      // The key scene for me is where he gets PSH drunk, because THAT’S actually why PSH keeps him around – for the homemade booze. Two fucked up soulmates. //

      That movie, man. I still can’t believe it exists.

      What about Inherent Vice? Thoughts?

      Reply
      • Todd Restler says:
        September 7, 2018 at 10:06 am

        Damn, with Burt Reynolds passing we’ll never get to ask him about Jack Horner’s sexuality.

        “Although we’ll never know – my take is that he is a classic Bottom. So controlling in his daytime life, he gives it all up in the sex realm”. You’re probably right! But there is an air of mystery around his characters that I find very compelling. Yet they are undeniably human in their emotions, actions, weirdness. Many (most?) movies don’t feel to me like they take place in the real world. His all do.

        There is something really special about PTA’s ability to develop characters. I have a hard copy of the script for Boogie Nights (my favorite PTA still and one of my all-time favorites). PTA wrote an intro where he basically said he feels his job as a director is to be a good writer and then cast well. Then get out of the way. He seems to give his actors a lot of room to improvise or “try stuff out”. They sure feel comfortable “going there” in a variety of ways.

        On the flip side, I also have the hard copy screenplay of Magnolia. The way he sets up all the characters in that opening montage set to Aimee Mann’s cover of “One” is pretty incredible, maybe the best opening to a movie in terms of character establishment that I have ever seen. But the script is also filled with camera moves like swish pans and rack zooms. It’s a “shooting script” that was presumably written “backwards” (from the movie to page not the other way around) but I get the sense that PTA has all that stuff down before shooting even begins, and is clearly adept with the camera, lens choices, lighting, etc.

        And even further, his attention to detail, the “mise en scène”, in his movies is incredible. Every single item in Phantom Thread looks like it was debated for hours before making it on screen. Of course the clothes. But also the plates and cups. The cars. The shoes. All perfect.

        One of the things I love about Boogie Nights is the “business” of the movie, if you look at the background of any of those party scenes there are mini-dramas and events happening to walk on characters and out-of focus background players. It’s so fun to watch. But in Phantom Thread it’s such an intense study of these three people, I get the idea that rewatches will yield similar joys with things like an arched eyebrow or pursed lips.

        I can’t think of another director that gets such great performances from his actors, but he also seems to have effortlessly mastered the technical aspects of filmmaking. He is still only 48 years old. What an amazing director. Just love his work. And I could talk movies with him forever. Listen to the commentary track on Boogie Nights, he is something even then. The Maron podcast is exceptional.

        “What about Inherent Vice? Thoughts?”

        Ha! I purposely left it off these comments as the sexual themes of that movie don’t really jibe with the other movies. It’s the only movie he directed that he didn’t invent himself out of whole cloth (which is amazing, really, where does he come up with this shit!).

        But more honestly, I didn’t like it! I wrote a long note as to why I didn’t like it, and you basically replied and said I’m wrong and that it’s a masterpiece!

        It’s another movie we can definitely get into it about – rarely have I WANTED to like a movie so much, and I keep trying to be honest – and it’s growing on me. But I’m not there yet.

        I’ll find the comment for you and repost.

        Reply
    • sheila says:
      August 30, 2018 at 10:47 am

      oh, and that vibe I get from PTA – that his life with Maya and all their kids – and that he had always yearned to be in a life like that, even if it exhausts him and is total chaos most of the time – anyway, I think that vibe is ALL OVER Phantom Thread.

      I think it’s his most personal film.

      I don’t want to do an A to B kind of thing: PTA is Woodcock and Maya is Alma – because: yawn. This is a work of art, an act of imagination backed by research and curiosity – but coursing through it is PTA’s belief that love can save you, has saved him, has saved him from a life made up only of work, ambition, on-off relationships. It’s an extremely emotional film in that way.

      Those who saw it as “retro” or saw him as “toxic masculinity” really mis-read the film, I think. I get everyone has their own biases but there is such a thing as not being able to “read” the information on the screen.

      I was very glad to be a woman writing about this film – with such a prominent platform – because it counteracted a lot of the other commentary out there from other women. Not ALL women … but many.

      Reply
  5. Todd Restler says:
    August 14, 2018 at 9:21 am

    You’re back! Didn’t know if you saw my Phantom Thread comments – I cannot stop thinking about that movie.

    I wonder how much of the movie is an autobiographical meditation on the creation of art? When making a film, Is PTA stuck in his breakfast routine, ALL of Woodcock’s routines, because he needs that space and consistency in his life while working? Is he impossible to be around during a shoot? Inquiring minds want to know.

    Has any director, past or present, gotten such consistently amazing performances from their actors? Daniel Day Lewis is just such an incredible actor. But where did he find Vicky Krieps? He has a 6th sense for casting.

    What a director, what acting, what a movie.

    Reply
    • sheila says:
      August 30, 2018 at 10:51 am

      // When making a film, Is PTA stuck in his breakfast routine, ALL of Woodcock’s routines, because he needs that space and consistency in his life while working? Is he impossible to be around during a shoot? Inquiring minds want to know. //

      I mean, this HAS to be true, to some degree, don’t you think?

      You don’t just toss off a movie like Phantom Thread. You have to commit 100% to it. Also the rate of his output is amazing. It feels like just yesterday was Inherent Vice – along with Zodiac my favorite movie of the last 30 years. Oh and Melanholia. Those 3.

