{"id":7053,"date":"2018-02-05T07:08:25","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T12:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7053"},"modified":"2018-02-26T07:24:54","modified_gmt":"2018-02-26T12:24:54","slug":"phantom-thread","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7053","title":{"rendered":"Phantom Thread"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Phantom

Day-Lewis & Krieps in Phantom Thread<\/p><\/div>\n

If this is indeed Daniel Day-Lewis\u2019s last film, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s new movie (trailer<\/a>) turns out to be an odd swan song. Apparently the idea it would be his last came over Day-Lewis in reaction to this character, for reasons he can\u2019t quite explain, but perhaps related to the draining intensity with which he prepares for his roles.<\/p>\n

Reynolds Woodcock, the British fashion designer Day-Lewis plays, doesn\u2019t display the physical energy of Hawkeye (in one of my favorite movies of all time, The Last of the Mohicans<\/em>) or the agonizing choices facing Abraham Lincoln, or the disturbing intensity of knife-throwing Bill \u201cThe Butcher\u201d in Gangs of New York<\/em>. Woodcock\u2019s challenge, a drive for perfection, comes not from circumstances, but eats him from within.<\/p>\n

Woodcock is a fastidious, often languid character. Some of the dialog was included in a radio review, and I was struck by how slooowly Day-Lewis spoke and the long pauses between utterances. You\u2019re less aware of that watching him, of course, because even when he\u2019s not speaking, he\u2019s doing a lot. The eyebrow, the little smile, the internal consideration, the piercing glance, the innate elegance. While the acting is wonderful, the character Woodcock is not especially likeable, and Day-Lewis is too honest an actor to try to make him so.<\/p>\n

Woodcock runs his domain\u2014domestic and commercial\u2014his way, as a well turned out obsessive. He cannot abide a disturbance at breakfast or his whole day is ruined. When his new lady-love Alma (played by Vicky Krieps) scrapes the burnt bits from her toast (with a microphone hidden in the jam-pot, surely), it\u2019s fingernails-on-the-blackboard for the entire audience.<\/p>\n

The Fitzroy Square townhouse where he lives and conducts business is presided over by his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville), who knows exactly how to keep order. Is she a benign presence or an over-protective monster? Even she is thwarted when Alma realizes that, to keep her man, she must bring him low.<\/p>\n

The production team had fun\u2014Woodcock\u2019s breakneck driving trips (an uncharacteristic unleashing of spirit), the 1950s ambience, the workshop with its dowdy middle-aged women\u2014seamstresses in real life\u2014producing fabulous garments they could and would never wear. Day-Lewis himself spent many months studying the craft of clothing design, and director Anderson has remarked on the actor\u2019s fine hands, able to do work believably, to sew.<\/p>\n

Fashion historian Alistair O\u2019Neill<\/a> has commented that the rich satin fabrics used remind him of Charles James\u2019s post-war designs. (Luscious show about James<\/a> at the Metropolitan Museum in 2014.) In its workshop and showroom scenes, the film eerily echoes the PBS mini-series, The Collection<\/a><\/em>, which aired last fall. Couture in the 1950s is an infrequent setting for drama; is it the hive mind that inspires two such resonant efforts in the same few months?<\/p>\n

The film has garnered six Academy Award nominations\u2014best picture, actor (Day-Lewis), director, supporting actress (Manville), score, and costume design. If Mark Bridges hadn\u2019t received that last, well-deserved nomination, surely he would have retired.<\/p>\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating: 92%; audiences, 70%.
\n<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If this is indeed Daniel Day-Lewis\u2019s last film, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s new movie (trailer) turns out to be an odd swan song. Apparently the idea it would be his last came over Day-Lewis in reaction to this character, for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Phantom Thread - a must-see, if only because it may be Daniel Day-Lewis's last.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[59,61,366,57,104],"tags":[1239,1238,333,1237],"class_list":["post-7053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academy-awards","category-character","category-drama","category-movies","category-the-morgue","tag-couture","tag-daniel-day-lewis","tag-london","tag-phantom-thread"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1PL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7053"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7055,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7053\/revisions\/7055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}