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Author: Adam Mars-Jones
Date: Feb. 9, 2018
From: TLS. Times Literary Supplement(Issue 5993)
Publisher: NI Syndication Limited
Document Type: Movie review
Length: 2,474 words
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PHANTOM THREAD
Various cinemas
Paul Thomas Anderson's new film with Daniel Day-Lewis seems less like a companion piece to its 2007 predecessor than a systematic inversion of it. There Will Be Blood was almost ridiculously intense, broodingly violent, with a protagonist who ignored all scruples and technicalities in his drive to prevail in a world (the early days of oil exploitation) that wasn't exactly genteel in the first place. Day-Lewis's outsized character Daniel Plainview was only ever going to be defeated by his own over-reaching. There was testosterone as far as the eye could see, and no female roles of any substance. Now in Phantom Thread he plays someone at the other end of the social scale, not a maverick but an insider intimate with high society, who doesn't exploit raw materials but refines already luxurious fabrics into handmade works of art: a successful London couturier of the 1950s named Reynolds Woodco*ck. This is still an alpha-male role (Day-Lewis doesn't really do beta) but an alpha male operating in a world of women. There's isn't a significant speech in the film made by any other man.
Woodco*ck is first shown preparing for the day's work, meticulously shaving, polishing his shoes, snipping stray hairs from his ears and nostrils. He lives above the shop, though the shop, where clothes are made and shown, seems to be a Nash terrace near Regent's Park, the splendour of the premises and even the address subtly filtering into the desirability of what is sold there. The workforce arrives, hushed and demure, putting on overalls--the atmosphere of Woodco*ck's atelier combines aspects of artist's studio, operating theatre and nunnery. In charge of its running is Cyril (Lesley Manville), the crisp impact of her solid heels on wooden floors conveying her authority so clearly that it rarely needs to be underlined. She has authority in other areas also, volunteering to dismiss Woodco*ck's current mistress, who has become annoying, and suggesting that giving her "the October dress" would be a suitable pay-off. Day-Lewis gives an infinitesimal twitch of assent.
1950s fashions suit Manville, and the outfits she is given to wear, precisely because they are so restrained, furnish her with a glamour quite different from, and effectively outranking, the ostentation (however restrained) of ball gown or wedding dress. This is not a warm character, but sometimes she gives off a vibration of contentment. It's as if a glacier was purring.
One night Woodco*ck drives down to his place in the country, leaving Cyril to follow another day. In the morning he breakfasts out, discovering a ravening appetite that is inseparable from his interest in the waitress Alma (Vicky Krieps). When he orders Lapsang, she says "Good choice", one of the few active errors in Anderson's script--that sort of affected equality between customer and server only took hold in America in the 1970s, and isn't altogether embedded in Britain even now. Woodco*ck takes Alma out for dinner and then home with him, telling her intimate details about his life. He...
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Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 NI Syndication Limited
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Gale Document Number: GALE|A634971448
