On its velveteen surface, Paul Thomas Anderson’s recently released Gothic romance “Phantom Thread” is many things. It is a film about fashion, about art, about love and about relationships turned toxic. But above any of these themes, at its core “Phantom Thread” is a cinematic treatise on control — who holds it, its importance, its ability to drive people to acts of madness and the absurdity that sometimes accompanies large degrees of it.
The film follows fictional designer Reynolds Woodcock (portrayed masterfully by Daniel Day-Lewis in his alleged final filmic role), a confirmed bachelor and fashion expert in the highest demand in 1950s Great Britain. Woodcock’s daily life is reliable if a bit uncommon. He breakfasts quietly while sketching new designs in precise black ink, manages a small team of devoted seamstresses, conducts fittings of his designs with the most moneyed of his society’s aristocrats, discusses his fashion enterprise with his sister and business partner, Cyril (Lesley Manville) and discovers women whom he adopts as muses-slash-girlfriends only to neatly dispose of them when they become too disruptive.
Woodcock is reminiscent of an orchestra’s conductor or theater’s artistic director — meticulous, thoughtful, at the helm as he cajoles his meals, relationships, staff, clients and sartorial creations into a routine as scrupulous as one of his hand-stitched seams. He holds the reins of his life very tightly, that is, until he discovers a new muse and lover in waitress Alma Elson (Vicky Krieps). What results is a power struggle between the two that lasts for the entirety of the film.
The struggle continues through a deepening relationship between the two, Elson’s use of — spoiler alert — poisonous-yet-not-fatal mushrooms to humble Woodcock, the couple’s eventual marriage and a second instance of poisoning, ending only with a compromise at the end of the film in which Woodcock and Elson agree on a power dynamic which can only be described as toxic. The film ends with Elson and Woodcock essentially constructing a pattern to follow in which Elson will “punish” Woodcock when he becomes too controlling or distant and Woodcock will submit willingly to her continuous discipline.
Anderson’s direction of “Phantom Thread” reflects the plot’s obsession with the idea of control. The cinematography, music, mise-en-scene and editing all show a care on the part of the director and other members of the crew that could only be accomplished with a painstaking attention to detail. The most fitting visual symbols of the film’s central theme, however, are Woodcock’s gowns. Multiple scenes showing seamstresses hand stitching the attire of the House of Woodcock, as well as several depictions of costume fittings with society women that include glimpses of Woodcock pinning and adjusting his creations with the utmost concentration serve to convey the extreme rigidity of not only Woodcock’s profession but also simply of his person in general.
A scene in which Woodcock, ill from his lover’s poison, falls into a client’s newly-finished wedding dress, staining it with shoe polish and ripping some of the its lace, illustrates Elson’s increasing control over Woodcock’s life, while a scene earlier in the film in which Woodcock designs a dress for Elson after their first evening together delineates the dominion that Woodcock attempts to hold over Elson as his muse for the first act of the film.
The performances by Day-Lewis, Manville and Krieps also serve to emphasize the film’s central theme of control, with all three delivering thorough portrayals of their characters. The audience is swept into a world belonging entirely to “Phantom Thread” with Day-Lewis’ fastidious delivery of dialogue, Manville’s pursed lips and significant facial expressions and Krieps’ ability to depict a woman who is equal parts charm and malice.
Each element of “Phantom Thread” combines to form a powerful machine that focuses intensely on the idea of control. The film is sinister and beautiful. The only flaw in Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest work, however, is rather large — “Phantom Thread,” quite simply, is absurd.
The film’s pervading ominousness, its severely serious performances and its obsessive preoccupation with precision and control seem heavy-handed in regards to the film’s strange plot. The intensity of the film, its visuals and its actors feels extraneous when measured against the film’s story of, essentially, a single diseased relationship.