In what is rumoured to be his final performance, Daniel Day Lewis plays a fashion designer in 1950s England in Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Phantom Thread. Anderson will be acting as his own cinematographer for the first time, and will also be collaborating again with Johnny Greenwood. Focus Features will be releasing the film December 25, 2017.
“Set in the glamour of 1950s post-war London, renowned dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock (Day-Lewis) and his sister Cyril (Leslie Manville) are at the center of British fashion, dressing royalty, movie stars, heiresses, socialites, debutants and dames with the distinct style of The House of Woodcock. Women come and go through Woodcock’s life, providing the confirmed bachelor with inspiration and companionship, until he comes across a young, strong-willed woman, Alma (Vicky Krieps), who soon becomes a fixture in his life as his muse and lover. Once controlled and planned, he finds his carefully tailored life disrupted by love.”
I am so psyched for this… I have loved all of PTAs movies, even the ones that received mixed reactions like The Master. His best, in my view, was There Will Be Blood which also starred DDL, so I have high hopes indeed.
Although it is obviously too early to tell, from the trailer it looks like Vicky Krieps can really act. Has anyone seen her in something else?
“Before making the film, I didn’t know I was going to stop acting. I do know that Paul and I laughed a lot before we made the movie. And then we stopped laughing because we were both overwhelmed by a sense of sadness. That took us by surprise: We didn’t realize what we had given birth to. It was hard to live with. And still is.”
I wondered why a man who is widely acknowledged as the greatest actor of his generation, who has won three Academy Awards for best actor and is magical onscreen, would want to walk away from his profession. “I haven’t figured it out,” he said. “But it’s settled on me, and it’s just there. Not wanting to see the film is connected to the decision I’ve made to stop working as an actor. But it’s not why the sadness came to stay. That happened during the telling of the story, and I don’t really know why.”
I haven’t had the chance to listen to this yet, but Paul Thomas Anderson appears on the latest episode of Fresh Air.
I’m looking forward to seeing the film next week. I admire all of Anderson’s films. but his last two didn’t really click with me despite the awesome performances (I definitely have to revisit The Master), so I’m hoping I have better luck with The Phantom Thread. It scored six Oscar nominations today, including a best director nod, and best OST for Johnny Greenwood. I wish I hadn’t missed Anderson’s recent AMA. Some of his answers were hilarious.
Q:If you could go back, what’s one thing you’d tell yourself while making Magnolia?
Definitely do… I was somewhat disappointed with it after the brilliant There Will Be Blood, but I have seen it four times and my appreciation for it grew with each viewing. I now consider it his second best film. Interestingly, in the reddit AMA he mentioned it as the film he is most proud to have made.
Inherent Vice I am still unsure about, I enjoyed it and thought it was fun, it also made me teary during one scene which is extremely rare for a movie. I’ll have to give it a third chance to stand out.
In any event, I am seeing Phantom Thread next week and can’t wait!
I do wish Daniel Day Lewis would… just make happier shit. Does that make me shallow? It makes me shallow right? :( I hate being shallow but I just cant enjoy darker movies these days. The world brings me down enough already but I want to enjoy the work of this great actor.
Nah, I agree. He’s brilliant, but the stuff he’s in is way too intense for me. I sat through There Will Be Blood with my gf years ago and that was awful. She takes artsy friends to these movies now.
That said she thought Phantom Thread was amazing after watching it the other night, so here’s to y’all in this thread digging it!
Yeah I am the same :( I want to enjoy a nice period piece with pretty gowns and a great actor’s swan song. But… it’s not for me. I wouldnt enjoy it because of all the darker stuff.
The movie was fantastic. People concerned about it being a dry period piece or an overly dark drama need not worry. The Phantom Thread, surprisingly, features lots of humor, and was very entertaining throughout. Day-Lewis was brilliant as expected. His performance as a fastidious fashion designer, Reynolds Woodcock, was the most effective communication of frustration I’ve ever seen; always fussy, overly particular, and desiring control over all aspects of his life. It will be criminal if he doesn’t set a record, and win best actor for the fourth time. The pettiness and irritability on display was simply hilarious!
Before seeing this, I was worried that Anderson had lost me. It’s always a shame when one of your favorite directors makes a work that doesn’t resonate with you. You can end up losing the desire to rush out and see their latest films, and even second guess your initial enthusiasm for their previous releases. This made me want to revisit his entire body of work.
I agree, I saw it today and really enjoyed it. Acting and writing was top notch, and the narrative was often surprising. Relative to there will be blood and the master, I feel the climatic scenes in this one lack the same punch. Yet, the flow and craft seen through the entire movie was fantastic and shows Anderson at the top of his game.
Watched this today with my wife and we both loved it. Day-Lewis was brilliant as always, and so were Vicky Krieps and Lesley Manville. It’s most certainly a movie I’ll watch more than once because it is a rich movie in more ways than one for sure.
Phantom Thread is Propaganda for Toxic Masculinity. At least, so says this guy:
It boggles the mind that this guy and his publisher actually thought that article was worth reading. I know I am taking the bait by reading and sharing this author’s drek with others, but it really got me wondering if my bias for PTA clouds my ability to objectively assess whether the movie actually is tone deaf in the year of #metoo. Can someone with the interest but without the PTA bias let me know what they think?
Apparently this narrative is an actual thing and not isolated to this one article:
I think people these days are more concerned about how to stick their worldviews into things (and look good/progressive/virtuous to the groupmind in the process) instead of examining those things for what they are.
The Phantom Thread is a brilliant movie about some aspects of human existence - aspects that are part of human experience in any age or time, only assuming slightly different forms according to the zeitgeist. Whether it is “respectful” or not is beyond the point - as a movie, it’s not worried about “respecting”, but about presenting something that exists, regardless of how “virtuous” or not we see it. We’re all human, with perks and flaws and virtues, most of us hiding those things behind a veneer of “normalcy” or apparent virtue that is often anything but.
To provide further detail, Woodcock is an excellent example of the effects that a Mother Complex can have on a man. The way the movie frames the whole thing in a more patriarchal era is actually respectful to those who watch; presenting the same complex in more modern terms would show Woodcock as the male writer writing on New Yorker about toxic masculinity or something like that, though, I suppose, without the redemption you see at the end of the movie. ;)
governs a domain peopled exclusively by obedient and loyal women
and immediately this came to mind:
Don’t pick a fight with me, you certainly won’t come out alive. I’ll go right through you and it’ll be you who ends up on the floor. Understood?
Yes, Reynolds Woodcock is a garbage little baby man, and if Alma were in her right mind she would run the fuck away from him.
But depiction is not endorsement. If the moment where one character poisons the other to maintain the status quo is not enough for you to put it bluntly: this is a horror movie masquerading as a romance.
