what do you guys make of "never cursed"?
there's a subtle, veiled expression of pain right after he proclaims himself a "confirmed bachelor" (her reaction to this line is gorgeous, too) that immediately endeared me to him. he's a man devoted to his craft who's also resigned to the notion that his love life has to suffer as a result.
which brings me back to "never cursed." reynolds explicitly refers to the things he sews into garments as secrets that only he would know about, which to me suggested that it's a place where he expresses his vulnerabilities. "never cursed" then seems to me a well-wish for the new bride but also a wishing well wish cast into the ether that he, in fact, wasn't cursed to a life of confirmed bachelorhood. there's a longing there that i love so much
I agree with what you say about the messages sewn into the dresses being expressions of his vulnerabilities. To my mind, Reynolds’ personality disorder is his ‘secret’ curse. A permanent, unsolvable conflict (a “ghost”, “haunting” him) and the real source of his despair. Reynolds is aware of it, but resigned to it, too, as an essential part of himself. My interpretation is that yes his obsession with work is real, a product of his artistic impulse, but also that his answer to Alma’s question is a bit of deflection. To have to explain that you can’t operate in relationships the way most people do is an unacceptable answer. To say “I make dresses”, while true, is a way to veil this.
Whether Reynolds’ personality is tied to his becoming accustomed to being mothered and lavishingly attended to, or something even more disturbed and difficult to alter, as in a deep-seated narcicissm (which is what I see in his character) isn’t fully clarified, but I view it as a combination with an emphasis on the latter (or the former creating the latter, in childhood). Narcissists are incapable of truly selfless giving in love in the way that a more healthily-oriented person is, without also expecting some sort of reward, admiration, or attention, in return. To give to them means a debt is made, and to engage in relationships lacking this vampiric element feels unnatural. So the question the film poses in the beginning to my mind is:
can Reynolds yield to anyone else and accept the compromise that love requires? Not will he, but
can he. The psychological magnifying glass that follows is an exploration of this. My reading is that he knows that compromise is fundamentally incompatible with his constitution, but he wants it, he wants to know love with Alma. And mentally he may not be able to change, but physically he can be incapacitated. Relenting to Alma this way is Reynolds’ willingness to embrace love acted out, in the only way he’s capable. So the end is not only a bit of sadomasochim, but the road of compromise and love expressed as only the man named Woodcock can. The physical realm is necessary because the other realm is not. I love it as a literary flourish to the story, but I also don’t believe it’s included purely as an injection of literary style.
there's also that absolutely heartbreaking moment during the big confrontation during his surprise dinner when alma says that she's, "waiting for [him] to get rid of [her]." the way ddl reacts to this line moves me to no end, especially because he follows it by saying rather callously that he doesn't need her. i revel in the humanity of that moment of contradiction, and the film is rife with them.
I wonder about this one. Because I don’t believe he needs her, only
a woman. This really is the pivotal scene in the film, because later he chooses to act against himself by committing, as if she is really the only one he needs. Alma does match him, though. Tongue for tongue. That sets her apart…
when alma leaves to go to the new year's eve party alone and reynolds is left to deal with his insecurities (which greenword's score so gorgeously conveys) then goes after her, it's the kind of movie moment that you would expect to end in some sweeping romantic gesture, and for so long it builds that way. when they finally come face to face, it turns into a staring contest that reynolds indeed loses, him reacting kinda poorly (i read his expression in that scene to be a "what are you looking at?" gesture) and taking her back home.
And here, the reason why he makes that choice…she challenges him, fights fire with fire. It’s the only thing that can work with a man of his qualities. And because she can see him for who he is, which is really unique to her. If Cyril wasn't blood and “the perfect size”, maybe he'd marry her, too.
i described this movie as the 2001: a space odyssey of romances to someone to relate how momentous i find this movie to be. there's a nebulous, all-encompassing quality to what this movie's about in the context of romantic relationships that engages in that kubrickian "bow to the unknown" (as jan harlan once put it) that i find utterly poignant.
Yes yes yes! Beautifully put.
