Phantom Thread

Saw this in a theatre. Movie aint that good but Daniel Day-Lewis' acting was phenomenal. He superbly potrayed the character of Reynolds Woodcock, who is obsessed with order, symmetry n following an organised routine. DDLs mannerisms, facial expressions n costumes were spot on. Many may hate the characters controlled behaviour but Woodcocks breakfast time was superb n so was his appetite. The film does hav repetitive trope of breakfasts for foodies. Also noteworthy is costume designer Mark Bridges incredible work, the look of Woodcocks suits n the gorgeous female dresses added a charm. Another aspect one cannot ignore is the mesmerizing musical score.

An aggravating and tediously slow storytelling that is about nothing, and goes nowhere, unless happy endings built on sadomasochistic relationships are your thing. The sister's icy gaze and mannerisms are worthy of the Nurse Ratched Award, and kudos to the background collective of seamstresses who gave the film it's only glint of humanity. For those who willing to endure the over two hours of self-indulgent posturing and loathsome, dis-functional bickering, the truly sick abhorrence of the ending may make you holding back your vomit. A feel-bad movie where the award should go to - if you were hoping for any inspiration, beauty and form - the car.

Much like mother!, Phantom Thread is an unnerving 2017 auteur look at a tortured artist and his neglected spouse / muse. But where mother! was a slow descent into abject insanity and (literal) barn-burning chaos, Phantom Thread is as uptight and dry as an aristocratic dinner party on Ambien. As an overwhelmingly opaque Paul Thomas Anderson film, it's the kind of movie that people seem expected to at least appreciate if not adore, especially given the universal praise poured upon it. I, for one, just found it boring at best and pretentious at worst. A successful clothing designer (Day-Lewis) in the 1950s meets and falls for a younger woman. The movie sets them on a cyclical course of love-fight-make-up-repeat that to anyone ever in a long-term relationship will certainly feel familiar, though hardly revelatory. Like a Victorian-era costume drama, it's all so stodgy and stiff, much of the apparent filmmaking "beauty" and unimpeachable performances went nearly unnoticed by me. I became preoccupied with Krieps wife-character's inexplicable interest in this man and getting irrationally enraged imagining method-actor Day-Lewis sewing dresses between takes. Now Anderson is inarguably a master director, so there are certainly some high points: the moody, bouncy piano score; Manville's strong sister character; individual scenes that spark up the otherwise monotonous proceedings (dinner arguments, fever-dream visions). Apparently, there is an underlining dark comedy to it all, but I just must be incredibly dense or simply missing something to not notice anything even dryly droll on screen. From my vantage, Phantom Thread is neither funny, compelling, nor even that beautiful; it is, however, maybe the most overrated film of 2017.

I cannot understand the praise this movie has received, aside from that for Daniel Day-Lewis' performance. It is, frankly, an insult to the movie-going public. My wife and I are both very well-educated individuals, which I think is important for anyone to know who thinks we just "didn't get it" with this movie. The same can be said about the couple who saw the movie with us. When it ended, we all looked at each other and felt that we had been had. The movie's title has no apparent connection with what passes for action in the film. Is this movie a love story? A study of the fashion industry decades ago? A battle of the sexes? Well, whatever it purports to be, it fails. It's pretentious, with lingering shots of couples or individuals passing for deep meaning. Long silences that do nothing to advance, or even explain, what passes for the story. Moody stares and shadowy lighting do not make a great film, or one as lousy as this. The musical score is probably the most intrusive of any film I've ever seen. Music swells to let you know that "This is important!" That doesn't work, and it interfered with scene after scene. Maybe the producers and director thought it added gravity to a movie desperately trying to show you that it is meaningful in so many ways. For many years the movie that most offended me, as an utter waste of my viewing time, was "Titanic." It has now been supplanted by this overwrought couple of hours of cinema. The worst movie I've ever suffered through, and that includes many of the ones lampooned on "Mystery Science Theater 3000." Come to think of it, that might be an appropriate venue for future screenings of this pretentious bore.

There's a lot of potential in the movie's concept: brilliant 1950's fashion designer, creating fashions for Europe's upper crust, owns a cool 1950's British sports car, a confirmed bachelor who meets a waitress and dines with her that night. Could have gone places. Didn't. This is a slow movie about some very strangely damaged people somehow accommodating each other in ways neither my wife nor I could fathom. You know how you see some movies and wonder for two hours "When's it going to start?" That's this movie.

I didn't like the main character, Woodcock (for the most part . . . he did have a charming side which he showed stingily). He was a bully at times and as a love partner, took more than he gave knowing that his talent and money would substitute for actual effort. Alma is quite likeable. Her devotion to him is endearing. But she wants more. Here the movie starts to decline. Her solution to the logjam of their personality clash is to poison him. Oddly, it (his illness) makes him fall for her and seek marriage whereas he has known himself to be a bachelor up to now. I'm thinking to myself, "That's just sick." And I ask myself, "Is it love any more when attempted murder becomes part of it? No wonder it takes her so long to answer "yes" to his marriage proposal! It's not surprising that the marriage fails miserably but we're asked to believe that another poisoning is just the remedy and that the whole ritual is some sort of acceptable romantic dance . . . and we're asked to accept that it works. Woodcock figures it out and since it's OK with him it should be OK with us. I endure a lot of pain at times when I have bowel trouble so I have a lot of trouble seeing this as a happy ending. I don't understand why the critics liked it so much.

