Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

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mfunk9786
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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#176 Post by mfunk9786 » Wed Dec 13, 2017 12:47 pm


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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#177 Post by hearthesilence » Wed Dec 13, 2017 12:52 pm

HAH! I wondered if the name was meant to be a joke. Half the time I heard or saw it, I thought of this.

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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#178 Post by mfunk9786 » Wed Dec 13, 2017 1:15 pm

I'm sure there are horror stories I just haven't heard - but what a lovely guy to read an interview with. Loved the bit about the films he needs to catch up with this year, and the effusive praise for Kirsten Dunst.

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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#179 Post by FrauBlucher » Thu Dec 14, 2017 9:56 am

I saw this last night. I really enjoyed this. The three stars' performances are just amazing. Vicky Krieps clearly holds her own with Lewis and Manville which is not easy to do. Btw... for those not familiar with Manville will see why Anderson wanted her. I won't say anymore as to not want to spoil anything.


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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#181 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Dec 18, 2017 1:18 pm



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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#183 Post by FrauBlucher » Sun Dec 24, 2017 3:28 pm

If you haven't seen it yet... stay away...A.O. Scott's review

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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#184 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Dec 26, 2017 12:30 pm

Oh, here it is! After Inherent Vice, all I could think (and still do, though my feelings on that film have warmed the way one might acquire a taste for a strong blue cheese) was that I missed PT Anderson's signature sense of experimental adventure within very formal confines. His first objective is always to make a film very well, and then to play as much as possible within that framework without breaking the yolk (I must be hungry). That film belies more than a little bit of discomfort with adapting the work of someone who doesn't necessarily write the way Anderson does, telling a story that is not tidy in the way that his films are always so wonderfully tidy. And it is reflected in his direction, which is disappointing if one goes in totally sold on his methods - it's becoming clearer and clearer that he's one of cinema's great living [or...?] auteurs, after all. If nothing else, Phantom Thread is a reminder that Anderson still has so much that he wants to show us, and he's just as breathless about it as that kid who made Boogie Nights was, if not moreso. It's a gigantic source of relief from a career perspective that just happens to be a deliciously frayed nerve from... every other perspective.

Despite its very elegant advertising, Phantom Thread finds Anderson in a similarly demented place as Punch-Drunk Love. But instead of drawing upon Sandler's emotionally complicated escapist fare, this film is far more influenced by classics that explore the uglier side of human relationships, like Rebecca, Séance on a Wet Afternoon, and Gaslight - so much so that I am kind of shocked that this film isn't in black and white just for the sake of being able to be seamlessly slid next to them in some kind of genre pantheon years from now (the wife suggests that it's likely because the clothes are too captivating to stomp on with greyscale). Daniel Day-Lewis' Reynolds Woodcock may be Anderson's first truly unlikable lead character (even moreso than Daniel Plainview - he is missing that character's dark sense of humor in place of a far more prickly, less memorably quotable one), but even Woodcock would begrudgingly find the life he's surrounded by fascinating from a distance. The film has such a good sense for how small and in some ways unremarkable the spaces in which great art is made are - it is shot on location in two cramped but elegant homes - and there isn't a moment that goes by where Anderson doesn't find something interesting to do with space that creates limitations that surely churned up a great deal of frustration for everyone in the production. It was worth it.

The score is Jonny Greenwood's best, and if there was ever any question, he's evolved from being 'the guy from Radiohead writing movie music' to a sheer force whom any filmmaker should be so lucky to be able to work with. There are some jarring moments in the film (thinking particularly of an unexpected detour involving a green dress in the middle of the film that arrives just as excitingly as it departs) that absolutely are enhanced by Greenwood's score in the way that the gargantuan horror of the burning oil derrick was driven home by "Convergence" in There Will Be Blood, only on a smaller and much more difficult scale to get just right. It's a real textural pleasure in the same way as everything else in the film is.