      // But where did he find Vicky Krieps? He has a 6th sense for casting. //

      At the DGA screening I went to, when they were all there – she told the funny story of how she got the part. She was in Belgium, and she’s not famous, but she has an agent, she’s had jobs, etc. She gets an email from her agent, alerting that he wanted to submit her for this new PTA movie since the lead girl was from Belgium. But Vicky Krieps describes how she didn’t even read the email – she just skimmed it – and assumed it was for a student short film or something, so she just tossed herself on tape, did a monologue, and sent it off – the entire thing for her was not a big deal, because she hadn’t even read the email.

      Everyone was HOWLING.

      and I am pretty sure she was already on PTA’s radar. He had seen her in something.

      But I just loved her innocence. “Oh whatever, some American needs a Belgian girl for his short film, okay fine.”

      and then look what happened!!

      Reply
  6. sheila says:
    August 17, 2018 at 9:12 am

    TODD! As you probably can tell, the last month and a half has been insane with deadlines for me – I flagged your comment (in my head) to come back to – and then – boo on me – I forget.

    Thanks for signal bumping it up to my attention again.

    I’ll come back with responses – love our discussions and look forward to hearing your thoughts on Phantom Thread.

    Reply
  7. Todd Restler says:
    September 7, 2018 at 10:56 am

    My Inherent Vice commets:

    I think this movie must have been a very different experience for those that read and “got” the book, as you did Sheila. I think you at least had an idea what you were in for, and how to approach this material.

    For myself, all I knew was that it was a PTA movie (one of my favorite all-time directors), featuring a cast that I love, and had loosely been compared to The Big Lebowski, one of my favorite movies. And, yes, I had heard that the plot was confusing, even impenetrable. But this was a movie that I wanted to love, in fact I EXPECTED to love.

    I was determined to just “soak” the movie in, and not be too concerned if I couldn’t follow everything. The problem is that I couldn’t help myself. I WANTED to follow things. So after the first scene, I rewound it and watched it again. Still lost, I watched it a 3rd time, then said screw it, this is no way to watch a movie so I let the rest of the movie play. And while I found certain scenes and moments either funny or sad or entertaining, for me the movie completely lacked what I would call “story momentum”.

    I had no idea in any given scene who a certain character was, why they were in the scene, what they wanted, what Doc wanted, what they were talking about, or why, or where, or who, or wait a minute wasn’t that the guy from 6 scenes ago, and what did he just say, and ARGGGH!!!

    I realize that I may be wrong, that the plot may in fact be clear, we even have a narrator telling us at every moment what we think we need to know. For ME, though, I was lost.

    It’s not always important to follow the plot of a movie. Sometimes that’s the point. Jacob’s Ladder is one of my favorite films, and the whole point of the film is trying to figure out what the fuck is going on.

    On a completely different type of movie, I loved Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation this summer. And I probably can’t describe the plot. I’ve heard of a double agent or a triple agent, that female character in that movie was like a 27th agent. But at least in each scene or sequence there was a clearly established goal of trying to rescue that guy, or steal that item, or escape from this trap, so at any moment you knew what the stakes were.

    Inherent Vice is actually worth studying because it breaks pretty much every rule we have all learned about drama or storytelling. How we need characters with clear goals. How one scene should flow to the next. How each scene needs conflict. Etc, Etc. Of course bending or even breaking these rules of storytelling can be thrilling. That’s what can separate the good art from the great art. And this may be great art, I don’t know.

    I’m wondering if I read the book if the plot would have made more sense. A character might appear, I may remember from the book how they fit into the story, and all is well.

    My total inability to follow the story in the movie was one of my problems. The other problem I had, and this may be more my problem than the movie’s, was the wild, jarring tonal shifts. One minute it’s a comedy. The next a drama. The next a farce. The next a detective story. I struggle sometimes with movies that are this “all over the place”. Am I supposed to be taking this story seriously? Tough to do when in parts it feels like I’m watching AIRPLANE!.

    Finally, I’ll compare this movie to Lebowski, and why it doesn’t work for me while Lebowski did. I’ll call it the Rule of Sobchek.

    Passive protagonists, like the Dude, or Doc, are a general screenwriting no-no. It’s just not usually as interesting to watch stuff sort of just happen to a character, as opposed to the character making things happen. Again, there are many great exceptions that break this rule. After Hours comes to mind.

    In Lebowski, The Dude basically wants to stay home and smoke pot. It’s WALTER who talks him into visiting the “Big” Lebowski to get a new rug, it’s WALTER who plans and throws the “ringer”, it’s WALTER who suggests they visit Larry the car thief. Pretty much nothing in the movie would have happened without Walter’s prompting. John Goodman was a force of nature in that movie, creating the energy that offset Dude’s inertia. When he is not on screen the movie is still good, but it’s only great because of Walter. Shomer Shabbas.

    I guess what I’m saying is that Inherent Vice to me is like Lebowski without Walter, which would just be the Dude mumbling and stumbling around his own pot haze. Which is a lot more fun to do than watch.

    Having said all of this, there were stretches or moments that I loved. When Doc is crossing the street and the cop body checks him to the ground. When that kid (no idea who he was) tells Doc “no problem” he can handle a stick shift, and then shows up with the steering wheel. Every single all too brief second of Martin Short’s performance.

    I can tell this may be one of those movies that I grow to like a bit more each time I see it, until eventually I am explaining why it’s a misunderstood masterpiece. I have some movies like that. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Inside LLewyn Davis. But I watched the whole thing twice now, and even though I really, really want to love this movie, I’m just not there yet.

    Reply

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