Phantom Thread - SPOILERS!

[valhalla]

Has anyone who's seen the film more than once been able to place where it is in the film that Greenwood's 'Puck Beaverton's Tattoo' music cue comes in?

BTS Photos from Women of Woodcock's (upcoming photobook) photographer.

[SPOILERS]

On the album, the track "Boletus Felleus" is an orchestral variation of "Puck Beaverton's Tattoo". The orchestral variation and the "Puck Beaverton's Tattoo" version appear three times throughout the film. The first is the opening logos/Alma fireplace scene (which I'm pretty sure is the Tattoo version). The second time is during the first poisoning scene. Then the third time is when Alma sits at the table with Reynolds before she leaves to go to the ball.

It's a great little track from Inherent Vice that never made the soundtrack sadly. It appears in Inherent Vice though, when Doc is handcuffed in the room.

[WorldForgot]

YES!!! PCP + Mushroom concoction. Figured it was the first mushroom scene but now that you mention it's the first audio we hear  you're totally right and gosh it's a great callback.

[Alethia]

Has anyone who's seen the film more than once been able to place where it is in the film that Greenwood's 'Puck Beaverton's Tattoo' music cue comes in?

BTS Photos from Women of Woodcock's (upcoming photobook) photographer.

[SPOILERS]

On the album, the track "Boletus Felleus" is an orchestral variation of "Puck Beaverton's Tattoo". The orchestral variation and the "Puck Beaverton's Tattoo" version appear three times throughout the film. The first is the opening logos/Alma fireplace scene (which I'm pretty sure is the Tattoo version). The second time is during the first poisoning scene. Then the third time is when Alma sits at the table with Reynolds before she leaves to go to the ball.

It's a great little track from Inherent Vice that never made the soundtrack sadly. It appears in Inherent Vice though, when Doc is handcuffed in the room.

Coooooootie food, you're right! Didn't make this connection myself but now that you've pointed it out, it's unmistakable. Nice work!

[tpfkabi]

Finally came to my area. Definitely want to see it again. Hopefully without annoying audience members and action movie low end bleed. Man, do I hate when I go to this type of movie and there is a dialog/quiet scene and you can hear low end action movie sounds. Then you are not always sure if it is part of the movie or bleed from another.

3 shots that come to mind
-stairs when the workers arrive
-circling shot around workers - I think this is when they have to repair the dress after he gets sick
-the shot up through the water as she adds the mushroom

I'm like Reynolds in a movie theater in regards to annoying sounds made by others.

[Something Spanish]

Re-watching Rebecca for the first time in 14 years, its influence on Phantom Thread is clearer. Both films feature a young woman seduced by an elderly debonair gentleman of stature into a demanding, luxurious lifestyle she is unaccustomed to and has difficulty assimilating. Both take place primarily within a mansion, House of Woodcock and Maderlay. Woodcock and Mr. de Winter have similar idiosyncrasies as far as food routines, etc. The relationship in both films always seems to be hanging on a thin thread, with the female walking on eggshells so as not to upset her man's peculiar habits. Rebecca is more of a jumping off point to meld with all of PTA's other ideas and Phantom veers away from the murder-mystery, doing its own thing; similar to how Hard Eight used the first act of Bob le Flambeur as a jumping point for its own central relationship then veered away from that film's heist ploy and did its own thing. PTA is really amazing with taking an existing idea that strikes his fancy and morphing it into something wholly new and original (similar to Tarantino, but not really , much more innovative), like using the beginning of Oil!, the basic premise for his needs, or the Time magazine pudding article for Punch-Drunk, Let There Be Light for Master, John Holmes' career for Boogie Nights and so on.

[csage97]

Finally came to my area. Definitely want to see it again. Hopefully without annoying audience members and action movie low end bleed. Man, do I hate when I go to this type of movie and there is a dialog/quiet scene and you can hear low end action movie sounds. Then you are not always sure if it is part of the movie or bleed from another.

