PHANTOM THREAD: Paul Tomas Anderson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Fifties London

Haha

Woke is good and all but yr gonna have a bad time with a lot of good art if characters are disagreeable to you and not, like, sufficiently shamed or something.

(Haven’t seen this, want to)

Thanks to both Eazy and VG for the Dior and I doc -- we just watched it here and both loved it. It is an interesting complement to be sure, obviously not exact, but the idea again of female labor as a strong link throughout both films, in different ways is especially great. The lifers were all amazing.

Though talk about how things turn on a dime when the full runway/premiere happens and who's noticeable in the front row in one room? Harvey Weinstein. (With Sharon Stone two seats away.)

oof forgot abt that

Poison mushroom omelette made me hungry

Great movie!

I enjoyed this - much funnier than I expected. And I liked how early on Alma was the barometer for the rest of us like, yeah these ppl are WEIRD af... for a while at least lol

So much toast! Made me hungry. And her noisemaking -biting the spoon while eating her cereal, the dramatic water pouring, DDL’s imma kill u glares, it all made me looool so much

Definitely glad I saw Dior & I - as discussed it is highly recommended for anyone who is interested in the mechanics. it’s a very good reference point for the inner workings of the atelier - the Dior atelier is almost identical to Woodcock! Crazy how so little of the traditions have changed over so many decades.

I would like to see it again

The costume designer interview Morbs posted upthread is fascinating

I thought it was so bitingly accurate that Woodcock would rail against “chic” because you do see that he is a little bit more traditional/old fashioned with his lace and that velvet caped gown from the opening. Not that the dresses arent gorgeous but they aren’t very “young”, his style seems more stately.

Bought a copy of the Balenciaga bio, I’m curious now

also this made me laugh

ME: A Welsh rarebit, with a poached egg on top -- not too runny -- bacon, scones... butter... cream... jam -- not strawberry. What else?
BURGER KING DRIVE-THRU: [inaudible]

— Vichy Thought Leader (@i_zzzzzz) January 20, 2018

Also good

when you tell me there’s only digital and vinyl and no CD release. pic.twitter.com/E5IiikhRMK

— Bruce Levenstein (@BruceLevenstein) January 22, 2018

lol

Saw this a few days after stomach flu ravaged my home, so the way illness affects the dynamics of a relationship was already on my mind. Movie resonated a lot, heightened as it is.

I loved this movie so much.

There are very few moments in cinema I’ve found as oddly satisfying as “kiss me my girl before I’m sick again.”

I talked to a couple that owns a gay NYC bar last night... they HAAATED it! One fell asleep.

mr veg wasnt impressed. he said everyone in the movie needed a slap. (he’s not wrong, lol)

no way. both alma and cyril were highly sympathetic. and so was woodcock in the end. deep down he wanted the little tyranny he created to be dismantled.

I like how the whole movie felt poised on the edge of creepiness and disaster, and you know that it is all going to boil over in one way or another, and then it does, but in a way that—while weird—brings everything to a satisfying revolution. just a very well crafted narrative

*resolution.

But Alma also does enact a revolution in the household. There are definitely ways to read this as a political allegory.

look i loved the movie but these arent great people. they’re sympathetic inside their selfmade terrarium but outside in the workd they’re basically assholes of varying degrees
woodcock is a fussy selfinvolved dick
cyril is a codependent control freak
alma = munchausen’s by proxy

I like how the whole movie felt poised on the edge of creepiness and disaster, and you know that it is all going to boil over in one way or another, and then it does, but in a way that—while weird—brings everything to a satisfying revolution. just a very well crafted narrative

― treeship 2, Sunday, January 21, 2018 10:59 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes, very refreshing & uncommon tweak on the audience, was a very surprising narrative pinch/twist imo. they're happy together!

look i loved the movie but these arent great people. they’re sympathetic inside their selfmade terrarium but outside in the workd they’re basically assholes of varying degrees
woodcock is a fussy selfinvolved dick
cyril is a codependent control freak
alma = munchausen’s by proxy

Completely and exactly. Like it was nice that it wasn’t another rote examination of the Freudian underpinnings of obsessive maybe genius, but nowhere in that film was anyone who deserved a second glance. Not visiting that London house full of people consumed with dressmaking for the unappreciative classes.

Idk y’all seems to me PTA’s real into the travails of difficult people trying to connect with each other, there’s no monsters in this movie.

Reynolds is coddled and protected from the world by Cyril (and privileged by birth? It’s hard to say) but as he says to Barbara Rose, his place is in the house. Dual in a way to PSH in The Master, he’s loved after a fashion by those who come to see him, but that love is instrumental and conditional upon uh literal fashion. It’s hard to live in the world, and relatable to want to live at a remove from it, if you can be taken care of.

/night thoughts

Agreed, fully.

