“You can sew almost anything into the canvas of a coat.”

October 27, 2017 8:35 AM

First Trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson's 'Phantom Thread' [YouTube] “Set in the glamour of 1950’s post-war London, renowned dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) are at the center of British fashion, dressing royalty, movie stars, heiresses, socialites, debutants and dames with the distinct style of The House of Woodcock. Women come and go through Woodcock’s life, providing the confirmed bachelor with inspiration and companionship, until he comes across a young, strong-willed woman, Alma (Vicky Krieps), who soon becomes a fixture in his life as his muse and lover. Once controlled and planned, he finds his carefully tailored life disrupted by love.”

• Daniel Day-Lewis, In His Last Role, Makes a Very Convincing Dressmaker in the First Trailer for Phantom Thread [W Magazine]

“Ten years after Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Thomas Anderson, two of Hollywood’s foremost three-name brands, first collaborated on There Will Be Blood—a film for which Day-Lewis won his second of three Academy Awards for Best Actor—they’re back with Phantom Thread, which is reportedly the actor’s final film before his retirement. (Day-Lewis announced earlier this summer, via his publicist, that he “will no longer be working as an actor.”) The first trailer for Phantom Thread, which debuted Monday, offers a first look at Day-Lewis as Reynolds Woodcock, an English couturier designing for society ladies (“dressing royalty, movie stars, heiresses, socialites, debutantes and dames with the distinct style of The House of Woodcock,” reads the film’s synopsis) in the middle of the 20th century. Day-Lewis might be leaving the screen, but he was apparently so taken with playing a designer—a role for which he apparently trained for three years—he is considering getting into the business for real.”

• Jonny Greenwood Shares Phantom Thread Score Sheet Music [Pitchfork]

“Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood has shared part of his score for Paul Thomas Anderson’s forthcoming film Phantom Thread. He uploaded the sheet music to the title theme, written for piano and either viola or violin. See the score below. Phantom Thread, which stars Daniel Day-Lewis and Lesley Manville, arrives December 25. The film marks Greenwood and Anderson’s fourth collaboration.” [pp. 1, 2, 3, 4]

posted by Fizz (40 comments total)

I'd like to see the look on John Malkovich's face when he sees this trailer.
posted by Optamystic at 8:45 AM on October 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

Once controlled and planned, he finds his carefully tailored life disrupted by love.”\

Thankfully I got a very different impression from that trailer than this summary. I got the impression that like many of PTA's other characters, this was a story of how Reynolds Woodcock is manipulative, controlling, and abusive towards the people he was closest to, in this case his behavior is excused because he's an "artiste." PTA has really made a career at examining toxic masculinity without his male fans realizing what he is doing.
posted by muddgirl at 9:04 AM on October 27, 2017 [47 favorites]

> " When I was a boy, I started to hide things in the linings of the garments..."

There's a story that Alexander McQueen, when apprenticed to a Savile Row tailor who made suits for Prince Charles, scrawled I AM A CUNT in chalk in the lining of a suit for the heir to the throne.
posted by giraffeneckbattle at 9:05 AM on October 27, 2017 [22 favorites]

This looks great but I'll go see anything that PT Anderson does anyway.
posted by octothorpe at 9:09 AM on October 27, 2017 [7 favorites]

I was just thinking last night that it had been too long since a new PT Anderson film had been released.
posted by mkhall at 9:21 AM on October 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm also pumped for Greenwood's scoring of the film. So much of my enjoyment of P. T. Anderson's films is bound up in the music. There Will Be Blood's music still gives me chills whenever I listen to it.
posted by Fizz at 9:31 AM on October 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

Prime Oscar bait
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:37 AM on October 27, 2017

I'm getting the sense Anderson is taking all his mid-century Criterion Collection influences off the shelf and working them through—Kubrick, Bergman, Powell, Pressburger, etc.

