You Really Gotta Be in the Right Mood to Watch Phantom Thread
Phantom Thread. Image courtesy of Focus Features.
I firmly believe Paul Thomas Anderson is the best director of modern times. I also believe Daniel Day-Lewis is the best actor of his generation. There Will Be Blood was nothing less than a masterpiece, and clearly the best film of the 21st century so far. So when they reunited for another collaboration called Phantom Thread, I was expecting more of the same. But I must be honest. It took me several tries to get all the way through Phantom Thread. This is not a film that lends itself to easy viewing. It is about a horrible person whose failings as a human being are forgiven because his devotion to his craft - making dresses - produces wondrous works of art.
It is very slow and indulgent, and you as the viewer have to commit to the vision in order to get into it - the payoff is arguably worth it in the end, but you have no way of knowing that in the beginning. The first time I watched it, I made it to the part where Daniel Day-Lewis goes to a seaside English retreat and spends about 3 minutes ordering breakfast in a weirdly sultry way like he’s about to make love to some poached eggs. I had to stop it at that point because you really have to be in a particular mood to watch a film where a breakfast order functions as a thinly veiled expression of some kind of fucked up psycho-sexual disorder. The second time I watched it, I made it to the point where he goes on the worst Tinder date of all time with Vicky Krieps and ends up making her try on dresses in his attic while his sister chaperones, which in any other context would be some Texas Chainsaw Massacre type shit. This movie was cultivating a very particular style and mood, and I just wasn’t on the same wavelength.
But on the third attempt, I as the viewer harmonized with what Paul Thomas Anderson was trying to do. And I got into it. Visually, this film is beautiful. It is stunning and lush and seductive. Every scene, every image is filmed in a way that creates a kind of sensual intimacy. The one that will always endure with me is toward the end where poisonous mushrooms are being cooked in a skillet with butter and herbs, and it is shot with such soft, warm lighting that you cannot help but feel like you are in a Caravaggio.
Yet the acting and the plot are very reserved and restrained, as if the emotion of the imagery is trying to explode out of the screen at you. The production design is terrific - very precise and immersive, placing you very completely into this world of 1950s London. All of which sheathes a character study of a deeply textured and unusual relationship between a complex and troubled artist and his muse. Artists and filmmakers love to make movies about this subject, by the way - some more successfully than others. I guess they are interested in the idea that great art can only emerge from chaos and agony and trauma, which makes them feel better about being assholes in real life. Forgive me, they scream into the void, but it’s for the sake of art.
And it kind of seems like that is where this film is going - the great, tortured artist who uses and abuses people and is forgiven for it because the perfection of his creations cannot be denied. But then, a twist. He meets his match in a waitress from a seaside diner. She has the gumption to poison him periodically, then nurse him back to health and in doing so the cycle of death and rebirth infuses him with new inspiration and sustains him as a person and a creative visionary. If you make it to the end of this complex and deeply weird film, I think that pay-off is worth it. Their bizarrely toxic yet creatively productive symbiosis works for them, and enables him to create art while she retains her autonomy - and that is a very interesting take on a kind of stale subject.
The really funny thing is that there is probably no director other than Paul Thomas Anderson who could have gotten this movie made - because he is widely acknowledged as a true artistic visionary (and, as far as I know, a very nice guy). If you or anybody else in Hollywood went to a studio head or a financier and said “I want to make a movie about a dress-maker in 1950s London who is a total asshole and marries a woman who poisons him every now and then so he can keep making great dresses” they would throw you into a dumpster. Unless you are Paul Thomas Anderson. So they let him make this movie, personal and intimate and gorgeous and weird as it is. It’s not my favorite movie, but I can appreciate it and if that is not some kind of subtle commentary on the nature of artists making the art that they want, then I don’t know what is.
As an aside in real life, Paul Thomas Anderson is married to SNL star Maya Rudolph. I won’t speculate on whether she poisons him regularly, but if that is what it takes in order for him to continue making these kinds of movies, then I will gladly pitch in for some mushrooms.
