Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson)

[Ivan Drago]

1. Magnolia
2. There Will Be Blood
3. Punch-Drunk Love
4. Phantom Thread (for now...seeing again really soon to confirm)
5. The Master
6. Boogie Nights
7. Junun
8. Inherent Vice
9. Hard Eight

As for Phantom Thread....I have thoughts on this myself but I'm saving them for my 10 favorites of the year article because it's going to be on that list.

[Pop Trash]

Anderson is sympathetic to the abusive, narcissist artist in the film. Why else make the woman a foil for his transformation?

I agree that Alma is a bit of a cipher and perhaps should have more shades and agency, but I don't get how Woodcock is "abusive" other than just being fussy and impossible to deal with. Plenty of divorces have happened because of this, but I doubt the relationship would be categorized as "abusive." Alma, on the other hand, [SPOILER] poisons the guy with mushrooms, and at least initially, none of this is consensual, and seems like a clear case of physical "abuse" via poison.

[Dillard]

I agree that Alma is a bit of a cipher and perhaps should have more shades and agency, but I don't get how Woodcock is "abusive" other than just being fussy and impossible to deal with. Plenty of divorces have happened because of this, but I doubt the relationship would be categorized as "abusive." Alma, on the other hand, [SPOILER] poisons the guy with mushrooms, and at least initially, none of this is consensual, and seems like a clear case of physical "abuse" via poison.

Right, Woodcock isn't physically abusive. However, he terrorizes women emotionally with his hot and cold game, and we see a pattern of it being very cold once he has his latest victim in tow and moved into the house. It's a classic case of emotional abuse. Alma certainly does manipulate him back, but that leads to another problem I have with the film: I have no idea why she stays with him. I didn't find it convincing at all. There were a couple of obvious moments where I was thinking: just leave! This is ridiculous! This "love" Anderson writes into her character came out of left field and is completely unbelievable! Even over at criterionforum there was a fanboy completely in love with the film who was like... 'you know the mysterious thing about the film that I don't get but keep thinking about is...why does she put up with his awful behavior? It's just so intriguing!' And I'm thinking... it's not a mystery! It's actually poor writing and a lack of chemistry between the leads!

Ok in case people might think I’m just playing the contrarian, I will say this. The score is amazing and sensitive. The camerawork is sumptuous. The acting impeccable. I just found the screenwriting poor and the portrayal of women to be problematic. I felt gross watching the film. It gets a nay even though it is in many ways a refined and beautiful art film.

[Pop Trash]

Right, Woodcock isn't physically abusive. However, he terrorizes women emotionally with his hot and cold game, and we see a pattern of it being very cold once he has his latest victim in tow and moved into the house. It's a classic case of emotional abuse. Alma certainly does manipulate him back, but that leads to another problem I have with the film: I have no idea why she stays with him. I didn't find it convincing at all. There were a couple of obvious moments where I was thinking: just leave! This is ridiculous! This "love" Anderson writes into her character came out of left field and is completely unbelievable! Even over at criterionforum there was a fanboy completely in love with the film who was like... 'you know the mysterious thing about the film that I don't get but keep thinking about is...why does she put up with his awful behavior? It's just so intriguing!' And I'm thinking... it's not a mystery! It's actually poor writing and a lack of chemistry between the leads!

Ok in case people might think I’m just playing the contrarian, I will say this. The score is amazing and sensitive. The camerawork is sumptuous. The acting impeccable. I just found the screenwriting poor and the portrayal of women to be problematic. I felt gross watching the film. It gets a nay even though it is in many ways a refined and beautiful art film.

Yeah, I actually agree with you. Although, I would say I've noticed real life couples that are even more mismatched than these two, but then, unlike in this film, I'm not privy to their private life. Maybe they are having head explodingly amazing sex or something? Speaking of which, and I don't know if it has been discussed here yet, but we never see Woodcock use his......penis with Alma, so I wonder if this is another case of a potentially impotent Anderson character ala Plainview in TWBB? Discuss.

[Dillard]

Yeah, I actually agree with you. Although, I would say I've noticed real life couples that are even more mismatched than these two, but then, unlike in this film, I'm not privy to their private life. Maybe they are having head explodingly amazing sex or something? Speaking of which, and I don't know if it has been discussed here yet, but we never see Woodcock use his......penis with Alma, so I wonder if this is another case of a potentially impotent Anderson character ala Plainview in TWBB? Discuss.