3 shots that come to mind
-stairs when the workers arrive
-circling shot around workers - I think this is when they have to repair the dress after he gets sick
-the shot up through the water as she adds the mushroom

I'm like Reynolds in a movie theater in regards to annoying sounds made by others.

I went for a third screening tonight and had this exact low end bleed problem. Man, how annoying! Throughout the whole movie, there were bursts of sub bass bleed from the other theatre about every 10 to 20 seconds, I kid you not. Every freaking quiet dialog scene ... there it was. Since it was my third watch, it wasn't too distracting and I didn't care a ton ... but it was still a bit of a nuisance. Actually, I read your post earlier in the day and then thought about it while I was watching the movie. I hope you don't get that bleed again!

As a more general comment, I really liked the use of longer lens focal lengths for the long shots. For example: the pan down from the top of the town house to its front early on; following the duchess (I think that's her title) down the marble steps early on as well; the long shot in front of the townhouse when the princess and her posse get out of their cars. These longer focal lengths don't have the barrel distortion you get with a wider lens, and they also have a different sort of size ratio for things that are closer and further in distance. It's a subtle thing, but I could feel myself thinking about the choices Paul and co. made and going, "Uh huh, uh huh."

[giodashorts]

The shot that begins under the table, slowly pushing in on Reynolds waking Alma and asking if she would like to marry, is quite nice. Looks like it was done on a slightly longer lens. A 50mm maybe. He did similar things in 'Inherent Vice'. That shot of Doc talking to Sortilege while the others eat pizza. That shot of Doc and Bigfoot -- Adrian saying, "fuck you, and fuck your banana."

[csage97]

The shot that begins under the table, slowly pushing in on Reynolds waking Alma and asking if she would like to marry, is quite nice. Looks like it was done on a slightly longer lens. A 50mm maybe. He did similar things in 'Inherent Vice'. That shot of Doc talking to Sortilege while the others eat pizza. That shot of Doc and Bigfoot -- Adrian saying, "fuck you, and fuck your banana."

I was sitting around last night and thought it would be fun to watch Inherent Vice from the perspective of having seen Phantom Thread, so I put it on. I've got to say that I enjoyed it more than ever this time. It continues to get better with each viewing for me, which is good news. Anyway, he does a lot of super slow push-ins in the movie, like the scenes you mentioned: There's the scene with Coy Harlingon and Doc sitting in the kitchen at The Boards' house in Topanga, the scene with Penny and Doc sitting on a bench outside, and probably more I'm forgetting now.

I've got to say, PTA did a great job with the film. I just come at it from a weird position of being a Pynchon uber-fan, so of course I have my preconceptions about what it should be like based on having read the book a bunch. But now that I'm a few years removed from the release and Phantom Thread has cleansed my PTA palette, I do appreciate it even more. There aren't many films released these days like it, if at all, and that's a testament to Pynchon's writing and PTA's cinematic style and influences. The cinematography is delightfully different from the norm as well. My biggest regret for the film is that there just wasn't room for a lot of Pynchon's jokes, such as when Pynchon describes everyone to say Denis' name so that it rhymes with "penis," or when Sauncho Smilax is musing about how Daisy is laying some grooming demands on Donald when he notices that Donald grows whiskers in an episode where he's stranded on a boat for a bit. Little things like that that just come alive in the book and make me laugh and emphatically nod, thinking, You go Pynchon! I still think @wilberfan should come around to it! Can't force someone, though. 

However, my biggest regret for the film is when Doc walks into his office to see Tariq Khalil and says, "What it is, my brother" and Tariq respons, "Peace!" In the book, black guys are described as being seen rarely out near the ocean, so Doc tries to act cool and says, "Say, what it is, my brother." Tariq replies, "Never mind that shit," and stares at Doc's white guy afro. That bit gets me every time, and it was a sad omission for me from the movie when there was no reason to stray from the source.

[wilberfan]

I was sitting around last night and thought it would be fun to watch Inherent Vice from the perspective of having seen Phantom Thread, so I put it on. I've got to say that I enjoyed it more than ever this time. It continues to get better with each viewing for me, which is good news.  I still think @wilberfan should come around to it!

