Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson (2017)
Rated R Phantom Thread is about the story of Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis), a clothing designer in the 1950s. He meets a waitress named Alma, with whom he immediately becomes obsessed with and she becomes his muse. Woodcock is work obsessed, and has an oddly close relationship with his sister, Cyril (Lesley Manville). Alma begins to fall in love with Woodcock romantically, and desperately looks for signs that Woodcock feels the same way and favors her above all of his other women employees. For the first half of the movie, it is clear that Woodcock is not interested in romance, because he is always too consumed with designing clothes. He only really becomes loving and warm towards Alma when he is sick. Throughout the movie, this relationship gets deeper and deeper, and ultimately, more twisted. WOW, this movie was not what I expected it to be at all. I don't know what I was expecting when I went it, because I have seen the trailer dozens of times, but the trailer gives away nothing about the movie. It possibly might be one of the vaguest trailers ever. That aside, everyone was getting fed up with this movie before it even came out because it took forever. Everyone had seen the trailer and seen its nominations, but it was no where in sight in theaters. Did it even actually exist? So when it FINALLY came out in theaters, I was excited to see it, but had no idea what to expect. Being Daniel Day-Lewis's reportedly last movie, I thought it would be an in depth intellectual examination that would show off his ability to be an impersonation actor. It was kind of like that, I guess, but not in any way that I thought it would be. This movie kind of tricks you for the first half, because you don't know what is to come of Woodcock's relationship with Alma. It seems evident that it will probably end in heartbreak on Alma's side, since she has been warned countless times by Cyril that he can never really love anyone more than he loves his work. She tries relentlessly anyways, which is completely unsuccessful. *SPOILERS* One night, Alma asks everyone to leave the house so she can make a dinner for just the two of them. This ends terribly, with Woodcock throwing a complete tantrum that his schedule has been tampered with. Alma becomes so angry and upset, because she is in love. She knows the only time that Woodcock will be loving towards her is when he is sick, so she devises a horrible plan. One day, while gardening, she sees a bunch of poisonous mushrooms. She grinds them up, and one morning, she puts them into Woodcock's tea. He becomes really sick, and refuses the help of even doctors. He only wants Alma. After weeks, she helps him get better again. At this point, Woodcock doesn't know that she poisoned him. As the movie progresses, and Woodcock and Alma get married, their relationship gets worse again. He is only interested in his work, their honeymoon is a disaster, and he refuses to go out with her on New Years. This all progresses, and Alma gets fed up again, leading to - you guessed it! - more mushrooms. This leads to one of the creepiest scenes in the whole movie. Long story short, Woodcock knows he's being poisoned, but he's cool with it. He likes Alma nursing him back to health, so he lets her give him the mushrooms. And this is how they live their lives together. The end. There's so many creepy and disturbing parts of this movie, but I'm going to leave them out. But yeah, I really didn't see the movie taking this dark of a turn. I didn't know much about Paul Thomas Anderson at the time when I watched this, but after seeing the ending to There Will Be Blood, I kinda get it. That was dark, but this is downright creepy. I still don't really know how to feel about it. The entire movie kind of leads up to it in a way, but you have no idea what it's really leading up to. For the first half, I wouldn't call it a creepy movie. But it is slow paced and filled with some sort of anticipation, like the movie is getting you ready for something. You don't really know what that is until more than halfway through. As slow paced and one-dimensional as the beginning half of the movie was, you kind of expected something more to happen. If not, this would have just been a really boring movie. I just didn't expect THAT to happen. I don't know if I like this movie or not, and I usually love dark endings and twists. If you know anything about Paul Thomas Anderson or his previous films (which I did not), this movie will probably be less of a shock to you. That was not the case for me. Still, reading this review spoiled the movie for you if you haven't seen it, but if you're a fan of dark and twisted, this would be right up your alley.
1 Comment
|
AuthorCasey Land Archives
January 2018
Categories |