PHANTOM THREAD: rapturous and witty

PHANTOM THREAD

Phantom Thread, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, is Paul Thomas Anderson’s rapturously beautiful and unexpectedly witty story of a strong-willed man and two equally strong-willed women.

Reynolds (Day-Lewis) is a dressmaker to the rich and famous in 1950s London.  His unmarried sister Cyril (Lesley Manvilla) runs their home and takes care of business affairs.  On a foray to a provincial resort cafe, Reynolds is taken by the breakfast waitress Alma (Vivky Krieps), and brings her back to London with him.  Barely tolerated at first by Cyril, Alma becomes Reynold’s muse – until she isn’t.

In the movie’s first two minutes, Anderson establishes Alma as vibrant, Reynolds as fastidious and Cyril as commanding.  Phantom Thread is about the three characters’ relative power in the interpersonal relationships.  Alma starts at the very bottom, but changes the power balance in a quite novel way.

Daniel Day-Lewis creates a wonderfully watchable character in Reynolds.  He uses his creativity as an excuse for license to get his way in every regard.  Cyril indulges Reynolds and keeps him in a cocoon.  He says that a distraction at breakfast can ruin his productivity for an entire day.  Anderson heightens the volume of breakfast noises to show how grating the sound of buttering toast is to Reynolds.  It’s very funny.

Reynolds is so obsessive that, when he brings a date back to his place, he DRESSES her instead of undressing her.

The formidable Cyril is as chilly as February in the Yukon.  She is a woman of very few words, but her cutting observations and acid reactions are very, very funny.  The great actress Lesley Manville gets the most out of very brief lines – and, often, a mere silent look.  Manville’s performance is reason enough to see Phantom Thread.

The Luxembourgian actress Krieps (never thought I would write the adjective Luxembourgian) has received much critical buzz.  She is adequate as Alma, but I wouldn’t cross the street to see her next movie.

Reynolds adorns women in impressive dresses throughout Phantom Thread – the costume design is stellar. Anderson’s frequent collaborator, Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead, supplies a beautiful score.  The total effect of visual imagery and music is opulent, so opulent as to remind me of Max Ophuls’ The Earrings of Madame de… and Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard.

I saw Phantom Thread at a special SFFILM screening (70mm print!) with Paul Thomas Anderson in attendance.  Anderson said that he set out to make a gothic romance like Hitchcock’s Rebecca.   The kernel of the story was a strong-willed man who becomes nicer when laid low by illness – and his wife prefers him that way.  Anderson said that he was further inspired by the period British films The Passionate Friends and I Know Where I’m Going.

In a very nice touch, Anderson dedicated Phantom Thread to his late friend, the director Jonathan Demme.

Phantom Thread is a beautiful and witty film – one of the best of 2018

Lincoln: Spielberg introduces us to Lincoln the man

At the moment of Abraham Lincoln’s death, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, standing at the foot of Lincoln’s bed, said “Now he belongs to the ages”.  Indeed, Lincoln became immortalized as moral icon, martyr and master of language (all of which he was).  But, because we didn’t see Lincoln campaign and govern on the nightly television news (or even on newsreels), there has been no popular familiarity with Lincoln in the flesh.  With Lincoln, Steven Spielberg has pushed aside the marble statue and re-introduced us Lincoln the man.

The great actor Daniel Day-Lewis becomes the man Lincoln.  We see him as the genius of political strategy who is always several moves ahead of the other players.  We see him as the pragmatist who will do what is necessary to accomplish his goals.  We see him fondly cajoling his wife but gingerly avoiding her outbursts.  We see him as a complex father – grieving one son, doting to a second, distant to another.  And we see Lincoln as a very funny guy –  both a master communicator who tells anecdotes to make his point and a raconteur who enjoys laughing at his own bawdy stories.  Day-Lewis brings all of these aspects to life in a great performance.