I am recently on record having pledged to watch the Vice again the next time it's playing on the big screen somewhere geographically reasonable in the L.A. area.  I trust that when that happens, several of you will arrange to sit in the row directly behind me to ensure I remain alert and awake.  We can then--depending on collective mood and temperament--retire to a local ice creamery for treats and civil conversation.    Those of you who are L.A.-based, please help me scan the cinema horizons for screenings "...at a theater near [me]."

[csage97]

I am recently on record having pledged to watch the Vice again the next time it's playing on the big screen somewhere geographically reasonable in the L.A. area.  I trust that when that happens, several of you will arrange to sit in the row directly behind me to ensure I remain alert and awake.  We can then--depending on collective mood and temperament--retire to a local ice creamery for treats and civil conversation.    Those of you who are L.A.-based, please help me scan the cinema horizons for screenings "...at a theater near [me]."

That sounds fun. Too bad I'm in the northeast of the continent .... Maybe one day I'll pack it in and move out to LA like Neil Young sez.

[Drenk]

Glimpses of impressions here, I saw it yesterday...

I had a teacher who said that there is a cost to innovation for the public. When you watch something you haven't quite yet seen before, you're in a position of discomfort at first. We often write here that the first viewing of a PTA movie can be an experience of discomfort. Even when I watched The Master, after having seen every trailer and clip I could, the movie itself was something I could not have predicted in the way it worked and flowed.

Despite all the influences of Anderson, he's very much interested in how you can tell a story in a new way. How? He shows that the base of the story doesn't even need to be all that new—but he offers storytelling, emotions, moods which are his own, special, rare, and that I often find overwhelming, especially in this one...It can be more oblique than The Master at times and, yet, more direct...? I don't know. He avoids a lot. All the backstory for Freddy in The Master: gone. We've heard about the backstory for Alma. The first thing we saw, footage of a soldier meeting Alma at a beach, cut...But the characters are alive, complex, even if the information we generally need—in the sense that we are needy—and I don't know how that works—cutting past all the usual ways doesn't necessarily makes a more interesting work.

The rythm. Some of my friends are not happy with the fact that he doesn't do long takes like he used to in Magnolia or Boogie Nights. The thing is: Magnolia isn't great because he follows characters in hallways. One of the best thing in Magnolia is its rythm. It just flows, man. It goes big, quiet, calm...one scene building into another, for a different character, which creates the link between them and the night.
I saw that you talked about this movie being like a symphony. It's exactly like that. The rythm creates emotions and meanings. It's also connected to the sense of memory. Inherent Vice as a faded postcard, you remember...? The quietness yet vibrancy of the past. How it comes back. All that...

You can especially see how he's interested in the quietness after the wedding. I mean, one of the best scenes of this movie, one of his best scenes, is almost wordless. It's a staring contest. They both win. And the New Year's scene...I expected them to kiss, I waited for them to kiss, I needed...? them to kiss and instead I got another staring contest...and I entered in the movie even more.

As cold as this movie can appear it is very tactile, full of sounds and shapes, faces and bodies.

The scene with the mother knocked me out. Totally cried. And it made me think of Magnolia—remember how it quiets down when Tom Cruise says "I'm quietly judging you" or this weird moment when Gattor talks about Chopin before falling down...? There, you have Reynolds finally calming down, talking to a ghost, just saying simple things in such a vulnerable way...and I could feel the mood he was in, how weird it was for him to be in that position, and how good, ultimately, it was...

There's a lot more, but I'll stop here.

[jviness02]

I've seen this three times, now. I don't really have anything meaningful to add to the conversation except DDL is such a treasure in this. He could have easily Plainviewed this performance and made Woodcock really nasty, but there is a lot of tenderness in this performance that makes it believable Alma would fall in love with him, despite his rough edges.

[WorldForgot]

I was sitting around last night and thought it would be fun to watch Inherent Vice from the perspective of having seen Phantom Thread, so I put it on. I've got to say that I enjoyed it more than ever this time. It continues to get better with each viewing for me, which is good news.  I still think @wilberfan should come around to it!

