Review of Phantom Thread, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

There are always a handful of movies I hear about every couple of months that I gush about, thinking that the synopsis and praise I heard about it are worth making it something to watch very soon, but then I end up deciding not to watch the movie for years for a variety of reasons. Usually it’s just procrastination, and the fact that I have so many movies to watch and homework to do.

Phantom Thread was one of those movies. I wanted to watch it ever since 2018, but have literally put it off for five years. I’m writing this blog post and publishing it in 2024 because of my backlog of reviews to post, but I watched Phantom Thread for the first time in 2023. It’s quite a shame considering how much praise I’ve heard about this movie.

I ended up watching the film when I had nothing to do one day after wrapping up my finals for the semester. Because I had all of this time to watch movies, I ended up just picking up these movies that have been on my to watch limbo for so many years. They’d just added this film back on Netflix, so I saw my chance and pressed play.

And that’s how I ended up spending my morning one lonely Thursday. I would say, it was very worth it.

Let’s get into the review!

A dangerous dance between a popular London tailor and his muse.

The setting in this movie is London, specifically in the year 1954. If you’re into fashion, you’re going to know that the Dior New Lok became all the rage in the period after World War II in Europe, marking a return to this form of fashion and indulgence after years of war.

One of our main characters in the movie is Reynolds Woodcock, a popular tailor for the cultural and societal elite in London.

No one ever challenges Reynolds and his designs, and he’s seen as a creative genius by the people he adorns in his garments. However, he has quite the personality: he’s controlling and obsessive, which we’re really going to see later on, and he has some trauma from his mother’s death.

His sister runs the business side of things, and can be quite sour because of it.

When making a gown for a client, Reynolds meets a foreign waitress at a restaurant: Alma. He becomes smitten with her on sight, and decides to invite her to dinner.

She decides to go for it, and the two of them fall in love in the process. She becomes his muse and lover, despite them appearing very stiff when in each other’s presence.

His sister dislikes Alma at first. But as Reynolds and Alma progress through their relationship, Alma begins to dislike how Reynolds is so controlling. She’s more open with her love, and during a dinner, he lashes out at her for breaking the routine, as it will disrupt his creative thinking process. Alma does not react well to this at all either, and she literally poisons his tea with mushrooms.

He collapses while making a dress, slightly ruining the fabric in the process, and Alma is forced to take care of him through the night.

He hallucinates about his mother, and Alma enjoys the fact she holds more power over him in this state. At the same time, his staff works through the night in order to finish the dress order.

After a while, Reynolds does recover. He asks Alma to marry her once he’s feeling better, and despite her initial feelings, she decides to agree to his proposal. After their honeymoon to Switzerland, they fall into the same routines and begin fighting again.

Things become even worse when his sister reveals that he’s losing clients to more modern fashion houses, as his style is now considered old fashion.

Reynolds doesn’t like this at all, and blames Alma for distracting him. She spies on him and his sister, and when she finds out he wants to end the marriage, she poisons his meal yet again with the mushrooms.

As he takes a bite, she tells him she wants him to depend on her, and he swallows the food, then tells her to kiss him. He falls ill, and Alma imagines a dream life where they have kids, a good life and business, and decides to overcome the challenges to come.

Overall Thoughts

I have to be blunt: this wasn’t the movie for me. I think there’s something great to be admired in the acting from the movie, that’s for sure. Krieps and Day-Lewis are some of the finest actors working on the scene (or in Day-Lewis’ case, when he was on the scene), but the plot did not jive with me at all.

I think Reynolds represents this old way of living that made me feel uncomfortable to see on the screen, although I know this would be period accurate. Although Alma has this dream in the end, I don’t see herself actually living out what she imagines because he needs to learn to change in order to have his business survive.

That said, their marriage is just toxic by the end as well. The fighting does not work at all, and her dream also might not come true because they simply don’t work well as a couple. They have their good moments, but, at the same time, she wants something he might never agree to. We see him compromise by taking the poisoned food, but I could also see him exploding at some point.

The fashion background was really interesting to me, though. He does do old school garments for the period, which contributes to the decline, especially with Dior storming onto the scene.

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