Phantom Thread

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Phantom Thread
Phantom Thread.png
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Written byPaul Thomas Anderson
Produced by
Starring
Edited by Dylan Tichenor
Music by Jonny Greenwood
Production
companies
Distributed by
Release dates
  • December 11, 2017 (2017-12-11)(Walter Reade Theater)
  • December 25, 2017 (2017-12-25)(United States)
Running time
130 minutes [2]
CountryUnited States [3]
LanguageEnglish
Budget$35 million [4]
Box office$47.8 million [5]

Phantom Thread is a 2017 American romantic period drama film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. It stars Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps, and Lesley Manville, and follows an haute couture dressmaker in 1950s London who takes a young waitress as his muse. [6] It is Day-Lewis's most recent film to date. [7] [8] The film is the first Anderson film shot outside the United States, with principal photography beginning in January 2017 in Lythe, England. It is Anderson's second collaboration with Day-Lewis, after There Will Be Blood (2007), and his fourth collaboration with composer Jonny Greenwood.

Contents

Phantom Thread premiered in New York City on December 11, 2017, and was theatrically released in the U.S. two weeks later. [9] It received acclaim for its acting, screenplay, direction, musical score, costume design, and production values. The National Board of Review chose it as one of the top ten films of 2017, [10] and it is widely considered one of the best films of the 2010s. [11] [12]

At the 90th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director for Anderson, Best Actor for Day-Lewis, Best Supporting Actress for Manville, and Best Original Score for Greenwood; it won for Best Costume Design. It also earned four nominations at the 71st British Academy Film Awards, winning for Best Costume Design, [13] and received two Golden Globe nominations. [14]

Plot

In 1954 London, fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock creates dresses for members of high society, including royalty. His clients view him as a genius whose creations enable them to become their best selves, but his creativity and charm are matched by his obsessive and controlling personality. Cyril, his sister, manages his fashion house's day-to-day operations and tries to protect him from anything that might distract him from his work. The superstitious Reynolds is haunted by their mother's death and often stitches hidden messages into the linings of the dresses he makes.

After designing a new gown for a revered client, Lady Harding, Reynolds visits a restaurant near his country house and meets a foreign waitress, Alma Elson. She accepts his invitation to dinner. Their relationship blossoms, and she moves in with him, becoming his model, muse, and lover. Cyril initially mistrusts Alma but comes to respect her willfulness and determination.

At first, Alma enjoys being part of Reynolds's work, but he proves aloof, hard to please, and finicky; as a result, they start to bicker. When Alma tries to show her love for Reynolds by surprising him with a romantic dinner, he lashes out, calling it an "ambush" and questioning her motive. Alma retaliates by poisoning his tea with wild mushrooms gathered outside the country house. As he readies a wedding gown for a Belgian princess, Reynolds collapses, damaging the dress and forcing his staff to work all night to repair it. He becomes gravely ill and has hallucinations of his mother. Alma stays by his side, nursing him back to health.

After Reynolds recovers, he tells Alma that a house that does not change "is a dead house" and asks her to marry him. Taken aback, she hesitates, but then accepts. After a honeymoon in Switzerland, Reynolds and Alma start bickering again as Reynolds's domineering personality reasserts itself. Cyril tells Reynolds that Lady Harding is now a client at a rival fashion house and suggests that his classic, conservative designs may be going out of style. Reynolds blames Alma for upending his routines, saying she doesn't fit in and has turned him and Cyril against each other. Alma overhears him.

At the country house, Alma makes Reynolds an omelet poisoned with the same mushrooms as before. As he chews his first bite, she informs him that she wants him weak and vulnerable, then strong again after she has taken care of him. Reynolds realizes the omelet is poisoned, but ostentatiously swallows the bite and tells her to kiss him before he is sick. As he lies ill again, Alma imagines their future with children, a rich social life, and a bigger role for her in the dressmaking business. She acknowledges that while there are challenges ahead, their love and their complementary needs can overcome them.

Cast

Production

Anderson became interested in the fashion industry after reading about designer Cristóbal Balenciaga. [18] Reynolds Woodcock's obsessive fastidiousness is loosely inspired by English-American fashion designer Charles James. [19] Daniel Day-Lewis, a method actor, spent a year learning dressmaking from Marc Happel in preparation for the role. He gained enough skill to enable him to recreate an iconic Balenciaga dress. [20]

Filming

Principal photography began in late January 2017 in Lythe, England, United Kingdom, [21] [22] with a number of other locations in the North York Moors also featuring, including Robin Hood's Bay and Staithes. [23] Filming also took place at Owlpen Manor in the Cotswolds [24] and in the London neighbourhood of Fitzrovia, in Fitzroy Square, and in Grafton Mews. [25] Woodcock drives a maroon Bristol 405 in the film. [26] Filming also took place at the Grandhotel Giessbach, Brienz, Switzerland, Lake Brienz, and Brienzer Rothorn. The New Year's Eve party was filmed at the Blackpool Tower ballroom with approximately 500 supporting artistes. [27]

