On Pins and Needles
Seen at The Charles Theater
Forget a nibble on the ear lobe. Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis), preferred dressmaker to the most discerning of ladies, would rather measure you for a dress before making love. And don’t make a fuss about it. Conflict really throws him off his routine. And when he’s thrown off his routine, he becomes bedridden and misses his mother. So really, don’t make a fuss. In fact, don’t do anything, especially at breakfast when he’s making his sketches. Really, perhaps it’s better if you just leave – quietly. He won’t say anything, but if you don’t, then his dutiful sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) will have to kick you out. And the thought of it tires her.
Phantom Thread, by Paul Thomas Anderson, is a film by perfectionists, for perfectionists. The thing runs like a clock. Every frame could be hanging in MoMa. Every gesture precise and powerful. Every costume and set piece exactly what it should be. Watching Phantom Thread, we have the visceral sense that we are witnessing two masters – Anderson and Day-Lewis – soaring on separate but parallel tracks to a joint artistic height that is quite unmatched by any other movie to come out in 2017.
Some critics have found Phantom Thread’s exactness cold; too cold, they say, for a romance. What were these critics expecting? La La Land? Anderson’s last “romance,” Punch-Drunk Love, involved phone sex lines, extortion, and a ton of pudding. What they mistake for froideur is actually a kind of old fashioned, classical mise-en-scene that has largely been left behind in the digital, handheld world. Phantom Thread is a period piece inside and out. See for reference the wonderful scenes that have Reynolds racing his 1950s sports car through village streets and country roads – a reminder of how no amount of stunt doubles, CGI, and Vin Diesel can match the exhilaration of good music and lighting.
Superior technicality will always lead to charges that a film lacks the human touch. But why make a sloppy film about a fastidious dressmaker? Moreover, the care given to each second of Phantom Thread never becomes overweening. Day-Lewis, the great star in his last curtain call, is allowed to wander in and out of frame, hunch over his sketches, and focus on his needlework, oblivious to our presence. He speaks, occasionally, punctuating heavy silences with either devastating cruelty, or heartbreaking earnestness; all delivered in a tinny posh tenor that’s just this side of snide.
Anderson gives similar treatment to Phantom’s other would-be star, the period costume and set design. Never mind the considerable expense and expertise that must have gone into recreating the upper class fashion world of London in the 1950s, Anderson never attempts to beat us over the head with sweeping vistas or those obnoxious shots we always see at old timey balls where the camera dive bombs down in amongst waltzing partygoers. When the characters do attend a ball, a wild New Year’s Eve party where patrons in bright “cowboys and Indians” costumes spill champagne under giant puppets, we couldn’t will them to get out of there faster.
And that’s the brilliance of Phantom Thread – the constant push and pull between the efficient, symmetrical universe desired by a selfish, manchild and the slow, fat, messy world that real people inhabit, permeates every aspect of it – from Johnny Greenwood’s uneasy score (continuing the experimental work he did on There Will Be Blood and The Master), to the needy clients whom Reynolds must make beautiful (Harriet Sansom Rose gives a heartrending performance as an alcoholic in desperate need of a therapist and a good hug), to a scene wherein Reynolds struggles to enjoy his breakfast as his muse Alma (Vicky Krieps), plucked from the profane world (she has just the right amount of belly, we are told), loudly butters a piece of toast. There is nary a moment when the audience is allowed a sigh of relief. The whole builds to a great climax, as a confused audience finally realizes that a look from Reynolds to Alma is communicating something far darker than we had suspected.
We wonder if perhaps Anderson and Day-Lewis are letting a bit of themselves poke through the fourth wall as Phantom Thread asks: can a balance be struck between the profane and the perfect? Perhaps, it concludes, but not without force. “Sometimes, he just needs to be slowed down,” comments Alma, as Reynolds lies feverish in bed.