In a lot of ways, Phantom Thread is a lot like its lead character - lucky to have so much beauty to surround an ugly, mean center, so as to make that core totally captivating instead of unacceptably repulsive and strange. Much will be made of the central relationship between Woodcock and Vicky Krieps' raw Alma in this film - whether it is "weird," whether it is a feminist concept, a misogynist concept - but the most disturbing thing about all that is how many threads of it are relatable to the grounded, comparatively healthy (in more ways than one) relationships of the film's viewership, the same way other classic sticky psychological dramas like Gaslight held up a similarly challenging funhouse mirror to its coupled consumers. That is a very difficult line to walk, to make a film about people doing ugly things to one another that not only demands introspection, but makes you feel good and warm and romantic about said introspection. But Anderson pulls it off here, and Phantom Thread is an impeccably great film for that and dozens of other reasons I don't even have time to scratch the surface of in this particular forum post.

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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#185 Post by FrauBlucher » Tue Dec 26, 2017 4:20 pm

Mfunk...To slightly change the subject... where did you see it and was there a sizable audience?

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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#186 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Dec 26, 2017 4:31 pm

The AMC in Lincoln Square NYC, it was sold out at 1:30 PM on Christmas Day for the 70mm exhibition. I can't wait to see it in a less busy setting (people were still using their cell phones to find their seats and were chattering on about their "Dump Trump" t-shirts once the film began, even though the theater waited an extra 10 minutes after showtime to begin since there were no trailers attached to the 70mm reels), and... sorry, nerds... in digital. The blown-up 70mm print had some beautiful qualities, but it was incredibly bright to the point where white levels in backgrounds were blown out, and the film grain would vary between lovely and excessive from scene to scene. Very nice program, however, with some neat costume sketches and marketing images.

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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#187 Post by The Elegant Dandy Fop » Tue Dec 26, 2017 5:03 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:The blown-up 70mm print had some beautiful qualities, but it was incredibly bright to the point where white levels in backgrounds were blown out, and the film grain would vary between lovely and excessive from scene to scene.
I saw it on 35mm a month ago, and the whites were often blown out and very bright, but it was never bright due to the print. Also, the lumens on a film projector are far lower than any modern day theatrical digital projector. It'll probably look far brighter on a digital projector if anything. I know someone who just dealt with projecting the first 70mm screening of this film and the studio had meticulous oversight every aspect of the projection. I think the look of the film has unusually overblown whites!

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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#188 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Dec 26, 2017 5:22 pm

I stand corrected, then! Still looking forward to losing some of the flicker and the grain though - my eyes occasionally took a little bit of a hard blink to adjust to changes in brightness between scenes and that doesn't happen when I'm watching something projected digitally. Personal preference, I suppose. I could end up being wrong, will update when I see it again in a few weeks.

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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#189 Post by senseabove » Tue Dec 26, 2017 5:58 pm

SFFILM (the org behind the San Francisco Intl. Film Fest) is having a 70mm screening at the Castro theater on 1/4, with PTA in person for a Q&A after. Members only, though, but shockingly it does not appear to be at capacity yet. I can only assume people aren't checking their email over the holidays or won't be back from traveling yet, considering several other recent Members-only screenings of then-soon-to-go-wide films (Call Me By Your Name, Three Billboards) reached capacity within a day.

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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#190 Post by Drucker » Wed Dec 27, 2017 12:11 am

Mfunk, I just arrived back from a screening at the same theater. Very prominent grain, very bright whites. And I thought the sound was far too loud at first and had to be a mistake until the film settled in!
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My reading of the film's central plot is that Alma's tampering with the wedding dress indeed jinxes it, and of course Woodcock had already noted the superstitions people have about such things. This leads to his mini-mushroom episode, his first sickness, the engagement, and the course of events that follow. His mother's image is not her being there, per se, but is in fact her leaving. Once "never cursed" is removed from the wedding dress, everything is different, and his mother is gone. This allows him to change as a human being in many ways as we see.
Curious as to what others think of this reading or if I've missed something. On another note.
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My wife is an artist with a ton of obsessive ticks. As I came home she was on the couch asleep, and I was being noisy as I tend to be, with eating an apple and sniffling. She got up and walked to bed without a word, giving me a dirty look. I saw a lot of her in Woodcock's character, and it hit very close to home! Now only to make sure I don't eat mushrooms she cooks.

