film Of THE YEAR PhAnTom ThReAd
ReLeASeD back in February, Paul Thomas Anderson’s elegant, delicious pleasure remained the benchmark for the year in film. Considering, too, that it is apparently to be leading man Daniel Day-Lewis’s cinematic swansong, its position at the head of our year-end poll seems entirely fitting.
Reynolds Jeremiah Woodcock is certainly as memorable as any of Day-Lewis’s previous characters. A celebrated couturier to the post-war aristocracy, he is witty and nimble, elegant and epigrammatic. As with many creatives operating at the highest level, he is also fastidious and obsessive: one dress is described enigmatically as “worth everything we’ve been through”. In conjunction with his gimlet-eyed sister Cyril (Lesley Manville), Woodcock runs his operations from a splendid Georgian townhouse in London; but alas, as the film opens, this empire is faltering. First Woodcock finds himself under threat from the New Look, then he is unexpectedly beguiled by Alma (Vicky Krieps), a German waitress who becomes his muse.
Although there are a lot of clothes in Phantom Thread, it is not particularly a film about fashion. It is about control and obsession and the disruption of a status quo by a new arrival – in which case, it is possible to see this as thematically similar to Anderson’s 2012 film The Master.
But unlike The Master, Phantom Thread is often very funny. There are droll flashes of drawing-room farce – as well as a darker comic grain. In one scene, Woodcock complains testily that Alma butters her toast with “too much movement”. There is a late-arriving macabre gothic twist to the story that underscores Alma’s growing control over Woodcock.
During a year in which there were many strong leading performances – Frances McDormand, Joaquin Phoenix, ethan Hawke, Toni Collette and Saoirse Ronan – it was hard to top Day-Lewis’s monstrous, dazzling and hammy Woodcock. “Chic?” He exclaims with disgust as he is brought news of Dior’s pioneering work across the Channel. “Fucking chic.”