Daniel Day Lewis - Phantom Thread [318 points / 28 votes]
“Maybe he’s the most demanding man." – Alma (Vicky Krieps) speaking, of course, about sought-after dress designer Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) near the beginning (but really, near the end) of Phantom Thread
“Alma is speaking to someone, who will eventually be revealed as a doctor, about her exacting, exasperating, mysterious husband, but as the doctor remains off-screen for the moment she might just as easily be speaking to us, laying down in loving, unforgiving terms the groundwork for our eventual acceptance or rejection of Woodcock’s insular manner, his refusal to compromise, either in his celebrated sartorial vision or the minutiae of daily procedure that seems to be his tether to self-expression, to his minimalist articulation of emotion, to sanity itself. And Day-Lewis, always a generous receptacle into which his characters can be poured, molded, and realized with an acuity and commitment rare among modern movie actors, could perhaps himself be described in a similarly evocative, inquisitive, slightly awestruck fashion.
“Yet I’ve actually heard some people, perhaps those who hold in high regard Day-Lewis’s three Oscar-winning turns, as well as his Hawkeye in Michael Mann’s superb rendition of The Last of the Mohicans (1992), describe Day-Lewis in Phantom Thread, in what he has hinted will be his final movie performance, as, well, boring. Yes, in comparison to his relatively ostentatious appearances in in My Left Foot (1989), There Will Be Blood (2007) and Lincoln (2012), Day-Lewis’ Reynolds Woodcock is certainly subdued. But boring? Perhaps only if you’re disengaged from the entire movie. However, those who find themselves caught up in the hushed, meticulously structured routine and the underlying tension woven into the fabric of the film by writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, are magnetized by the confidence with which Day-Lewis draws his audience in. Every glance up from a sketch pad and over glasses, every hitched breath, prepares the table for the expected histrionics which, gratifyingly, never come in quite the timbre, the pattern, the timing in which we feel prepared to receive them.
“For me, the height of the movie’s emotional pitch arrives in a moment so off-rhythm and cloaked in reserve that it might be easy to miss. Reynolds, beginning the long, measured process of unveiling himself to Alma during a phase of what could be described as mannered infatuation, turns his reticent, reedy voice to the subject of his late, revered mother, a persistent ghost whose presence is ever felt, yet never quite so much comforting as unsettling. Her eerie silence is, for Woodcock, a terrible barrier, a measure of unattainable perfection for the designer who fears his work will never fill the void created by her absence. To Alma he hints at secrets which he routinely incorporates into the very fabric of his clothes, invocations and bits of physical memory sewn into the lining which make them unique to their owner. He then reveals that a lock of his mother’s hair has been hidden in the breast of his own jacket, and in doing so he hitches and swallows, interrupting but for an almost-imperceptible moment the flow of the confession. It’s a perfectly modulated moment from the actor, one that barely moves the ‘Acting!’ needle but somehow still registers an earthquake’s worth of character truth and mystery, and it’s as moving as anything on Day-Lewis’s Oscar résumé.
“If Phantom Thread does turn out to be Day-Lewis’s final film, then Anderson seems well intent on drawing Woodcock’s character in terms that also reflect on the intent and character of his lead actor. In addition to Alma’s framing observation near the film’s beginning, we also hear Alma say of Woodcock, ‘When you love your work, you can give like he does.’ Then later, when the pressures of reconciling his relentless work pace with the intangible, yet paralyzing yearning for romantic fulfillment which he can barely articulate begins to wear him down, she observes, ‘Sometimes it’s good for him to slow down his steps a little,’ knowing well the plans she herself has devised which will bring their relationship into full, twisted bloom. It’s difficult to hear these expressions and not think of Day-Lewis as well, a mercurially tempered, Method-precise actor who has decided that it’s time in his life to turn away from that which has brought him and his audiences so much reward and toward a life of carpentry and other pursuits involving the craft of his hands as well as his heart.
“Many of those fans of Day-Lewis’ film work, in admiring his achievements, have also expressed a somewhat imperious selfishness when contemplating his imminent retirement: How could he do this to us? And again, in Phantom Thread Reynolds Woodcock seems to address both the pressures of delivering couture to the exacting denizens of London society in the 1950s and the ambivalence interlacing the conviction of Day-Lewis to forever step away from the spotlight: ‘I think it’s the assumptions and expectations of others that cause heartache.’
“To what degree Anderson and Day-Lewis have consciously conceived of Phantom Thread as the actor’s last hurrah is unknowable, but Day-Lewis’s announcement of retirement, which came before filming began, and our awareness of it as an audience, certainly colors the experience of seeing the performance. And it’s profoundly satisfying to see the actor meld more with the director’s physical and spiritual vision for the film than stand apart from and somehow above it, in the manner which has brought him such a bounty of previous glory. But really, if this is the last we see of Day-Lewis as professional inhabitant of his characters’ fantasies, nightmares and obsessions, it’s hard to imagine a more resonant way to bring down the curtain.
“After all, Phantom Thread provides this meticulous craftsman, this artist among journeymen, an exeunt informed by an elegant, piercing rumination on meticulous craftsmanship, sending him off into a new life of an entirely different sort of scrupulous and painstaking accomplishment. It’s a pursuit which is honored by his embodiment of Reynolds Woodcock, the artist as mad scientist, demanding lover, uncompromising visionary, emotional cripple, and Anderson rewards him with the most passionately optimistic, yet peerlessly perverse conclusion of any in the director’s oeuvre. When Woodcock pleads to Alma, ‘Kiss me, my girl, before I get sick,’ it’s an anticipatory consummation of passion that signals moving from a plane of controlled, yet unsatisfying pleasures to a new realm where fulfillment will come with much more private, personal intensity, an adventure that may be understood entirely only by the one embarking upon it. On those terms, and among a symphony of deepening shadow and softening light radiating from Anderson’s palette, Daniel Day-Lewis creates in Phantom Thread a most exquisitely realized swansong.” ~ Dennis Cozzalio
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