Phantom Thread reviewed by Mark Kermode

so Paul Thomas Hanson came on the program it was last week right you talk about a phantom thread which is his new movie with a score by Jonny Greenwood and I should say that I as you know I was just saying earlier on this week I was doing I was introducing the two of them on stage they were doing a live performance of the school by John agreement I've been a huge fan of Johnny creeper school for a long time right back to when Johnny Green was was denied an Oscar nomination for there will be blood back in 2003 which was the most technical of technicality so anyway a phantom thread story is set in 50s London Daniel day-lewis sees Reynolds Woodcock who is the designer dressmaker at the house of Woodcock which he runs with his sister Sarah brilliantly played by Lesley Manville who I think is just you know just terrific so she runs the business basically she turned to the books but she also tends to the extraordinarily pernickety needs of Reynolds and his strange creative rituals rituals like breakfast must never be loud or interrupted and if his breakfast doesn't go well he can't get things right for the rest of the day things like on you a bit like that though things like that she he has women who are his muses of whom he tires and we find that very very early on that she says shall I tell so and so to leave I'll give her such and such address so we were immediately set up that there is a sort of cyclic all habit here that he he falls in love with women he designs dresses for them he tires of them and then it's left to Cyril to you know to show them the door taking the dress with them so he's also obsessed with his mother for whom he made a wedding dress whilst young and there is a suggestion that the whole of the rest of his career has basically been repeating that making a dress fit for his mother and looking for somebody who is somehow able to fill that particular void he says at one point he he's been dreaming of his mother and saying her name out loud and then waking up his cheeks wet with tears and he's obviously in in a funk so he goes to the country where he meets Alma who is serving in a hotel which he goes to have the most expansive of breakfast it's an ordinary breakfast and it's it's wonderful if you've ever seen the the adaptation the television adaptation the Omnibus television adaptation of it's called whistle I'll come to you but it's basically a my James I whistle I'll come to you my lad in which Michael Horton explains that there are more things in philosophy than there are in heaven and earth whilst enjoying the most magnificent breakfast now I think it's it's kind of on a par with that so he goes there he sees Alma played by Vicki creeps and immediately he feels some kind of connection he says at one point I feel like I've been looking for you for a very long time next thing she becomes his muse he is making dresses for her but inevitably and cyclically he starts the tire of her Cyril is right always right it's not because the fabrics are told by the clients and Cyril is right it's right because it's right because it's beautiful every wonder will change your taste maybe not maybe you have no taste maybe I like my own taste that's just enough to get you into trouble so you can hear from that the kind of the the brittle nature of summertime particularly of Daniel day-lewis his accent which is pitched somewhere between sort of clipped Brit and timeless Transylvanian and there is certainly a hint of the vampiric about him the way he sits with his kind of insect-like limbs curled up around him the way which is his face has got a sort of slightly ghoulish almost skull like appeal to it we see him at the beginning in his dressing ritual sort of getting himself ready and it did remind me a little bit with enough of Gary Oldman it did ah and also a bit of Colin Firth okay the Tom it's just fine you said yeah as a single man and then to some extent that would refer back to things like you know American Gigolo I can't imagine Richard Gere doing this one anyway so what we have here is a tale of an impossible artist so it's it obviously draws influence from the red shoes and there's a we see quite a lot of Powell and Pressburger in it it's also the tale of somebody stepping into someone else's shoes so we think for example of you know Hitchcock and Rebecca and that kind of you know the strange going into somewhere which is which becomes a prison it's also a tale of a cracked masochistic love affair which immediately reminds me of punch-drunk love and I should say that I think this is Paul Thomas Anderson's best film since punch-drunk love and you know how much I love punch-drunk love I think this is now on a par with it and I'm teetering on the edge of whether or not this is actually my favorite bolt on Versailles and film whether it's dislodged punch-drunk love which I have loved for a long time and I'd in a way I won't know until I've let it settle but I've now seen phantom threads as I said four times and every time I see I see more in it what I love about it is punch-drunk love was a film which referred very often to to pop I you know they had that use of that he needs me he needs me he needs me you know which is referring specifically to the film adaptation of Popeye with Robin surely develop yep okay okay this is absolutely laced through with threads from fairy tales so there is cursive there is talk of curses and superstitions the superstition of the wedding dress that he says very early on when he was making the wedding dress his nanny wouldn't help him do it because they were all these superstitions that if you touch a wedding dress you won't get married and in the end he said his sister helped him to do it and Alma says and and what happened to her did she get married he says no and then we learned that one of the things he's been doing since an early age is stitching things into the dresses that he makes he says you can hide things in the lining of garments messages coins little things and one of the messages that he puts into the lining of a government is never cursed he talks at one point about the house of woodcock being being a dead house somehow being cursed so this thing about curses recurs time and time again there are allusions to Bluebeard and to the Brothers Grimm there are journeys off into forests where mushrooms strange mushrooms grow and are harvested by a heroine who has more than a touch of the princess in the tower or Little Red Riding Hood