Also…
I came across a mostly negative review on Letterboxd earlier tonight, which, as much as I disagree with its conclusion and criticisms, I thought was generally well-observed. In its describing what it sees as failings of the film, my thoughts of what I love about it become clearer. The thing I think this review fails to see is that Reynolds’ personality precludes traditional compromise and a traditional relationship from the outset, and so the mushroom overture IS a perversely life-affirming and love-affirming notion. If you read it and answer “because he’s a narcissist” to the questions it poses, I think the movie takes more definite shape.
Much like TWBB and The Master, this is a film about a deeply unhealthy co-dependent relationship, but this film lacks the socio-historical context that made the affectations and behavior of the characters in TWBB and The Master easier to accept. Phantom Thread exists in a hermetically sealed universe, in largely one location, and PTA seems to me to have chosen mid-50s London as the time period/social milieu entirely for aesthetic reasons. The clothes and production design and music and so on and so forth are indeed all sumptuous and ravishing, but I don't think he's saying anything of note about fashion culture of the time--that an acclaimed male artist is a fussy asshole and treats women like shit certainly does not feel particular to this era. So, where the strange, almost inhuman behavior of characters like Daniel Plainview and Freddie Quell is explicable when these characters are seen as representative of moments in history (the rise of industry and postwar anxiety, respectively), the similarly odd behavior of Woodcock and Alma can't be explained in the same way.
That's not necessarily a bad thing (I find the way Plainview and Eli are so clearly meant to represent capitalism and religion a little simplistic, though that film needs a rewatch) but PTA doesn't adjust his approach in any discernible manner. So, all we're left with as an audience, then, is a dual study of two characters whose behavior is often incredibly alienating to the audience. We're constantly put in the position of asking "Why do these people act this way? What are their motivations? What is driving them?" and PTA often frames them in tight closeup, as if to search their faces for answers. Why does Woodcock keep the company of women when he seems to so clearly see their presence as a burden? Why does he tread over other women but kowtow to Cyril? What is his obsession with his mother? And for Alma, why does she not just leave? Why does she continue to allow herself to be humiliated, shamed, and treated like nothing? (Let's not assume, for the moment, that Alma is operating within an abusive relationship because, though it may be true, that's not the framework the film ultimately sets forth.)
The answer to these questions, I think, all end up being fairly simply. But then there would appear to be a disconnect between the strain and effort of the aesthetic to understand these people, and the ultimate simplicity of their psychology (e.g., Woodcock has mommy issues, Alma wants to be seen as beautiful, etc). The problem is perhaps that PTA wants to create a sense of mystery, a sense of ambiguity, but that ambiguity is just stalling until an inevitable end rather than being a useful or necessary tool for the narrative, keeping the audience in the dark in order to shock them at the end but not providing any insight. PTA's goal here, in other words, is not exploration but rather obfuscation; preventing us, until the very end of the film, from having all the clues necessary to understand this relationship, then cutting us off from these characters once we have actual material to work with! Like Woodcock playing Alma, or perhaps vice versa, PTA is playing a game with the audience, but I don't think I'm much interested in the nature of his game.
The idea that the end should really be the film's midpoint is an idea I've heard a lot from those who don't like the film, but I think those people like the ending but just find it misplaced, whereas I take issue with the ending! The final montage seems to be suggesting an idea that I simply reject having sat through the prior two or so hours (isn't this relationship beautiful? Nah, sorry, it's an awful relationship). And I think that idea is contingent on Alma having the same power as Woodcock, which she simply does not. For this to be a mutually abusive relationship, or an equally abusive relationship, which is what I think the film pushes us towards, Alma's form of abuse would have to exist as something other than a reaction to Woodcock's constant belittling and mistreatment of her (again, because PTA doesn't explore what the relationship becomes once Woodcock understands what Alma is doing to him, we have no way of knowing if this ever does exist as something other than that). My rabbi Adam Katzman thinks that this is the point of the film--exploring the power dynamics between a man and a woman in this time, and locating the only way in which a woman could assert power over a man in this context--which is a solid interpretation, but for me the fact that Woodcock accepts her revenge at the end dismantles any power she might have had, because her power is necessarily couched in his permission to give her power, and thus it becomes not a revenge at all but rather another form of subservience to him.