I am recently on record having pledged to watch the Vice again the next time it's playing on the big screen somewhere geographically reasonable in the L.A. area.  I trust that when that happens, several of you will arrange to sit in the row directly behind me to ensure I remain alert and awake.  We can then--depending on collective mood and temperament--retire to a local ice creamery for treats and civil conversation.    Those of you who are L.A.-based, please help me scan the cinema horizons for screenings "...at a theater near [me]."

I will be keeping track & in touch and if it's fine by you, whenever this day comes, I'll be sitting front row, as close to Sortilege and Gordita Beach as i can be.

[Scrooby]

2 February 2018 (movie just released in UK)

General points on Phantom Thread, in no particular order:

Gold standard of movies nowadays.

Boiled down to its essence (a): a woman wants attention.
Boiled down to its essence (b): a man realises he needs more in his life than just work.

He eats the mushrooms willingly because: (a) He can be coddled when ill as if by his beloved mother; Alma brings his mother back to him. (b) Through illness he can escape the ongoing merry-go-round responsibility of creating his art. (c) (Twistedly,) he can get closer to the woman he "loves". (d) Possibly via (c) he can distance himself somewhat from his sister?

A. One possible dramatic flaw: the sister is set up through the entire film, but her character culminates in no proper scene of resolution by the end. In fact, she seems to be discarded.

B. [But now I am beginning to think differently about this so-called potential "dramatic flaw". In Wonder Wheel, Woody Allen intentionally gives Kate Winslet a banal, forgettable final line; in doing this the writer is commenting on and encapsulating her character. Similarly, by reducing the sister at the end, by not giving her that "one final major scene", PT is, so to speak, humiliating her.]

The general plot: a woman manipulates a man to get attention. (Think Fatal Attraction, for one.) The twist, of course, is that the guy ends up welcoming the intrusion (of mushrooms). If a writer cannot create a completely new or newish structure (e.g., Ulysses, or even Dunkirk), then the next best plan of attack, in my estimation, is to take an established form and twist it in a surprising way. (The worst thing a narrative artist can do, of course, is to follow an established plan by the numbers without any innovative deviation.)

Very obviously the lensing is magnificent. PT is one of the best advertisements for celluloid that anyone can offer nowadays. I don't mean the framing; I mean the colour and texture and softness of the imagery (which, of course, is not solely the creation of the camerawork, but also the production design).

The music is also now the gold standard of movie music for our generation. To my ears no better movie music can be written nowadays (I mean, with an orchestra; this was as good as John Williams, I guess). Greenwood should chuck in Radiohead and try a symphony. That said, movie composers, for some reason, are simply unable to make the leap into the pure symphonic form divorced from movie imagery. (There are exceptions to this reflection, somewhat.) But Greenwood should try. Someone has to, nowadays.

It seems obvious to me, keeping Punch Drunk out of it, the best movie PT has ever made, because of his command of character. What do I mean? Throughout the entire film the characters, specifically (a) the relationship between characters and (b) the relationship between the characters and the audience, keep shifting. PT has given us a very sophisticated presentation of character (for a movie). That said, it cannot be compared to the playwrights mentioned above because PT is writing in the modern idiom in which character can be ambiguous rather than perfectly, clearly defined. (E.g., is Alma evil or helpful? Does she do what she does out of love for him, or out of self-need? Maybe it's not entirely either/or, but still.) Anyway, this shifting of character perspective is what a writer should aim for (in my estimation). PT really hit the nail on the head here (well, except for the problematical lack of sister-resolution scene).

["Modern idiom" may be gobbledygook on my part; it has just struck me like a thunderbolt that Alma is very much an Eve Harrington character. All About Eve is an absolutely perfect companion piece to PT!]

[Or possibly not total gobbledygook, because the Eve Harrington character is completely resolved—her inner life revealed—by the end of All About Eve. Alma, in contrast, will remain forever mysterious, unresolved.]

We are told that the guy is a serial womanizer. What makes Alma different from the others? This is never explained.

I have a book of all of the Dior collections leading back to the first in 1947. The reproduction of the fashion show was so perfect a reproduction from the Dior photographs that I was literally stunned; I think my jaw dropped. Kubrick couldn't have reproduced the fashion show one iota better. It literally seemed to be as if the photographs had come to life. In short, perfection.

Why mushrooms? There is going to be a thematic/expressionistic link between fashion and mushrooms (the natural world). I'll say just one general word here: delicacy. I don't wish to explore it further just now, but I will point out, as an "advance thought", that one of Alexander McQueen's fundamentals throughout his career was an intersection between the natural world and his fashion creations.

Interestingly, one scene seems to be missing (purposefully): the scene in which the sister berates her brother for Alma's lowbrow situation (e.g., she's a waitress). In most every other treatment of this movie written by anyone else, this scene would most likely have been incorporated. (This thematic matter is handed over, instead, to another character.)

At first I thought, "why would general audiences care about the problems of an artist?" But then I realized that the film can be boiled down beyond that to the essential: characters who need/want love, loving care, attention. (I could add other words but they require annotation.) This is the "bottom," the fundamental of the story.

The gender of the two lovers can be switched, theoretically, without much change to the movie. Except, if someone points out the concept of the "nurturing" aspect of a female. ("Security and commitment . . . and whatever the f**k else.") So, possibly, someone might argue that the gender roles are better assigned as they are in the screenplay.

One shot of the sister, looking down from a high staircase, could have come straight out of Hitchcock's Rebecca. (Or any 1940s movie.) Loved it. (I need not even mention the shot from Psycho; it is so obvious.)

The sequence when the dress is recovered from the ugly woman: some might argue that this sequence is not entirely necessary for the movie. (At first thought, it's kind of kooky, for more than one reason.) My theory, nothing more than a theory, is that this sequence may have been inspired by a true anecdote which I do not know.

[Also: isn't that a major offense? Or even more than one? 1. They are stealing an item worth a tremendous amount of money. 2. Breaking and entering, perhaps? (Or something similar.) 3. Assault, perhaps? (Removing the dress from the sleeping woman.) The two of them could have gone to prison!

As an addendum to this, Alexander McQueen refused to create items for women he thought "beneath" his art. Victoria Beckham (when she was "Posh Spice") was one.]

[Also, that "kooky" sequence reminds me of 1930s screwball comedies, or something from those wonderful Fred and Ginger flicks.]

[There is, come to think of it, a kooky element to the breakfast scene during which Alma disturbs the artist's composure by making excessive noise. Such a situation can easily be imagined for a screwball comedy of the 1930s.]

A friend of mine said that the ending of the movie is not particularly hopeful, though it may seem that way to some. I can back up my friend's view with two reflections: (1) That Alma discovers a secret message in a dress and removes it suggests something very, very evil. No respect for her lover, or for the art. But this slots into her character: she wants his full attention in the manner of Fatal Attraction; (2) at the very end of the end credits, the music hits, intentionally, one ambivalent chord before the final resolution, and I found that very, very ominious (I said to myself, "Oh s**t").

It annoyed me benignly that when the guy doesn't like the wedding dress, he doesn't explain why.

The concept of the fashion designer having had enough of his career because of all of its pressures is very, very relevant. Here's a paragraph from a recent, very good book on Galliano and McQueen: "The go-go pace [of the 1990s-early 2000s] was unsustainable and the wreckage it caused astounding. Marc Jacobs wound up in rehab, twice; Tom Ford was pushed out of Gucci—in part because board members felt he was running out of ideas—and suffered a bout of depression; French designer Christophe Decarnin reportedly abandoned his post at Balmain after being hospitalized for a nervous breakdown; Galliano's trusted assistant Steven Robinson died of a cocaine-induced heart attack at thirty-eight; Galliano became a severe alcoholic and prescription pill addict who inevitably imploded; and McQueen killed himself."
   And there are a bunch of other stories that I have gathered in the past year. An up-and-coming talented British designer (who, say commentators, inspired the early Galliano in a prominent manner) named John Flett died at 27, ostensibly from a heart attack most likely brought on from drug abuse apparently inspired by the hassles and pressures he was experiencing while trying to get noticed. Nicolas Ghesquiere quit Balenciaga after fifteen years because the corporate bulls**t had piled too high for his taste. Dior died from a sudden, unexpected heart attack at age 52. Saint Laurent panicked when he finally got sick of the pressure of having to create an entirely new collection every six months without pause (he has a famous quote about this). And so on. Unlike other artists who can take their time if they like, fashion designers are forced to create like machines on an assembly line; one pause in their output, or one horrible collection, can lead to corporate doom and personal failure with no way back.

And let us remember that the London fashion scene in the 1950s was about to experience the youthquake of the 1960s. Extravagant couture didn't go away, of course; it never will—but seemingly all we hear about fashion in the 1960s is the new youth movement and the new, revolutionary fashions that arose with it and which have never left us. So setting PT in the 1950s is kind of like O'Neill setting The Iceman Cometh in 1912 or Thomas Mann setting The Magic Mountain around the same time—right before the upheaval of WW1, which changed the world. By setting the scene right before a major upheaval, a writer can suggest (and I'm going to express this ambiguously) a certain perspective to the characters, situation, and world.

There is a whiff of the concept of suicide in PT, insofar as the guy swallows the mushrooms after Alma explains herself. An artist who lives with beauty day-by-day can get too overwhelmed with it all; weirdly, ironically, curiously, too much beauty and cerebral fertility can lead to mental illness and suicidal thoughts. Too much input.

The movie is an "hallucinogenic creepy fairy tale".

I wonder, fleetingly at the moment, if the story could have been told even better in a novel.

PT might be described as "a classy Cronenberg film".

I think the British character will respond to the twisted nature of this film. In its essence it seems a British film, not American. ("Nasty nature", possibly, if we see Alma as evil, and not helpful.)

After Alma delivers the poisonous mushrooms for the first time, the wedding dress is almost destroyed. Not delivering a wedding dress on time to a high-end client may very well have spelled the absolute end of the fashion house. So with one (arguably lunatic) act Alma could have taken both a life and destroyed the fashion house for all time.

If we choose to believe that Alma is purely benevolent in intentions, then we are led to receive the ending as a happy one. Consider the happy ending of Punch Drunk Love. So the obvious rhetorical question follows: does PT Anderson seem the sort of artist who would want to repeat himself? To end a movie the precise same way? If the answer is no, then we have no choice but to receive the ending as eternally ambiguous. Because we have no idea how their romance will ultimately turn out, what it will lead to.

Is one's partner helpful or a hindrance? This is an artist's eternal question. 

[Days and days and days later, PT is still haunting me. Alma is, to me, pure evil, someone who needs to have a stake hammered through her heart. It struck me that the two slapstick moments (Alma making noise at breakfast, which could have come out of a Fred and Ginger movie; and stealing the dress, which is just an absurdity) is PT Anderson attempting a Kubrick sophisticated funny/serious-at-the-same-time fusion. Obviously it's not going to reach the heights of EWS, but I'm still floored by PT's artistry. He really, really nailed it. Too bad it's just so damn uncomfortable. Alma is a movie monster. . . .

At the end of the movie she is a black widow and he is caught in her web. . . . ]

These are some initial, general thoughts for the moment. I've only seen the movie once, which is pretty much akin to not much more than a "fleeting glance". I've said very little, but a person has to start somewhere.

[wilberfan]

We are told that the guy is a serial womanizer. What makes Alma different from the others? This is never explained.

I think the obvious answer is that she pushes back when none of the others did.  Also, I think she got to stick around longer than the others because Cyril came to genuinely like her (perhaps in part because of Alma's feistyness?).

Great post.  Especially for only having seen it one time!  I especially enjoyed your paragraph about the fashion designers that all crashed and burned...  Fascinating.