Phantom Thread: Daniel Day-Lewis’ exquisite swan song

DANIEL Day-Lewis’ first role in five years will also be his last. What a film to go out on.

THE gowns in Phantom Thread are exquisite, each dress lovingly crafted from the most richly textured fabric, with lines designed to highlight and flatter the human form.

There’s a thread that connects the sartorial creations you see on screen and Paul Thomas Anderson’s striking film — they give you a window into the men who made them.

Anderson’s film can be seen through a similar prism as Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!, in that both films can be understood as an allegory for the complex relationships between imaginative creators and the people around them — though the elegant Phantom Thread is exponentially more accessible than Aronofsky’s divisive movie.

In Phantom Thread, that creative genius is Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis), a famed fashion designer and dressmaker in the 1950s, a man whose work is coveted by society dames and European royalty.

Phantom Thread is widely expected to win the Oscar for Best Costume Design

Like other “great men” before him, he’s an exacting and mercurial kind of fellow, with his quirks and demands indulged by everyone around him so as to not interrupt his all-important talent.

Reynolds’ enabler is Cyril (Lesley Manville), his sister, an unsettling, constant presence who, among other things, breaks up with his live-in girlfriends when he tires of them. His genius, you see, can’t be disturbed with unseemly confrontations.

On a break at his country house, Reynolds meets Alma (Luxembourger actor Vicky Krieps), a waitress at a local tea house. From the start, even in her quiet, unassuming way, Alma pushes back.

Maybe not when he rubs her lipstick off or whether he “chooses” to emphasises her breast in his dress design. But her determination to know her own mind manifests in actions that build the foundation of a complex, strangely dependent relationship.

It’s tempting to impose a semi-autobiographical interpretation on the characters of Reynolds and Alma and their relationship. A noted auteur, Anderson also wrote the screenplay, which have led some to ponder whether it’s representative, at a core level, of Anderson and his wife, comedic actor Maya Rudolph.

And the film gives you a sense that Anderson has a complicated ethos over whether a “creative genius” should be pampered and coddled or they should be called out for their sometimes awful behaviour.

Day-Lewis has been nominated for an Oscar for Phantom Thread

All the same, the process of creation is romanticised through meticulously captured sequences — close-ups of seamstresses filing into the house in the mornings, of scissors cutting straight through fabric, of needle and thread bobbing in and out of lush fabrics, of silks billowing, of ink sliding across paper as the next design comes into being.

Each movement is mesmerising. As is Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s sublime composition.

But Anderson’s fastidious approach is also what makes Phantom Thread a little emotionally distant and cold.

Day-Lewis’ first role in five years will also be his last — the triple Oscar winner announced he will retire after Phantom Thread. If he really chooses to stay off the screen after this, then this is quite the performance to bow out on.

As always, he has turned in a measured, masterful performance of a flawed man who could be tender and kind, petulant and dismissive, and deeply hurtful. The final 15 minutes is where Day-Lewis’ understated intensity really comes together. What a swan song.

Rating: 4/5

Phantom Thread is in cinemas from today.

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Originally published as Phantom Thread: Daniel Day-Lewis’ exquisite swan song