Cinematography

It was reported in June 2017 that Anderson himself would serve as the film's cinematographer, because Robert Elswit, his frequent collaborator for cinematography, was working on Nightcrawler . Michael Bauman, who previously worked as Anderson and Elswit's gaffer, was credited as the "lighting cameraman". Anderson and Bauman pushed their 35 mm film stock and filled its frames with "theatrical haze" to "dirty up" their look; according to Bauman, "One of the first things [Paul] said was, 'Look, this cannot look like The Crown . That was a big thing. When people think of a period movie it becomes this beautifully polished, amazingly photographed—I mean, The Crown looks beautiful—but super clean, gorgeous light, and he was clear it couldn't look like that." [28]

Soundtrack

The soundtrack is by Jonny Greenwood, who previously worked with Anderson on the soundtracks for There Will Be Blood (2007), The Master (2012), and Inherent Vice (2014). It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score, Greenwood's first Academy Award nomination. [29] The soundtrack features prominently in the film, with nearly ninety minutes of music during the film's 130-minute runtime. [30] [31]

Reception

Box office

Phantom Thread grossed $21.2 million in the U.S. and Canada and $26.6 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $47.8 million, against a production budget of $35 million. [5]

After three weeks in limited release, where it made $2.8 million, the film was added to 834 theaters on January 19, 2018 (for a total of 896), and grossed $3.8 million over the weekend, finishing 12th at the box office. [32] The next weekend, after the announcement of its six Oscar nominations, and having added 125 theaters, the film grossed $2.9 million. [33]

Critical response

Daniel Day Lewis 26 May 2013.jpg
Leslie Manville (cropped).jpg
The performances of Daniel Day-Lewis and Lesley Manville garnered critical acclaim, earning them Academy Award nominations for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress respectively.

Phantom Thread received widespread critical acclaim. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 91%, based on 358 reviews, with an average rating of 8.5/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Phantom Thread's finely woven narrative is filled out nicely by humor, intoxicating romantic tension, and yet another impressively committed performance from Daniel Day-Lewis." [34] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 90 out of 100, based on 51 critics' reviews. [35]

The A.V. Club 's A.A. Dowd gave the film an A−, calling it a "charitable and even poignantly hopeful take on the subject [of being in a relationship with an artist]" and writing, "in the simple, refined timelessness of its technique, Phantom Thread is practically a love letter to classic aesthetic values—cinematic, sartorial, or otherwise". [36] The Observer critic Mark Kermode gave the film five stars out of five, calling it "a deftly spun yarn" and praising Day-Lewis's performance, calling his role a "perfect fit [in a] beautifully realised tale of 50s haute couture". [37]

Christy Lemire of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association placed the film second on her list of the ten best films of 2017, calling it "captivating" and "one of Paul Thomas Anderson's absolute best" and singling out Greenwood's score as "intoxicating". [38] Michael Wood, for the London Review of Books , wrote that the film unsuccessfully references other gothic films such as Rebecca from the 1940s. He also wrote: "Can we imagine a long future for this couple? The film can, and does, but the picture is so hackneyed—pram, baby, walk in the park—that it has to be a dream, or an irony." [39]

Top ten lists

Phantom Thread was on many critics' top ten lists for 2017. [40]

Accolades

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Film releases". Variety Insight . Variety Media. Archived from the original on December 23, 2017. Retrieved December 23, 2017.
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  3. ↑ "Phantom Thread (2017)". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved December 2, 2017.
  4. ↑ Hooton, Christopher (March 31, 2017). "Paul Thomas Anderson's next film with Daniel Day-Lewis gets release date". The Independent . Archived from the original on February 14, 2018. Retrieved October 26, 2017.
  5. 1 2 "Phantom Thread (2017)". Box Office Mojo . IMDb. Archived from the original on July 6, 2018. Retrieved September 23, 2018.
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  7. ↑ Vincent, Alice (June 21, 2017). "Phantom Thread: everything you need to know about Daniel Day-Lewis' final film". The Daily Telegraph . Archived from the original on June 23, 2018. Retrieved July 21, 2017.
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  19. ↑ Sharma, Jeena (April 25, 2018). "A brief history of Charles James, the designer who inspired Phantom Thread". Interview . Archived from the original on December 6, 2018. Retrieved December 5, 2018.
  20. ↑ Moss, Jack (February 2, 2018). "The Real-Life Couturiers Who Inspired Phantom Thread". AnOther . Retrieved January 20, 2022.
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  31. ↑ Sharf, Zack (December 17, 2017). "Jonny Greenwood's 'Phantom Thread' Original Score is Used in Nearly 70% of the Movie". IndieWire. Archived from the original on April 10, 2021. Retrieved September 5, 2020.
  32. ↑ D'Alessandro, Anthony (January 21, 2018). "January Slows As 'Jumanji' Takes No. 1 For 3rd Weekend With $19M To $20M; Older Guy Pics '12 Strong' & 'Den of Thieves' In Mid-Teens". Deadline Hollywood . Archived from the original on January 21, 2018. Retrieved January 21, 2018.
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