Maybe that would be interesting to explore if the film was placed entirely in Alma's perspective, and thus the ending would be her own skewed view of this relationship in which she has no power, but despite her narration the film switches perspectives often (the first twenty minutes is focused on Reynolds), and Dr. Harding never provides any kind of objective counterpoint to her subjective telling of this story, and instead just acts as a sounding board. So all we get is the "this is love!" ending, which just strikes me as disingenuous. For this to work as an allegory about relationships in general (i.e., we all mistreat each other and seek power over one another in different ways), it has to work on the literal level first, and I simply cannot accept that this is a good relationship, even on the characters' own terms, and I certainly cannot accept that this is anything like my relationship or any other healthy relationship I can think of!
This same reviewer wrote something about Cassavetes and Pialat’s relationship to narrative which I find insightful, and think also applies to
Phantom Thread. Funny enough, it also explains away some of his critcisms or bewilderment about this movie in relation to
There Will Be Blood and
The Master, especially in regards to their socio-historical context being integral to their narrative efficacy in his eyes:
I want to expand on some thoughts my good buddy Graham had about Pialat and his supposed American counterpart Cassavetes. I think Graham is right that the central concern of both of their films is emotion, specifically, I would add, how to structure narrative around certain emotions. That may sound like an obvious or not particularly noteworthy aim, but I think it's different from how most people make films, which is to build emotion out of narrative, rather than narrative out of emotion.
I guess many arthouse/independent directors do this, but one reason I think Pialat and Cassavetes are so often associated with each other is that both deal with extreme emotions--not necessarily unrealistic emotions, but certainly outsized, intense, and passionate emotions. They are, in a sense, emotions that might easily lend themselves to melodrama. But while both directors certainly show some affinity for the melodramatic, I think both are interested in finding ways to work around melodrama, to find other ways to portray these emotions. Cassavetes does this at least partially through exaggeration, allowing actors to explore an emotion in full during extensive sequences that tend to go on past the moment where another director might think the actor had gotten across the "point" (most acting is, of course, simply telegraphing narrative information or responses to narrative information). Pialat takes the opposite approach, attempting to find the mundane in the melodramatic. As Graham points out, the former approach lends itself nicely to duration, while the latter lends itself to ellipsis (skipping over moments that might be deemed important to a narrative of melodrama).
My own perspective is that
Phantom Thread’s sort of inverted narrative structure, forming plot almost purely out of emotion, was always the inevitable trajectory that began with
Blood and
The Master (and maybe even
Magnolia and
PDL, now that I think of it…) The socio-historical contexts in PT’s movies have always been excuses for characters and set-dressing, a way to give visual weight to those “outside, intense, and passionate” emotions described above, and also a way to add aesthetic value and luxuriate in those textural details. While the WWII period may have prompted the narrative scenario that inspired Master and Freddie, ultimately the story revels in the psychology of those characters and the relationship dynamic between them as its main interest, socio-historical comment or contextual relevancy be damned. The launching pad is always abandoned in favor of an all-encompassing, universal truth, as samsong pointed out
I wanted to comment on this specific part of that letterboxd review quoted in full above:
the final montage seems to be suggesting an idea that I simply reject having sat through the prior two or so hours (isn't this relationship beautiful? Nah, sorry, it's an awful relationship). And I think that idea is contingent on Alma having the same power as Woodcock, which she simply does not. For this to be a mutually abusive relationship, or an equally abusive relationship, which is what I think the film pushes us towards, Alma's form of abuse would have to exist as something other than a reaction to Woodcock's constant belittling and mistreatment of her (again, because PTA doesn't explore what the relationship becomes once Woodcock understands what Alma is doing to him, we have no way of knowing if this ever does exist as something other than that).
Etan’s description of Alma’s pushback always being in reaction to Reynolds and not “mutually abusive” is true, but I see it as finally hopeful. Alma doesn’t need to have the exact same power as Woodcock. That’s not why she does it, exactly, and not the point of the end of the film. She could very well leave him for someone else. While there’s some degree of subversion to their roles, I think she pursues the change in power dynamic because she believes in him (
"You're not cursed!"). She believes in his ability to love. And I do see the movie as working as an allegory for the push-pull of all relationships in general.
I love that he thought of it enough to talk to his rabbi.