As I watched this film I felt like I was watching "Eyes Wide Shut"-- the glacial pacing, the fashion and the mysteriousness seemed familiar. I'm not really as impressed with visuals as most people. I have enough knowledge and experience with film making to know that any moron can get good/great visuals if he or she has enough time in a location and even a fairly competent director of photography-- or, in the case of a huge budget movie, competent video editors as well. But I must state that unlike Blade Runner 2049, although this film's visuals are good, they weren't good enough to justify its ultra-slow pacing. Even though it's actually shorter than Blade Runner 2049 by thirty minutes, it felt longer than it to me. Daniel Day Lewis delivers his usual outstanding performance. But his Reynolds character is borderline unbearable. If Vicky Krieps's Alma character (his lover) wasn't in the film to counter his repulsiveness, I might have left the theater early. Throughout the film, Reynolds and his parasitic brood of socialites speculate that her youthful age is to "blame" for her humanity. Even Alma herself claims that she longs to be dead inside (my words) like Reynolds as she ages. I wanted to say to her that she should never aspire to be as boring and tedious. Reynolds has a lot of Freudian issues. By the end of the film there is much fatuousness and derangement as Alma reveals just how she is manipulating him. And unlike some of the people who were in my audience, I wasn't amused or entertained by Reynolds' willingness to accept it. It's better than Paul Thomas Anderson's last couple of films, and Lewis manages to go out on top as an actor, but ultimately it gives way to the same sort of pretentiousness that ruined those films as well.

PHANTOM THREAD just annihilated me. It's completely worthy of all the immense hype (such as, most cinephiles considering it the best film of 2017). It grows and builds in as organic a manner that a film possibly can. At first, I wasn't sure how I felt - I needed to get to know the characters, then, through most of the movie, I was cracking up at all the tension and the misery between them, then, by the last 10 minutes, I was in tears - a flow of tears which increased each minute as I processed the power and uniqueness and realness of what I had just witnessed. They were "profound" tears. I don't know that I've ever seen a movie that so tastefully glamorizes the toxicity of love. The poison that so many of us romanticize, the poison that we NEED in our lives. There are two types of people in the world: people who feel at home in perfectly "healthy" relationships, and then there's the rest of us. This film is for the rest of us. It stands in a league of it's own. I could never have expected the conclusion - the way that the ribbon is tied, the way the final thread is sewn. It hit me like a bag of bricks. It is all of the pain in love and all of the beauty, all at once. I have never seen this story told before. It's completely original, and completely shattering. The three leads are absolutely astonishing - Daniel Day Lewis and Lesley Manville are terrifying - Vicky Krieps is the most real. The writing and directing is impeccable - P.T. Anderson's legacy continues, it's fire burning brighter than ever. Yes, this is a masterpiece. I am dead.

All I could think at the end was, "Okay. I don't get it." But I will still try to make a modicum of sense out of it, just for you. Let me say here, in case you don't feel like reading further: Don't watch this movie if you haven't already done so. Find something better to view. ("Message from the King" isn't half-bad.) My understanding of this film: The control freak meets his soulmate. She loves him but she wants to tame his OCD-ness. She will poison him over and over, with his permission, until he is (my rendering of her words) "flat on his back, gentle and needing her again." Ugh. Ever since "My Beautiful Launderette" I have loved Daniel Day-Lewis and enjoyed his masterful acting. Even though "Last of the Mohicans" was absolutely cringe-worthy, it was fun to watch Day-Lewis running through the forests, lugging that ancient flintlock musket (or flintlock rifle or whatever it was), brown curls flying. Wow. That was something. My Left Foot, Room with a View, Lincoln, etc. All of his great performances over the years . . . And now we have this piano-tinkling, violin- downer music codswallop? As always, Day-Lewis is riveting. The storyline is somewhat intriguing, too-----until you realize the whole thing is about this Alma chick not getting the attention she needs. She will not be tossed aside. She suddenly has the inspiration and means to bring this great artist to his knees. We learn how she is going to give him near-death experiences and settle his hash and thereby win his love. Bah. Shame on her. She is not a muse, she's a low-life jealous ninny. Jealous of his talent and artistry. And she tells us she will find him throughout the ages, no matter where he is. What? And make him miserable over and over again, in those many lifetimes? And he goes along with this? What a bunch of tripe.

I simply didn't know what the point was. I got that Lewis was a perfectionist and an artist. But a very dysfunctional man who could not maintain a regular relationship. Then he suddenly thrusts himself into another relationship? Or was it? Or not? The "love at first sight" aspect between the two of them rang phony. A big problem was that the role was based on a gay man, but what was depicted was (I guess) a hetrosexual man. Was not really too sure what role Krieps was filling for him. Sure seemed like a relationship, by and large. And there was some growth to it. But Krieps' motivations were awfully vague. Did like where she felt pretty being dressed by Lewis. But for him, why her? I felt I was told that there was something there between the two, but nothing showed me that. He was admirable in his achievements and interesting in his disfunction. Her? Nothing but some regular person. I really also didn't feel respect for her as it degenerated to her blind love for a man that had no love for her. And very creepy (and many daddy issues) due to the age difference between the two (31 years in real life). What is it with Hollywood in saying that there are no relevant women older than 35? Her poisoning him was a sad turn for the character but did develop into an interesting sequence of change. Something she couldn't have known would happen. I kept thinking she was trying to kill the part of him she didn't like. But then his unraveling after the marriage was phony and broke with the tone. Conversely his knowingly and willingly eating the poison mushrooms was an interesting turn, albeit one that was too little, too late. But I did guess it before he sat down and she confessed. Just a couple hours of very good acting and moody scenes that tried to wring out some sort of "love story" that just wasn't there. (And it won The National Board of Review award for best original screenplay? Huh?)