But: discursively closed narratives of creation (an app, a dress) have been ruined for me by life and TED talks. It’s an old, shitty take that some people are safest with the four walls, roof and a floor that they insist is the root of their success. Hammering that nail vis-à-vis beauty (as opposed to something like Jem Cohen’s Museum Hours where beauty is a public good) in this film seemed captivating while watching, briefly chin stroky afterwards and then just sort of curious: like why would you dedicate such talent to telling these people’s inner lives when Kelly Reichardt can make a film like Certain Women which contains beauty and the insistence of how a life had to be lived in nearly a dozen more ways? Afterward it felt cheap from a psychological standpoint and slick as candy.

I’ve never seen a film which portrays misophonia (which generally manifests in feelings of knife sharp rage when hearing others eat — though all sounds are game) and that was nice. It’s hard with a partner to explain that no, I do have to leave the room if you want popcorn. Otherwise I won’t be who I am.

But everyone has a difficult life. I love nurses; coddling should only be infrequent enough for it to matter.

But the film suggests that this hermetic existence is coming to some kind of end too as shifting fashion trends (the dreaded "chic") affect dressmakers like Woodcock.

I don't care about stuff made exclusively for rich fucks. But the singer not the song etc.

cyril is a codependent control freak

I could do a "chic" rant on "codependent"...

Do it

too much work

I mostly eyerolled my way through this piece on "straightwashing" via Woodcock, but hey, it's David Ehrenstein. I think it's way more ambiguous than what he extracts from it.

http://gaycitynews.nyc/heterosexualitys-phantom-stalking/

Rolled my eyes as promised

finally saw this, disagree w/ alfred that the mother stuff was unnecessary, my friend and I laughed regularly all the way through, with the audience only joining in around the halfway mark

It didn't hurt the film, it just added nothing to what we learn about Woodcock (besides giving PTA an excuse to film a handsome ghost scene). I don't like Freudian claptrap.

idk without DDL's bedridden breakdown I doubt I'd have had even the slighrst whiff of sympathy for Reynolds at all (even if it was mostly just pity)

it's a crime that Krieps didn't get nominated along w/ Manville and DDL

Agreed.

I didn't like anybody onscreen, which is fine because I dislike 98 percent of the people I watch or read about. But the film is sharp about the delusions of men who experiment with the feelings of women but expect solitude to work on their art.

yeah absolutely

the score was unbelievable

My friend who I saw it the first time with remarked that at his much less full second viewing the laughter was much more tentative than when we saw it in a full house. It’s a funny movie!

i heard more laughs at this than at ladybird.

i was howlin ever 90 seconds

maybe they should have ditched jonny greenwood for theme to curb your enthusiasm.

My review of the blasted thing

This was very much worth the long drive to see it.

If your friends are chic
Consider yourself unique

I didn't know/notice PTA ws his own cinematographer. It looked frequently stunning, especially in the party venue.

Although there is no credited DP, he has disputed that he did the job. I don't know whether that's just lip service to please the guild or not.

(if he wanted to be 'recognized' presumably he wd've used a pseudonym a la Soderbergh)

agree with alf about mother stuff, except i don't know how to make sense of the ending without it

yeah strenuously denied being DP p strenuously in the interview morbs posted

denied it strenuously even

saw it again tonite. went by really quickly. it's a very simple, contained, small story. lesley manville is so good.

more interviews

“Anyone who has been in a relationship for a long time will notice that the balance of power can change very quickly. I had Rebecca in my mind and another great film called The Passionate Friends. My feeling about Rebecca is that I wish Joan Fontaine [’s character] would have turned to Laurence Olivier [’s character] at some point and said ‘enough’…I wish she had poisoned him,” the director joked...

...
"The kind of thing you write down is like ‘a man and a woman’, ‘a love story’, and then ‘sister?’ You write down a lot of stuff with a question mark next to it – that’s a great indication of when an idea is starting to come together. It’s funny, when you read other stories about other writers and you realise you’re not alone when you see notes in margins and on script pages, where these guys are doing the exact same thing as you. Asking yourself questions is always a good way to start building a story. So I kept adding to this idea of a strong man who gets sick and the woman in his life who recognises that in that illness he is sweet and vulnerable and in need of her. And then it all happened so quickly, which is such a good feeling. But there’s always half-baked stories kicking around somewhere."

https://www.screendaily.com/news/daniel-day-lewis-reveals-what-he-likes-most-about-working-with-paul-thomas-anderson/5126049.article

http://lwlies.com/interviews/paul-thomas-anderson-phantom-thread/

There’s an interesting link between The Master and this film I think.

I think so too. That wasn’t evident to me initially but there’s something in the bizarre central relationship between the protagonists. That push and pull, that intense dynamic between two people who have a great amount of affection for one another but find it hard to communicate. Yeah, chalk that up to ‘bag of tricks: limited’.

I don't mind returning to that particular well at all.