PHANTOM THREAD
An unsettling portrait of the lengths to which one must sometimes go to make the whole of life — not just the creative portion — worth living… a certain empathy with the travails of both Woodcocks, of the relentless pursuit of a goal without end by the creative, totalitarian id of Reynolds (an unsurprisingly brilliant – and possibly final – performance by Daniel Day-Lewis*) and the similarly relentless pursuit of another goal without end by Alma (Vicky Krieps is the true star of THREAD; her performance – and her stare – is a revelation), two passionate voices waging war across the minefield of the creative life and mind, a mind uniquely capable of self-deception: the only time I felt a realization of myself as a human being open to the tenderness of others in “real/adult life” was when I was recovering in my hospital bed, the sanctity and the curse of routine forcibly removed as my body learned to stop eating itself and I learned how to function amidst the rise of my new normal, of my new routine (no mushrooms required nor do I foresee the necessity of a return to illness as release, as fulcrum, unlike the impression of the Woodcocks’ inevitable loop with which the film’s final moments left me).
* Perhaps the war demonstrated in THREAD between a dedicated creative life and a dedicated human life spurred Day-Lewis’s decision to retire? Perhaps it hit too close to home for him? But that’s all just mindless speculation and I’m probably mistaken; though my theory makes a modicum of sense I’m certain it’s something far more mundane and far more human