Good points all around, Pop Trash. And maybe I’m projecting my naive romantic ideal onto the real world in which mismatched couples weirdly fall in love. ALL. THE. TIME. In spite of unfortunate power dynamics. That’s a great point. I just want so much more for Alma and I want so much more for her characterization because I was taken with the fantastic acting. And Anderson made the movie before the #metoo movement exploded this Fall. Does he get a pass because of that? I do think it’s a good thing if male writers feel pressured in the future to be more sensitive to the stories and perspectives of women in their writing. Or hell, just #morefemalefilmmakersinhollywo odgettingfunding.

[Peng]

I had a hard time picking which paragraphs to quote because the argument unfolds in the review and there is not a zinger summation paragraph. If you read on, she’s actually pretty even-handed in giving Anderson his due. She still thinks the film is problematic in its portrayal of women. I agree with her. Calling a female dissenting voice Patronizing is exactly the point she’s trying to make. Men have a hard time listening to a perspective which reveals the darker side to their Great Artists. Anderson is sympathetic to the abusive, narcissist artist in the film. Why else make the woman a foil for his transformation?

I didn't mean the writer in my first two sentences, simply because I don't read the whole review; those are just my sentiment against those kind of little-nuanced, specifically zeigesit-y, present-fixated take on films that have been very much on the rise, so much that The Way We Live Now becomes kind of a jokey meme phrase itself (and so much that there's some push-back). And for the twice assumptions that PTA is my Great Artist: thanks, but he's not. Both not my favorite and not the definition of what might constitue as my great, with half his filmography inspiring admiration more than passion, but I do consider this among his best.

[Ezee E]

Yeah, I didn't really see how Alma loved him after the New Year's event. Maybe she liked the free housing and food.

[Dillard]

I didn't mean the writer in my first two sentences, simply because I don't read the whole review; those are just my sentiment against those kind of little-nuanced, specifically zeigesit-y, present-fixated take on films that have been very much on the rise, so much that The Way We Live Now becomes kind of a jokey meme phrase itself (and so much that there's some push-back).

I don’t agree with you, Peng, that this type of criticism is zeitgeisty. Feminist literary criticism has been around for decades and it’ll be around long after we’re gone.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femi...rary_criticism

[Peng]

Again, not what I wrote. Or to be precise, I never specifically mean any particular reading (in which you specify feminist) and if I do I will not blanketly include such a large valid criticism movement. It's tying to the very specifics of a narrow time period, above all else, that I object (and in which that article articulates much more eloquently, although that pertains more to movies and in-vogue criticism trend at 2016's end/2017's start).

[Dillard]

Again, not what I wrote. Or to be precise, I never specifically mean any particular reading (in which you specify feminist) and if I do I will not blanketly include such a large valid criticism movement. It's tying to the very specifics of a narrow time period, above all else, that I object (and in which that article articulates much more eloquently, although that pertains more to movies and in-vogue criticism trend at 2016's end/2017's start).

Hi Peng, sounds like we’re not connecting. I don’t follow your objection to the article I posted.

[Pop Trash]

Word to the wise: this was much better the 2nd time around. It's too early to tell if I like it as much as The Master and TWBB, but after a 2nd viewing, it's certainly in the realm of possibilities. I can't stop thinking about how deeply weird the ending is without ever diving into outright surrealism like David Lynch or something like mother! or The Killing of a Sacred Deer.

[Dillard]

Word to the wise: this was much better the 2nd time around. It's too early to tell if I like it as much as The Master and TWBB, but after a 2nd viewing, it's certainly in the realm of possibilities. I can't stop thinking about how deeply weird the ending is without ever diving into outright surrealism like David Lynch or something like mother! or The Killing of a Sacred Deer.

Intriguing, Pop Trash! Hmm.... maybe I'll have to watch again.

[Izzy Black]

As for philosophical depth, I've never understood why people expect talented filmmakers to also be great thinkers. Surely, if we continue to value, say, Krzyzstof Kieślowski's films it's not because the ideas in them are especially profound but because he was a master storyteller who could dramatize his ideas in a compelling fashion.

I take your point, I don't think filmmakers need to be great thinkers either, but I find this example pretty odd. Kieslowski, I thought, is famously one of cinema's most philosophical filmmakers. It's even a bit on the nose at times. Is your point rather that he attempts to be philosophical, but his ideas aren't especially profound, despite being a great storyteller?