or you know Hansel and Gretel or any of those stories the camera which incidentally the film doesn't have a credited director of photography because the people that Paul Thomas Hampson usually works with weren't available a lot of people have said he's the cinematographer he's quite clear he's not the cinematographer he was basically marshaling a camera crew working with the people that he's you know worked with you know grips and camera operators and all that sort of stuff and as a team they worked to create this omaha grafite but the camera circles around these staircases that give you the impression of an ivory tower and then at other times take you out into these strange forests you know the beauty and the beast' analogy is there and then beneath it all you have this wonderful score by jonny greenwood which invokes you know passionate friends or brief encounter throwing back to those period pieces recorded very specifically in a way to make it sound I mean a muted piano and then these soaring romantic strings surging cyclicals themes all of which absolutely heart back to a bygone age which again put you in that thing of the magic of cinema though those classic influences but also I think evoke fairytale something mythical something magical and so therefore so you have on the surface a film which is about a really prickly difficult man who is defined by his rituals who is absolutely intolerant and intolerable and then you have this other layer underneath which is that it's referring to all these other movies which I love anyway and then more sort of importantly than that the whole thing has a fairy tale charm which every time I've seen it has been more me the first time I saw it I noticed it somewhat by the fourth time it just seemed to me that it was it was being you know declared from the rooftops and on top of all that it's really funny and it's one of the things which it's hard to understand how it can be as funny as it is partly it's funny because the dialogue is you know paper cut sharp and the the way in which it's delivered by the cost and the cast are brilliant I mean it's a really really you know great central cast these lines are delivered with that kind of you know lemon-juice sort of bite that zing Lesley Manville brilliant at one point she says I don't want to hear it because it hurts my ears and it's just you know and when I when I saw it with an audience they were really enjoying the laughter they were really really enjoying the but there is this very very strong sense of of sadness it is very much a ghost story you know Dame Helen Mirren was talking earlier on about Winchester and saying it's a ghost story it's not a ghost story that's not a ghost story that's a shouty fairground ride of a movie if you want a ghost story this is it this is properly a ghost story I mean that phantom thread which incidentally you know refers to a repetitive motion that goes on after seamstress isn't worked you know day and night making things that they're kept there their hands would continue to repeat those motions a phantom thread but also maybe it refers to the lock of his mother's hair that he has sewn into the the breast of his jacket the lovely thing is that the more you delve through the folds of this thing the more it has to give you the the funnier the jokes become the the sadder the sadness becomes the more spooky and wonderfully supernatural those those elements become which you know which includes sort of fever dream apparitions of this world and the next so I thought I thought it was terrific and I I think it continues to be more terrific I love the sky the score is just great the score is great Johnny Greenwood is nominated for an Oscar nominated for it I don't I think he's got a very very hard Tosca's of that's a very strong category this year I went all wrong category this year and I don't not even joking we are 15 basically yeah I thought it was I thought it was great and it caught me in its spell it kind of wove this web around me and I just was held by it you talk about the fairy tale I want yeah I hadn't thought about it like that before but there are a couple of sequences in his car which is it a beautiful yeah car and the way that is shot is feels as though it's part of that fairy tale yeah very unusually it doesn't yes or like the way it normally a you know a conversation in a car would normally be taken there's one sequence in a car which is very obviously a reference to Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange when they're driving through the darkened country lane and the camera is looking into the the illuminated car and that's very clearly a reference of the Durango 95 thing from but it seems that you're talking about like when when when the camera is following the car and it's an unusual car down these strange winding lanes or when they're exactly when they're talking that they seem to be in some kind of almost dreamy world and what's really interesting is that when you consider how crisp and clean the lines of the images are and indeed the lines of the editing I mean it's a really well edited film that it has that dreaminess that that of the worldliness that ghostliness that is so sorely lacking from Winchester

Channel: kermodeandmayo

Views: 196,477

Keywords: Paul Thomas Anderson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps, Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread, Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review, BBC, 5live

Id: PhRCSiNNE6o

Length: 11min 47sec (707 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Eat a huge breakfast and watch Phantom Thread!!

[u/[deleted]]

Monster Trucks is my favourite Kermode review

[u/verisimiliattitude]

I love how much he loves it, especially increasingly after four(!) viewings already.

Was really impressed with it on my first and only watch, but I could feel when it was over that it was the type of film that would only reveal layers and deepen more over time and re-watches.

[u/Freewheelin]

Just saw it, absolutely loved it. Kermode is spot-on with the fairytale allusions, that otherworldly vibe was intoxicating and kind of caught me off guard based on what I was expecting from the film. Vicky Krieps not being nominated for best actress is the biggest snub of the year.

I don't think people should watch this review before seeing the film though, he hints at some details best left unspoiled.

[u/[deleted]]

He likes this better than There Will Be Blood? Damn. I better go see it.