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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#191 Post by All the Best People » Sun Dec 31, 2017 6:31 am

I found this movie ... good (which for PTA, counts as disappointing -- but at least it is several rungs better than The Master). The performances are preternatural, wherever Vicky Krieps came from, my goodness. Beautifully shot, and as for the audio, I think Jonny Greenwood might be the MVP of this whole operation. My main reservation is that the characters were all such sociopaths that I never felt into the movie, I felt that it was something I was admiring through a screen, some sort of filter.

We'll see how it settles. PTA movies have a tendency to shift in both memory and further viewings. For instance, I found Punch-Drunk Love solid the first time, but better the second. The Master was fine the first time, horrendous the second. Inherent Vice good the first, and only kept improving in memory and in partial viewings (I haven't watched it in its entirety a second time). So this could really move in any direction.

I'll say this: when I walked out of Boogie Nights twenty years ago, had you told me the director would make a movie about a guy named Woodcock, I never would have guessed it felt like this ... and I would have expected it to be a comedy, but not as much of one as this is ... I just didn't realize it was a comedy until pretty deep in, and I'm not actually sure I'm correct in thinking it was.
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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#192 Post by phantomforce » Sun Dec 31, 2017 7:09 am

I enjoy reading what you fellas have to say about the work and am always nervous to hear immediate reactions, I admit its something that even I, needed some time to sink in once it was done. This is all about feeling.

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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#193 Post by matrixschmatrix » Sun Dec 31, 2017 2:51 pm

I saw this in the same 70mm presentation, though I think I missed the first five minutes or so- I came in to Day-Lewis talking to his sister about how she was going to arrange to get rid of a previous woman he'd been associated with. Overall:
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This isn't the movie I expected. One of the real surprises is how much power Alma has both as a person and over the narrative; the trailer leads one to believe that she is an object, something completely controlled, which turns out not to be the case at all. I think the movie is ultimately about co-dependency, and people who seek that kind of relationship. Day-Lewis is pampered, made weak first by a sister who indulges him in any way that makes him productive- destroying relationships he no longer wants for him, allowing him to demand that people do not eat loudly around him, keeping the house and anywhere else he works clean and controlled, but also preventing him developing the kind of skill set that would allow him to negotiate these things for himself. It's obvious this has been going on for a very long time, too- I would guess, from his story, that it was ever since he designed but could not execute the wedding dress. It's interesting, because on the one hand, this is obviously unhealthy- the sister has made herself a necessity by essentially crippling her brother and presenting herself as a crutch- but on the other, it's very familiar from stories about artists of any kind, who are usually allowed to be tyrannical and absolutist within their spaces (directors perhaps moreso than anyone.)

Alma disrupts this, and while she does push Day-Lewis out of his comfort space- something he's not well able to cope with, and which appears nearly to destroy their relationship- ultimately, they succeed when she is even MORE extreme in the tactics of codependency, deliberately making him sick so that he will be absolutely dependent on her in recovering. But Day-Lewis knows what is happening- and it's a relationship he is happy to be in.

I don't really know what to think, overall. I thought it was implied that his character was gay, or asexual maybe, and I'm still not sure that's not the case- he kisses Alma a few times, but they never appear to have a particularly sexual relationship, and his description early on of why he never married (it would be deceptive, and he makes dresses) seemed to allude to it- but ultimately I don't think that's really what his character is about. My girlfriend, who saw it with me, saw his character as being on the autistic spectrum- he has sensory integration issues, has a difficult time coping with breaks in his routine, and has trouble with social cues- which also seems possible. I think I liked The Master more than this one- it also seemed like a text that had a lot of different ways it could be read, but felt more intense and less delicate, which is more to my taste, I think. I'm excited to see this one again, though.
I really loved seeing it in 70mm, though I also found the flicker tired my eyes a bit- I've had that happen with 70mm screenings before, so maybe it's just inherent to the format. When we first walked in, I genuinely thought we were seeing something made in the 50s, though- there's something about the colors in that format that has a rich sense of originating in the time period in which the movie is set, and gave one an almost tactile sense of the materials of the dresses, the wood of the floor, and the material realities of the setting.
Last edited by matrixschmatrix on Thu Jan 04, 2018 2:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#194 Post by Drucker » Sun Dec 31, 2017 3:13 pm

Matrix--I had the same thought about the film really looking like an "older" film. This isn't something I felt with The Master, Interstellar, Dunkirk, or Hateful Eight.

