Daniel Day-Lewis
It was probably inevitable that the news of Daniel Day-Lewis’ retirement from acting — making Phantom Thread possibly his last screen performance — would dominate the pre-release conversation about the movie. The three-time Oscar-winner’s reunion with writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, who oversaw Day-Lewis’ towering work in There Will Be Blood, might add even more baggage to the assumptions a viewer could have coming in. The commanding presence of Day-Lewis would surely be part of another tale of a powerful man who manipulates everyone around him to get what he wants.
At the outset of Phantom Thread, that preconception seems to be justified. Day-Lewis plays Reynolds Woodcock, a successful fashion designer in 1950s London who does the creative work while leaving the business side to his sister, Cyril (Lesley Manville). A fastidious serial monogamist, Reynolds has just moved on from his last live-in muse when he meets Alma (Vicky Krieps), a diner waitress. The two soon become lovers, whereupon Alma discovers just how particular Reynolds is about the way he wants his world organized.
Krieps plays Alma with an initial passivity and uncertainty about how to please Reynolds, and Anderson employs a wonderful sound design to emphasize every scrape of a breakfast plate that irritates Reynolds’ desire for a silent start to his day. But the interaction between Reynolds and Alma keeps getting more and more complicated, until it becomes clear that the Reynolds Woodcock we see at the beginning of the movie isn’t really the Reynolds Woodcock he wants to be.
What Anderson constructs isn’t simply a showpiece for the greatest actor of his generation to stand astride a mountain and let us gaze upon his majesty. Phantom Thread is about power within a relationship, and as such it absolutely demands a performance that can stand up to Day-Lewis. Krieps does phenomenal work with her eyes and body language, as Alma gradually begins to assert herself and finally understand what it is she might be able to give Reynolds that nobody else has. The greatest gift Anderson offers here is understanding that he has written a story where the focus needs to be on these two central performances. Phantom Thread doesn’t send Daniel Day-Lewis out by giving him A Daniel Day-Lewis Movie. It offers us a chance to see how much talent it requires to play a moment when someone’s voluntary bite of food turns into a surrender.