Besides Day-Lewis, Tommy Lee Jones, as a key Congressional leader, and James Spader, as a political fixer, get the best lines.  Sally Field is perfectly cast as Mary Todd Lincoln.  Bruce McGill, David Straithern, Hal Holbrook, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jared Harris (Mad Men) and Jackie Earle Haley (Little Children) are all excellent, too.

Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner chose to focus on the few months at the end of the Civil War when Lincoln was trying to get Congress to pass the 13th Amendment to ban slavery.   Lincoln knew that, once the Civil War ended, his earlier Emancipation Proclamation was unlikely to withstand legal and political challenges and act to permanently ban slavery.  He also gauged that passage of the 13th Amendment was only viable before the end of the war, which was within sight.  His only recourse was to try to rush a successful vote over both the obstructionism of the opposing party and attempted sabotage by the Confederacy while both wings of his own party refused to join in collaboration.  It’s a horse race.

So we have a political thriller – one of the best depictions of American legislative politics ever on film.  Lincoln retains a team of lobbyists played by Tim Blake Nelson, John Hawkes and Spader.  These guys know that appealing to the principles of the targeted Congressmen is not going to get enough votes, so they enthusiastically plunge into less high minded tactics.  Spader’s character operates with unmatched gusto and is one of the highlights of the movie.  Lincoln’s lawyerly parsing of a note to Congress would put Bill Clinton to shame.

All of this really happened.  Lincoln, based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s absorbing Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, is utterly historically accurate. Lincoln buffs will especially appreciate small touches like Lincoln’s pet name for his wife, Stanton’s aversion to Lincoln’s endless stream of anecdotes, Thaddeus Stevens’ wig, Ben Wade’s scowl, Lincoln’s secretaries (the White House staff) sharing a bed and the never ending flood of favor-seekers outside the door of the President’s White House office.  I think that Mary Lincoln is portrayed a bit too sympathetically, but that’s a tiny quibble.  One more fun note:  the 1860s were to male facial hair what the 1970s were to apparel – a period when everyone could make the most flamboyant fashion choices, mostly for the worse.

Lincoln is one of the year’s best films, and like Lincoln himself, timeless.

Trailer for Spielberg’s Lincoln

Here’s the trailer for Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln with Daniel Day-Lewis. It’s based on Doris Kearn Goodwin’s absorbing Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.  The film will be released on November 9.

The brilliant cast also includes Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Jared Harris, Jackie Earle Haley, Hal Holbrook, Sally Field, John Hawkes, James Spader, Bruce McGill, David Straithern, Tim Blake Nelson, Walton Goggins (Justified) and Dakin Mathews (the horse trader in True Grit).

Because Lincoln’s prose is so exquisitely profound and because he is such an icon, he is often played on screen with a deep speaking voice.  In fact, Lincoln’s voice ranged high, and I enjoy hearing Day-Lewis capturing that characteristic in the middle and end of this trailer.

For Presidents’ Day: the Lincoln movie

Daniel Day-Lewis in LINCOLN

In late December, we’ll see a movie about perhaps the greatest American made by perhaps our greatest filmmaker.    Steven Spielberg is directing Lincoln, based on Doris Kearn Goodwin’s absorbing Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field play the Lincolns.  The dazzling cast includes Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Jared Harris, Jackie Earle Haley, Hal Holbrook, John Hawkes, James Spader, Bruce McGill, David Straithern, Tim Blake Nelson, Walton Goggins (Justified) and Dakin Mathews (the horse trader in True Grit).

10 Best Prison Movies

So how does A Prophet stack up against other films in that time honored genre – the Prison Movie? Can a French film rank high among the Alcatraz, Sing Sing and Folsom fare?

My top ten includes familiar themes – the fact-based stories, the great escape attempts, the characters who resist the oppressive authority and those who work the system to become crime bosses.  Plus Death Row.  My list includes American penitentiaries, British, French and Turkish prisons, enemy POW camps and Southern chain gangs.  But some of the best known prison movies do NOT make the cut.

Edward James Olmos, Pepe Serna and William Forsythe in a very under rated prison movie

See my list of 10 Best Prison Movies.