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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#195 Post by FrauBlucher » Sun Dec 31, 2017 3:40 pm

He makes no secret for his love of "old Hollywood." btw... Alma is Hitchcock's wife's name. Coincidence or not?

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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#196 Post by ianthemovie » Sun Dec 31, 2017 5:12 pm

I saw this last night in 70 and quite loved it, though maybe not so much as other PTA films. (I will need to see it at least one more time to decide.) One thing that distinguishes it from his other films is its being very driven toward making a certain "point" about love and marriage, or at least about this particular relationship. The plot of the film, which is truly bizarre and unpredictable, seems to have been designed to allow for the making of this point, which is woven throughout the film and crystallizes in the final scenes. In other words, as a narrative this feels less experimental and tighter than his other films, and there is more of a clear "takeaway" at the end, which should please those who walked away from The Master wondering what all of it was supposed to mean.

That said there is still plenty of ambiguity and richness here. For example, I'm left wondering
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what it is that Alma gets out of the relationship with Reynolds, since the film begins with her saying (sincerely) that he has made all of her dreams come true. Does she simply enjoy lording power over him when he's weak and dependent on her? I ask because while the film does a superb job of showing the many little things that can become grating in long term relationships (how someone eats, etc.), it seemed to show less and less the happiness and the pleasure that Alma and Reynolds get from each other. As the film went on I began to think, along with Lesley Manville's character, why doesn't he break it off with her, if she irritates him so much? And why does she stay with him? If I have one criticism it would be that the film might have balanced more of the scenes of annoyance with scenes of joy, etc., or at least given more clues about what makes it worth it for them to stay together. But perhaps that is meant to be part of the mystery of the film.

A short catalog of the film's many delights: the beautifully staged bit at the New Year's Eve party; the absurdist comedy involving the "rescue" of Barbara Rose's wedding dress; the breakfast table scenes; the many close-ups of Lesley Manville's extraordinary face--and the final shot of her looking miserable pushing the baby carriage as Reynolds and Alma walk off together, a great comic touch; the slightly menacing/kinky/ambiguous edge to so many of the lines of dialogue ("If you want to have a staring contest you will lose"; "for the hungry boy"; etc.)

I was also struck by how similar this film is to The Beguiled, from its themes and its rich production design to the use of poison mushrooms as a plot device! But I think this is a much more interesting variation on those themes.
Jonny Greenwood's score is divine, by the way.

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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#197 Post by whaleallright » Mon Jan 01, 2018 8:43 pm

You can tell just from the trailer that this is staged and shot very differently from almost any other contemporary American films. I've gently knocked Anderson's recent films for being sort of heavy-handedly understated (and obviously cryptic), if that makes sense, but I was impressed by how the trailer, at least, avoided the sort of bombastic visual and dramatic "beats" that even artier English-language films seem to feel obligated to furnish these days. The film opens here (on 70mm) in a week and a half, so I don't have to wait long to find out if the film matches it.

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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#198 Post by GaryC » Thu Jan 04, 2018 2:04 am

Launchingfilms did say about a week ago that this would have a 70mm print in the UK but it now just says 35mm (and DCP, obviously). So that narrows it down to about three London venues I'd aim to see it at.

(Inherent Vice did get 70mm prints in some countries, but not the UK, so this is much the same. I did see The Master in 70mm in London though.)

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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#199 Post by StevenJ0001 » Thu Jan 04, 2018 3:15 am

GaryC wrote:Launchingfilms did say about a week ago that this would have a 70mm print in the UK but it now just says 35mm (and DCP, obviously). So that narrows it down to about three London venues I'd aim to see it at.

(Inherent Vice did get 70mm prints in some countries, but not the UK, so this is much the same. I did see The Master in 70mm in London though.)
The 35mm prints should look great—unlike The Master this wasn’t shot on 65mm so I think you’ll just lose some image brightness and stability, and that’s about it. I saw a 70mm print (twice—LOVE this film) and it was gorgeous, but the 35s should be just fine.

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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#200 Post by Calvin » Thu Jan 04, 2018 6:09 am

Unless there's been a change, Glasgow Film Theatre told me they'd be showing it from 70mm in March

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