Two films seem to be quoted with particular directness. The first is Max Ophüls' The Earrings of Madame de..., one of Anderson's avowed favorites. It's about a high-society woman discovering capacities for feeling that her arrogant husband never anticipated. The other movie is Psycho. Between those two, I think muddgirl is right on the money.
posted by Iridic at 9:42 AM on October 27, 2017 [6 favorites]

Iridic, there's also a kind of Hitchcockian-Rebecca vibe that I'm getting. About a woman who is brought into a wealthy man's life and things are not as they seem and the "love" he's providing is very double-edged.
posted by Fizz at 10:08 AM on October 27, 2017 [5 favorites]

Aww man, this trailer makes me think of The Master and now I miss Philip Seymour Hoffman.
posted by Fizz at 10:14 AM on October 27, 2017 [4 favorites]

Ahhhhhhhhhh the typography of the titles! So beautiful!
posted by eustacescrubb at 10:30 AM on October 27, 2017 [4 favorites]

I'm sure this is great, and the cinematography also looks great, but I hate what they did with the blacks. It's the kind of raised, washed-out black that makes me think they maybe exported the trailer with the wrong black level, but then the titles have proper blacks, so it's not that.

It's a shame they went with such a trite, trendy-for-a-bit-in-2014 color trick on cinematography that looks like it should ideally have been messed with as little as possible.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 10:36 AM on October 27, 2017

I'm not really an aficionado of Paul Thomas Anderson's oevre, so my initial thought in watching the trailer was, "This movie seems like it's going to make me hate men (more)." Now reading the comments I see that that is likely on purpose.
posted by soren_lorensen at 10:39 AM on October 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

You lost me at "the glamor of 1950's post-war London."
posted by ocschwar at 10:43 AM on October 27, 2017 [12 favorites]

PTA has really made a career at examining toxic masculinity without his male fans realizing what he is doing.

... You know, I love PT Anderson's works and yet never put two-and-two together that this is exactly what he's doing. Great way to phrase it. I'm getting serious horror movie vibes from this trailer; a horror movie about what it's like to have the attention of a controlling man. Perhaps for some it'll be a horror movie about how being a controlling man ruins your life and others' too. Masked in the story of what it's like to be an exacting artist. A scary version of Sunday in the Park with George?
posted by Emily's Fist at 11:00 AM on October 27, 2017 [9 favorites]

I'd like to to see Paul W.S. Anderson's take on the same material.
posted by goatdog at 11:00 AM on October 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

It's a shame they went with such a trite, trendy-for-a-bit-in-2014 color trick on cinematography that looks like it should ideally have been messed with as little as possible.

i feel like 'the master' was as much about using modern film color technique to recreate the look of old kodachrome snapshots as it was scientology, closeted homosexuality, abusive relationships, or anything else...
posted by I hate nature. at 11:03 AM on October 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

PTA has really made a career at examining toxic masculinity without his male fans realizing what he is doing.

Hasn't that been sort of crystal clear all along? I mean, he out and out shows this with Tom Cruise's PUA dude in "Magnolia" and doesn't exactly try to hide it anywhere else. I love his films but was his critique of toxic masculinity intended to be subtle?

Ugh, that's sounds more obnoxious than I intend and I can't figure out how to reword it just now. I guess I just thought that was a pretty clear trope in his films and I am surprised men (even toxic men) wouldn't see it.
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:14 AM on October 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

Believe it or not, actual Nazis love American History X.

Film is a glamorizing medium. Just as Truffault said it was impossible to make a genuine anti-war film ("to show something is to ennoble it."), and it seems to be impossible to make anit-fascist films that some people won't watch and turn into fascists at the end of them, it may be impossible to show toxic masculinity without some men interpreting it as a celebration of toxic masculinity.
posted by maxsparber at 11:39 AM on October 27, 2017 [14 favorites]

it may be impossible to show toxic masculinity without some men interpreting it as a celebration of toxic masculinity.