[Milky Joe]

White's hate-boner for PTA never fails to disappoint.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...western-values

[Milky Joe]

[baby doll]

I take your point, I don't think filmmakers need to be great thinkers either, but I find this example pretty odd. Kieslowski, I thought, is famously one of cinema's most philosophical filmmakers. It's even a bit on the nose at times. Is your point rather that he attempts to be philosophical, but his ideas aren't especially profound, despite being a great storyteller?

Let me put it this way: If White is the least interesting film in Kieślowski's "Three Colours" trilogy (and there seems to be widespread agreement that it is), it's because the plot and characters only exist to demonstrate the director's thesis about post-communist Europe. To be sure, the thesis is a bit on the nose, as you say, but the film wouldn't be any less schematic as an experience if the idea behind it were more profound.

[Izzy Black]

Let me put it this way: If White is the least interesting film in Kieślowski's "Three Colours" trilogy (and there seems to be widespread agreement that it is), it's because the plot and characters only exist to demonstrate the director's thesis about post-communist Europe. To be sure, the thesis is a bit on the nose, as you say, but the film wouldn't be any less schematic as an experience if the idea behind it were more profound.

I see. The point seems to be that, at the end of the day, what would really elevate White (or what in fact makes Kieslowski special) is great storytelling. I think I agree with that to an extent, but I think his ideas also contribute to why Kieslowski is beloved. I suppose I was expecting an example of a director who clearly isn't especially ideas heavy but nonetheless is a great filmmaker because of their stories. Thanks for the clarification though. I think I have a better sense of what you meant.

[Izzy Black]

A few observations on the film -

I take Phantom Thread to be a film ultimately about seduction, manipulation, and exploitation. In this sense, it's a companion piece of sorts with The Master. You can see elements of these themes throughout PTA's career, but The Master is its closest kin, I think. It's also properly of piece with the films I consider among his mature era beginning in '07 (and so after what I would call his "film school" era of his earlier films).

The film revolves around games and formal structures. PTA's obsession with procedure and process is at a maximum here, and the concept of a manipulative game for PTA is explored with considerable depth in this film. For PTA, games are devices for power and control. A game is a way of streamlining and manufacturing intimacy between two subjects: "the master" and "the pupil".

Consider Freddie's interrogation scene (his "processing") in The Master. It's a series of questions designed to target the most personal aspects of Freddie's life, mining him for his fears and insecurities. We have a kind of machine-like structure with a set of rules that help facilitate Freddie's participation and his confessions, and then there's a promise, a promise of becoming part of some larger "Cause". We might call this game "religion" (I emphasize here the deliberate scare quotes). There are numerous other examples of such games throughout the film.

Now consider the rigid rules and game-like pretenses of Reynolds' interactions with Alma. We see it first with the seduction and flirtation in the opening scene. It starts as a food game. Talk about food is a device (or diversion) to facilitate further intimacy and interaction. Then we move to Reynold's home. Here the game is "fashion". Consider how Reynolds' dressing Alma in elegant clothing, measuring her dimensions, and stitching in various areas on the most intimate parts of her body is a form of immediate intimacy between strangers not ordinarily reached outside the structure of such a game.

The game in each case, of course, is inherently artificial. It is constantly disrupted by impersonal devices, and any intimacy exchanged in the game can never substitute for genuine emotional connections and bonds. So the victim in the game is always kept at a certain emotional distance or objective remove. This has the effect of (1) keeping the victim unsatisfied, transfixed by the allure of the "master" and (2) keeping the victim in a certain state of emotional pain and vulnerability. This makes them easier to control and exploit for the purposes of the "master's" own ends. This is further enabled by the fact that, as we see in the beginning of each film, the victims appear aimless and lonely. They seem to be relatively naïve individuals who appear to be in some sense lost and in search of something. This makes them more easily seduced by the allure of the beauty, status, and structure that is offered to them. Most of all, however, it makes them more easily seduced by the false promise of genuine emotional connection and intimacy. Both films, in different ways, explore how the subjects in the game attempt to assert their agency against those who would manipulate them.

[Kirby Avondale]

Good points all around, Pop Trash. And maybe I’m projecting my naive romantic ideal onto the real world in which mismatched couples weirdly fall in love. ALL. THE. TIME. In spite of unfortunate power dynamics. That’s a great point. I just want so much more for Alma and I want so much more for her characterization because I was taken with the fantastic acting. And Anderson made the movie before the #metoo movement exploded this Fall. Does he get a pass because of that? I do think it’s a good thing if male writers feel pressured in the future to be more sensitive to the stories and perspectives of women in their writing. Or hell, just #morefemalefilmmakersinhollywo odgettingfunding.

