Phantom Thread

Phantom Thread has been accurately compared to Hitchcock’s psychological dramas—the period feel, the established auteur director, the horror that can sometimes be found at the heart of intimate relationships between men and women.  For me, though, it’s more instructive to consider Phantom Thread in dialogue with the films Get Out, The Hunger, and Carol.  

Like Get Out, Phantom Thread depicts a character who is invited into a world of white wealth and privilege.  Alma in Phantom Thread and Chris in Get Out are smart and sensitive enough to realize that something just isn’t right in these mysterious worlds of beautiful homes and feigned politeness.  Whereas Chris has a best friend to confide in and ultimately to help save him, however, Alma seems completely alone and without the same urgent desire for escape.  Granted, the stakes are different—Chris must struggle against murder, and Alma risks only abandonment.  But I was puzzled why Alma chooses to burrow into this toxic world, rather than to get out. 

What we know about Alma is that she is a charmingly klutzy waitress at a restaurant in the country; she has a vaguely European accent and seems not to have known her mother.  In 1950’s England, the specter of the Holocaust, and World War II in general, lingers at the edges of her character.  Was she a refugee of some kind?  Was her family killed?  Or did she choose to leave her home on her own terms?  Was she married, or did she have any serious relationships before?  What country is she even from?  Does she have any hobbies or interests other than foraging for mushrooms?  We learn nothing about her throughout the course of the film, except in regard to how she chooses to handle her relationships with Reynolds and his sister Cyril.  Did the filmmaker not care enough to develop her character more fully, or is she intentionally a cypher?  We never learn about Cyril’s hopes or dreams either.  Although her business acumen is well established, Cyril never expresses a personal desire, something for herself alone. In some ways, this lack of information makes for a neater film.  Like excess thread, the narratives of Alma and Cyril’s lives are cut to conform to the pattern of the film.

In such a deliberately crafted film, is it an accident that the score for Phantom Thread includes the same Schubert piano trio as was featured in the 1980’s vampire love triangle The Hunger?  And that Reynolds’ hunger is also a central theme of Phantom Thread?  In The Hunger, Catherine Deneuve’s Miriam has a dilemma—she can transform her lovers into fellow vampires with whom she can share centuries of wealth and privilege, but eventually her companions begin to age, at which point she is driven to find a new companion. As Miriam is compelled by her vampiric hunger, Reynolds is described as a “hungry boy,” and the film traces his appetite for breakfast in particular, as well as for disposable others who can contribute to his sense of self.  At the beginning of Phantom Thread, Johanna has worn out her welcome and is discarded by Reynolds with the able assistance of the ever-efficient Cyril.  Within the span of a day or two, Reynolds has identified his next companion, Alma—a young woman who glows with vitality.  Likewise, when David Bowie’s John the vampire begins to age, Miriam seeks a new lover—Susan Sarandon’s inquisitive epidemiologist Sarah.  Through their contact with Reynolds and Miriam, Alma and Sarah are transformed into unnatural versions of themselves—Alma into a prim, gown-wearing socialite, and Sarah into an inhuman vampire.  Both films center the experience of the needy, glamorous protagonist and his or her effect on the victims of their affection.  

Phantom Thread also calls to mind Carol, a recent film set in the 1950’s which dramatizes an uneven romantic relationship. In Carol, Rooney Mara’s Therese is a department store cashier who catches the eye of the monied and immaculately coiffed Carol, played by Cate Blanchett.  Both films exult in the visual splendor achieved by exquisite tailoring, set design, hair, make-up, and art direction. Where the films differ is in their depictions of the women’s lives and desires.  In Carol, Therese is part of a social circle that includes a boyfriend and friends, and she is interested in photography.  Carol is a devoted mother in the midst of a tumultuous divorce.  Unlike with Alma or Cyril, these biographical details about Therese and Carol allow viewers to understand and sympathize with their motivations, which perhaps is the benefit of basing a film on a book.  In both films, the characters navigate difficulties as they learn to know one another and then have to decide whether the challenges are worth continuing a romantic relationship.  And both couples do finally decide to pay the price that is demanded by choosing to remain together.  In the case of Carol and Therese, it is confronting the external pressure of a homophobic society.  For Reynolds and Alma, it’s the internal dynamics of enduring/inflicting illness in order to receive/administer comfort.  

After seeing Phantom Thread, I left the theatre wondering what the point of it was.  Was it that a controlling asshole needs not one, but two mother figures to enable his supposed genius to flourish?  That some people are going to romanticize a Heathcliff no matter how many dogs he murders (literally in the case of Heathcliff, figuratively for Reynolds)?  Several people in the audience laughed at the black comedy, finding humor in the absurdity of Reynolds’ puffed-up, fragile ego.  While I can appreciate that perspective, it’s not how I experienced the film.  

Initially I was put off by Phantom Thread, particularly when I read criticism referring to the character of master craftsman Reynolds as a representative of auteur director Paul Thomas Anderson.  But then I thought, what if this film had been directed and/or written by a woman?  What if Ava DuVernay had directed Phantom Thread?  Would we be discussing her mastery in the same way?  It’s impossible to know.  Would it change the way I understand the film?  The answer is unequivocally, yes, I would think of this film differently if a woman of color had been significantly involved in its production.  I would be more readily inclined to view it as a searing indictment of how white women are essential to propagating a racist, patriarchal hegemony and therefore collude in a system that privileges them at the same time as it narrows the scope of their lives.  Since Anderson is the director, however, is this understanding of the film wrong?  I do think there’s something to be said for T.S. Eliot’s distinction between the man who suffers and the mind which creates.  If this distinction between artist and art is valid, the meaning I derive from the film should be irrespective of its creator.

I found myself wishing that we knew as much about the internal lives of Alma and Cyril as we did the women in Carol.  I considered that the central tragedy of Phantom Thread might be that of Barbara Rose (Harriet Samson Harris), who expresses real vulnerability during a dress fitting scene, but sentences herself to her own Sunken Place through alcohol abuse and therefore is deemed by Reynolds and Alma to be undeserving of her couture dress.  I imagined how Phantom Thread would have been different if Barbara Rose had been a character like Lil Rey Howery’s Rod in Get Out and, instead of giving up, was able to help Alma or Cyril rescue themselves.  However, my concern with understanding the motivations of the white women at the soul of Phantom Thread can perhaps be best understood by placing myself in relationship to the continuum of white people who insist on trying to humanize Allison Williams’ Rose from Get Out when in fact—as Williams has asserted—Rose is just plain evil.  Phantom Thread seems to show that in such an insulated world as the one created by Reynolds Woodcock, there is no room for voices from the outside.  White women seem to believe that their choice is either to feed Reynolds’ vampiric power, regardless of how toxic it is, or to be left with the indignity of last season’s gown and nowhere to wear it.  Yet if I were to turn up the edge of this film, the phantom thread I would expect to see would spell out “White women, do better.”