And most likely they wouldn't even frame it that way. For those types of individuals who miss the satire, it's just going to be an awesome movie about a successful man who takes control over his life and blah blah blah. They'll see what they want to see in that particular light and perspective that supports their own world view. People are really good at doing that.
posted by Fizz at 12:13 PM on October 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

You lost me at "the glamor of 1950's post-war London."
Yeah, there are books about those years called "Austerity Britain." There's a reason Twiggy was so skinny.
posted by Bee'sWing at 12:13 PM on October 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

"to show something is to ennoble it."

I've always wanted this to go head-to-head with Godard's 'not blood, red.'
posted by beerperson at 12:17 PM on October 27, 2017

Look, I like Goddard, but anyone who argues film is an exclusively aesthetic experience without any ability to influence audiences didn't have to deal with the rise of the KKK after Birth of a Nation.
posted by maxsparber at 1:23 PM on October 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

Hasn't that been sort of crystal clear all along? I mean, he out and out shows this with Tom Cruise's PUA dude in "Magnolia" and doesn't exactly try to hide it anywhere else. I love his films but was his critique of toxic masculinity intended to be subtle?

I mean, the Focus Features ad copy for this movie is selling it as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl love story, so even if they're deliberately trolling there are going to be people walking into this movie expecting it to be a romance.
posted by muddgirl at 1:34 PM on October 27, 2017

...I just thought that was a pretty clear trope in his films and I am surprised men (even toxic men) wouldn't see it.

Personally, underestimating what toxic people perceive has been perilous. As violence is significantly more the domain of males...well.

Look, I like Goddard, but anyone who argues film is an exclusively aesthetic experience without any ability to influence audiences didn't have to deal with the rise of the KKK after Birth of a Nation.

Balancing the exposure of toxicity with its focus...an ill-received perspective in a thread applied to Cartman, Moe, and Groucho. I can't agree more with the terms of exclusively and influence and reversing the stipulation produces: Anyone who argues depiction exclusively influences audiences didn't deal with a history of censorship. Middle ground is challenging to secure.

So, I want to bite on the PT Anderson catalog...Punch Drunk Love...not seeing it. I had a friend say it was Anderson's loving study of Jewishness. I can't textually support the conjecture, but Saul Bellow's Seize the Day was my go to. Hard Eight certainly displays toxicity, but Sydney, John, and Clementine comprise a family without toxic behavior toward another until Clementine's traumas task John for the development Sydney provided him. The "family" trope is magnified in Boogie Nights with toxicity all around. I can't cite another exception.

And maybe now I'll get some schooling in what defines toxicity. Which is why MF rocks.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 1:55 PM on October 27, 2017

I mean, the Focus Features ad copy for this movie is selling it as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl love story,

I guess as a dude I am supposed to get off on this fantasy, but honestly I have no interest in seeing yet another movie about an old man hooking up with a hot young woman. (I mean, Lewis is 26 years older than Krieps, whatever ages their characters are supposed to be.) And maybe the movie is way more nuanced than the preview, but the meeting-cute in the trailer isn't exactly compellingly convincing. I'll be skipping this one.

I am not dogging on real-life relationships with wide age gaps or real-life manic pixieness, just sort of over the constant flow of movies featuring it as a fantasy.
posted by Dip Flash at 1:59 PM on October 27, 2017 [3 favorites]

Anyone who argues depiction exclusively influences audiences didn't deal with a history of censorship.

Has anyone argued that?
posted by maxsparber at 2:02 PM on October 27, 2017

I should have written: Personally, underoverestimating what toxic people perceive...
posted by lazycomputerkids at 2:05 PM on October 27, 2017

I dunno. I think my estimation is pretty fair, but maybe I see more images of cackling Jewish caricatures posted by people with Romper Stomper AVIs.
posted by maxsparber at 2:09 PM on October 27, 2017

Yeah, there are books about those years called "Austerity Britain." There's a reason Twiggy was so skinny.

and the Rolling Stones were so short ...
posted by philip-random at 2:44 PM on October 27, 2017

I blame Capstan Full Strength and the National Loaf.
posted by Bee'sWing at 2:57 PM on October 27, 2017

the 'Phantom Thread'

Soon to be followed by "Attack of the Clothes" and "Revenge of the Stitch"
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 3:28 PM on October 27, 2017 [16 favorites]

Hasn't that been sort of crystal clear all along? I mean, he out and out shows this with Tom Cruise's PUA dude in "Magnolia" and doesn't exactly try to hide it anywhere else. I love his films but was his critique of toxic masculinity intended to be subtle?