I don't see how he needs a pass, really. Of all the characters in the movie, the perspective is weighted most strongly towards her and she gets the lion's share of whatever sympathy there is to be had. But she isn't simply and easily sympathetic. She's not a role model and she's not meant to be. She's flawed, confused and caught up in his delusions. A large part of #metoo is about shedding light on dysfunctional gender dynamics, so the notion that it would dissuade us from depicting a character like her or a relationship like theirs seems to speak right past the movie and the movement.

Their motivations aren't always easy suss out, but that's late-PTA's mushroom omelette. He likes characters with ambiguous, contradictory psychologies and weird dependencies. He likes throwing them into charged moments where they aren't clear to each other or even themselves, where little accidents in the performance carry a lot more weight and, I'm guessing, surprise him. This might leave the audience in an uncomfortable lurch, but that's the omelette. We might not ever fully know why she stays with him, but we might not ever fully know any number of people who end up in any number of weird relationships. Still, we know enough to make our way around, and when she does something we wouldn't have expected and that we don't want from her, that's a sign that we're pushed out of the boxes we've made for her to make a more comfortable, consumable person. That she stays with him after the disastrous dinner she plans for them is ridiculous to us, but it's revealing of her character and of the unhealthy investment she has in the myth of Woodcock and in her picture of what their relationship could be. By the time she escalates the situation into full-bore psychopathology, it's clear she'll do whatever she can to make him vulnerable and dependent. Even if that was the extent of understanding her character (and I don't necessarily think it is), that would still be ok by me.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Most interesting element of this film is how I wasn't too invested in Alma initially because the film really only saw her through the prism of Woodcock, but then, as the film develops, she gains more and more agency and becomes a formidable "opponent."

Her motivations seemed to be the pursuit of a man who can be intimate and free-spirited, and she's fallen for someone uniquely incapable of that. He's so fussy and precise that he's emotionally stifling and borderline unreachable - it's only after she takes the surprising step of drugging him that he starts to open to her. There's a weird thing going on here, where they can't love each other as they are, so instead they're agreeing to a sort of seesaw game where she endures his emotional distance until it's time for him, drugged, to endure her love. Which makes this a suspense film for a time, as you wonder how far their warring emotions will take them, before finally settling on a sort of mutual manipulation. It's all very sad, that this is the closest they can get to intimacy. It's more like they've found ways to paint loving murals of each other on the psychological walls they've erected.

Sure, the major touchstone is Hitchcock, with the seeming nods to Rebecca, Notorious, and Psycho (the peephole, the mother issues) - there's also going to be a lot of Vertigo in a story where two people are trying to "make" the other person into a lover they can accept. But this operates on its own wavelength, exploring the quiet emotional tensions of the relationship while skipping the more obvious potential thrills. For all the talk of his earlier work having more youthful vigor (and a more outsized indebtedness to his favorite directors), PTA seems to be proudly forging toward his own sort of style, a combination of classic Hollywood formalism (those lush cross-fades, those wide masters) and a more European satisfaction in simply studying his characters (people mentioned Kieslowski - not a bad call at all).

A fantastic film, either way.

[FUCK, I'm so stupid, the screener started replaying while I was typing, and I saw her name "Alma" on the note, and duhhhr, of course it's Alma, the name of Hitchcock's wife. God. I'm just happy I was able to notice this on my own - it sorta broke my heart when other people had to point out to me that the hero in Get Out saved the day by picking cotton.]

[Rico]

I found this incredibly boring and I still can't figure out why anyone likes this drivel. It must be because of the big names attached. These guys are geniuses, everything they do must be great, right?

[Dead & Messed Up]

I found this incredibly boring and I still can't figure out why anyone likes this drivel. It must be because of the big names attached. These guys are geniuses, everything they do must be great, right?

Why would you antagonize viewers instead of the film?

[Peng]

Funny to read that too because his last film Inherent Vice has double (triple?) the big names and it's received in much more mixed way, with many saying it's one of PTA's worst (me included).

[Rico]

Why would you antagonize viewers instead of the film?

My inner Woodcock got the best of me.

[Milky Joe]

I found this incredibly boring and I still can't figure out why anyone likes this drivel. It must be because of the big names attached. These guys are geniuses, everything they do must be great, right?

Wow, you figured it out. What a stunning insight.

Anyway, I posted it in another thread but this is a great technical discussion about the film with PTA and Alan Parker: