Phantom Thread: A clumsily stitched melodrama

Phantom Thread (2017) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for profanity and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang

I simply cannot fathom the waves of critical adulation lapping onto the shores of this dramatic snooze of a film.

Having decided that Alma (Vicky Krieps) is to become his new lover and muse, celebrated
fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) naturally insists on creating a
dress for her.

Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson may have framed every scene with the care and precision that Reynolds Woodcock employs while making his haute couture dresses and gowns, but the story and characters remain unpalatable, the pacing lethargic, and the result about as appealing as waiting for paint to dry.

In short — although the viewing experience seems to last forever — Phantom Thread is a crushing bore.

Anderson’s films are always challenging at best; they range from weirdly captivating (Inherent Vice, Boogie Nights), to distastefully bizarre (There Will Be Blood, Magnolia), to utterly unwatchable (The Master). His characters invariably are grotesque burlesques: parodies of actual people, exaggerated to make a peculiar narrative point that rarely has anything to do with the actual human condition.

Based on his artistic output, Anderson feels like a misanthrope.

Phantom Thread is no different. Despite the luxurious world in which these people inhabit, laced with beautiful things, their souls are ugly and cruel. They deserve each other ... which I suspect is Anderson’s ultimate point, but hardly an epiphany on which to hang a 130-minute movie.

The setting is post-WWII London in the 1950s, at the House of Woodcock, where the imperious Reynolds (Daniel Day-Lewis) lives and designs at the center of British fashion: lavishly expensive creations coveted by royalty, movie stars, heiresses, socialites, debutants and their ilk. The firm’s mostly silent staff caters to every caprice and demand of their fussy, fastidious and anal-retentive lord and master; the stiffly condescending Reynolds expects no less.

Business matters and other “unpleasant details” are handled by his starch-collared sister Cyril (Lesley Manville); such details include hustling each of his casual lovers out the door, once he tires of their companionship ... which, we gather, is a frequent occurrence. Each, during her short stay, supplies a smidgen of inspiration drawn from personality and physique; each departs having been transformed, to a degree, into a “better” version of herself.

Reynolds also is an unrepentant sexist pig: a coldly calculating martinet who doesn’t even seem to like his most loyal and devoted clients. The dynamic feels like an uncomfortable gothic mash-up of Pygmalion and Rebecca, with Manville’s Cyril standing in as the chilly, omnipresent Mrs. Danvers.

Lincoln: The greatness of a man

Lincoln (2012) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for grim war violence, dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang

Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, fueled both by Tony Kushner’s lyrical screenplay and Daniel Day Lewis’ astonishing performance, may be one of the finest period dramas ever brought to the big screen.

A delegation from the Confederacy is en route with an offer of peace that could end
the four-year Civil War, but Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis, right) knows that if the Southern
states return to the union, all hope of passing the 13th Amendment will vanish. He
therefore plays a dangerous waiting game, despite the warning from Secretary of State
William Henry Seward (David Strathairn), who worries that any public hint of this delay
would blossom into a public relations nightmare.

It’s akin to time travel: Our 19th century United States comes to vibrant life, thanks to impeccable work by production designer Rick Carter (an Oscar winner for Avatar), costume designer Joanna Johnston and, most particularly, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski (Oscars for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan). You can practically feel the dust, grit and coal smoke coming off the screen.

Kushner’s dense script demands — and receives — a massive cast, with scores of speaking parts. The role call is a Who’s Who of names we remember from history class, and the driving narrative often unfolds with the confrontational snap of TV’s West Wing.

And yet...

For all its authenticity and casting excellence, Spielberg’s 150-minute film is long, slow and occasionally ponderous. It’s also claustrophobic at times, with some dialogue exchanges seemingly designed for stage presentation (no surprise there, I guess, since Kushner is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who “moonlights” in cinema).

The focus is narrow, as well. Although based in part on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Kushner concentrates exclusively on the events of January 1865, with a brief epilogue in April of that same year. The goal, during this climactic point of Lincoln’s presidential career: passing the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in order to abolish slavery. Permanently.

The novel twist, which conflicts juicily with Lincoln’s generally accepted image: the degree to which he risked delaying the Civil War, already a four-year conflict that had claimed hundreds of thousands of young soldiers on both sides, in order to win passage of that amendment in the House of Representatives.

There Will Be Blood: Too anemic

There Will Be Blood (2007) • View trailer
Three stars (out of five). Rating: R, for violence and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.17.08


Some films can be admired, even when they're difficult to enjoy.

Some even resist admiration.

Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis, right) and his young son, H.W. (Dillon
Freasier), share an unsettling bond that has more to do with opportunism
than actual love: a dynamic that will fracture as a result of events soon to
take place in the dust-worn community of Little Boston.

There Will Be Blood has much going for it, starting with director/screenwriter Paul Thomas Anderson's all-encompassing sense of early 20th century California, and the hard-scrabble lives endured by the prospectors, entrepreneurs and just plain charlatans who helped create the nascent oil industry.

Production designer Jack Fisk and cinematographer Robert Elswit thoroughly immerse us in the dusty, grimy atmosphere that accompanies both the work and those who endure it; the sense of actually being part of the environment is as strong as in the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men.

It's also a fascinating chunk of history too infrequently explored by the motion picture industry, which generally focuses on the preceding era — all those Westerns — or the 1920s onward. Rarely do we settle into this period when civilization clearly has been established, although social decorum and the rules of law, order and justice haven't quite caught up yet.

The film also is fueled by a dynamic and thoroughly compelling starring performance from Daniel Day-Lewis, who throws himself into this part, body and soul, with a vigor rarely seen. "Down and dirty" can't begin to describe his work here; his Daniel Plainview — a well-chosen name for a man who prides himself on plain speaking and clear vision — is so much larger than life, so much more vibrant than anybody else, that he seems to stride in blazing color through an otherwise sepia-hued cast of characters.

Unfortunately, There Will Be Blood also is grindingly dull, aggressively unpleasant and populated by amoral, opportunistic individuals with little if any redeeming value. Granted, this tale deliberately focuses on people seeking any available means to exploit each other, but the tapestry includes an entire small community; despite this, we're not given a single character to care about. The one possible exception — Plainview's son — remains a mostly mute phantom, used as little more than an appendage when Plainview wishes to convey his "family values."

And, because this is a Paul Thomas Anderson epic, things inevitably turn weird in the final act. He doesn't get as indulgently freakish as the rain of frogs that climaxed Magnolia, but he certainly concludes this story with a bit of giddily exploitative violence in a setting so intentionally bizarre that it feels like something borrowed from Sweeney Todd.

Even if you've floated along up to this point, buoyed by Day-Lewis' admittedly riveting acting, this final sequence can't help but leave a sour taste.