Ugh, that's sounds more obnoxious than I intend and I can't figure out how to reword it just now. I guess I just thought that was a pretty clear trope in his films and I am surprised men (even toxic men) wouldn't see it.

I mean, I'm a woman, and I didn't key into it because I never sat down and pondered about what the overarching theme of PT Anderson films is. Even though the toxic masculinity in individual films is clear, and particularly unsubtle in Magnolia. I do think in most films he tends to show and not tell why standards of masculinity are messed up, like in There Will be Blood.
posted by Emily's Fist at 3:42 PM on October 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

but honestly I have no interest in seeing yet another movie about an old man hooking up with a hot young woman.

Like I implied in the first comment, I really doubt that the director of The Master or There Will Be Blood is making the kind of movie that Focus Features is trying to sell, and the dinner argument cut into the trailer really undermines the effervescent tone of what little description the producers have given. It really leaves me scratching my head.
posted by muddgirl at 3:54 PM on October 27, 2017

In it for the post-war couture but just from the preview, Vicky Krieps is woefully miscast.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 4:21 PM on October 27, 2017

Needs more John C. Reilly.
posted by mikeand1 at 4:57 PM on October 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

I really doubt that the director of The Master or There Will Be Blood is making the kind of movie that Focus Features is trying to sell

That was also a problem with Inherent Vice. The trailer set it up as a fun period spoof, something like what the The Nice Guys set out to do four years later. What audiences got instead was, well, Inherent Vice.

(I'm not sure what kind of preview would have done it justice and made people want to see it. Maybe a trailer that's just a shot of Josh Brolin, sitting in a comfortable chair in his real life house, playing gently with a drowsy Dalmatian mix. He turns to the camera, smiles, and says, "Hi there. I'm Josh Brolin, and I'm appearing in a new movie from Paul Thomas Anderson called Inherent Vice. Have you read the Thomas Pynchon book it's based on? No? That's okay. I don't suppose you've seen Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye? If not, that's fine too. But you might want to know going in that Inherent Vice, the movie, is a labyrinthine period detective story with a druggy ambiance and a shambling structure borrowed from Altman's seventies ensemble pics. We understand that's not everybody's thing. I like it fine, but I guess I'm a little biased. Isn't that right, Pericles?" He scritches behind the dog's ears. "Isn't that right? Isn't that right? Yeah. Yeah. Sleepy dog. Yeah. Yeah, you're a good one.")
posted by Iridic at 5:07 PM on October 27, 2017 [19 favorites]

Hmm.. the only Paul Thomas Anderson film I ever saw was Boogie Nights, and I didn't read it as a critique of toxic masculinity - but now I can see it viewed as that. But I don't think it was successful in that regard. It seemed to revel in abuse of women and take pleasure in denigration. But that was my read.

I guess I'm with maxsparber that it seems to be impossible to make anti-fascist films that some people won't watch and turn into fascists at the end of them, and for me that goes for a lot of stuff about movies, like how htey portray drug use, violence against women, and violence more generally.
posted by latkes at 7:53 PM on October 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

Heh, “Woodcock”
posted by bendy at 8:50 PM on October 27, 2017

The tonal palette used to depict austerity-era Britain reminds me of Terence Davies, whereas the candlelit scenes remind me of Barry Lyndon. I didn't necessarily feel the Ophuls influence myself & I've seen several Ophuls films, but early Kubrick was often compared to Ophuls, because they had very swoop-like camera movements that would just follow people through doors & hallways etc.
posted by jonp72 at 9:08 PM on October 28, 2017