Phantom Thread
Phantom Thread
Phantom Thread
Phantom Thread
Phantom Thread
Phantom Thread
Phantom Thread

Phantom Thread

Origin
USA
Movie genre
Entry
CZK 80
Length
130 min
Director
Paul Thomas Anderson
Release
2017
Rating
71 %
Cast

Daniel Day-Lewis, Lesley Manville, Richard Graham, Vicky Krieps, Camilla Rutherford, Jason Redshaw, Cedric Tylleman, Gina McKee, Brian Gleeson, Harriet Sansom Harris, Silas Carson, Martin Dew, Tim Ahern, Julia Davis

Set in 1950's London, Reynolds Woodcock is a renowned dressmaker whose fastidious life is disrupted by a young, strong-willed woman, Alma, who becomes his muse and lover.

With his latest Phantom Thread (2017), Paul Thomas Anderson's quite accentuated formal perfectionism (perfectionism that journalists insistently keep referring to) finds itself wrapped into a heartfelt love poem that breathes with warmth balancing between farce and humor. In contrast to Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love (2002) with its volatile, almost mindless electric tempo of a 50's Hollywood musical that keeps intensity always on a high note without actually breaking into songs, the richly psychological and mysterious melodrama of Phantom Thread is between Hitchcock and Kubrick in its formal and narrative design accompanied by Johnny Greenwood's elegantly baroque score (largely inspired by Glenn Gould's Bach recordings) that at times is suffocating in its refinement. Hand-made costumes and interiors and the old-fashioned luxury of a 35mm film (P.T.A. being the cinematographer of his own film) contribute to Phantom Thread's refined and elegant and at the same time accentuated to the point of being slightly obsessive yet very romantic, subtle, and outlandish world.

“On the contrary to previous P.T.A.'s films with the likes of ‚Master‘ (2012) where the camera seemed to prefer sparse compositions and half-empty landscapes, the cinematography of ‚Phantom Thread‘ largely consists of interiors and close-ups that allow in detail to examine facial expressions or else, magnificent fabrics from which Woodcock sews haute couture; lens closely studies the very texture itself and it becomes clear why Anderson prefers tactile film to an incorporeal, intangible digital. The atmosphere of a London mansion in which the protagonist lives and works often reminds again of Hitchcock (Anderson himself saying that his film feels most closely to Hitchcock's ‚Rebecca‘ and ‚Vertigo‘) whose heroes were often forced to coexist in confined spaces, or of George Cukor's ‚Gaslight‘ (1944) - in the same way, Anderson explores the dynamics of family or near-family relationships that even though always exist between people living on the same territory, yet is formed in a different pattern in each individual case.” – Andrei Kartashev

Screenings

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