PHANTOM THREAD (US - 2017) Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lesley Manville, Vicky Krieps, Gina McKee, Brian Gleeson, Camilla Rutherford, Harriet Sansom Harris, Julia Davis, Lujza Richter, George Glasgow, Nicholas Mander, Eric Sigmundsson, Emma Clandon. (R, 130 mins) In the months leading up to the release of PHANTOM THREAD, Daniel Day-Lewis announced it would be his final film and that his retirement was effective immediately. If he's serious, and there's no reason to doubt him this time (he did announce his retirement following GANGS OF NEW YORK but was back three years later in the little-seen THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE), then his second collaboration with his THERE WILL BE BLOOD writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson offers an appropriately masterful performance for his swan song. Day-Lewis is arguably the world's greatest living actor, with three Oscars and another three nominations, including one for this film, and that's a remarkable number for a guy who doesn't work all that much. PHANTOM THREAD is his first film since winning an Oscar for 2012's LINCOLN, and only his seventh in the last 20 years. He's an actor who's notorious for immersing himself in roles, embracing method acting in extreme ways, isolating himself from family and friends, demanding to be referred to by his character's name, and never breaking character for the duration of the shoot. That kind of dedication can be exhausting in the pursuit of one's art, and to an extent, Anderson fashions PHANTOM THREAD as a commentary on such commitment. Day-Lewis is Reynolds Woodcock, an erudite, in-demand fashion designer in post-war, 1950s London. He designs dresses for society's elite, up to and including royalty. He has obsessive routines and grows prickly and abrasive when they're intruded upon or deviated from in any way. And like any artist, he leaves a part of himself in his work, in the form of a word or phrase stitched inside the fabric.
He's also never gotten over the death of his mother (his favorite suit has a lock of her hair sewn inside the fabric near the breast pocket so she's always with him) and is only person he's close to is his cold, brittle, spinster sister Cyril (Mike Leigh regular Lesley Manville, also Oscar-nominated). Reynolds has a seemingly romantic companion in Johanna (Camilla Rutherford), but he's growing tired of her and wants her out of his house and out of his life, leaving the dirty work of dumping her to Cyril, who's used to handling this part of Reynolds' personal life. By chance, Reynolds meets a waitress named Alma (Vicky Krieps) and is immediately taken with her. He invites her to dinner and has her model some dress designs. Reynolds impulsively moves Alma into the Woodcock house and she learns quickly that spontaneity and surprise are not his way of doing things. He all but shushes her at breakfast, annoyed at the noise she makes buttering her toast and declaring his morning tea ruined after she attempts to make conversation. She's advised against such future behavior by Cyril, who recommends "Perhaps you should take breakfast in your room." As time goes on, Reynolds grows tired of Alma like he has Johanna and all the others, but he underestimates her time and again. Unlike his past conquests, she sees through his manipulative mind games and knows how to counter him (on their first date, she informs him "If you want to have a staring contest with me, you will lose") and doesn't back down from his sneering and pithy insults (on her serving asparagus with butter instead of his preferred oil and salt: "Right now, I'm just admiring my own gallantry for eating it the way you've prepared it!"), which not only up-ends Reynolds' life, but also sends their relationship on an oddly perverse turn where its truest nature is not revealed until very late in the film.
It wouldn't take much tweaking to turn PHANTOM THREAD into a high-end, arthouse Lifetime movie. Reynolds is a narcissistic control freak of the highest order, and while it never quite ventures into "thriller" territory, there's a pervasive unease over the threat being possible and the general sense of the unknown over exactly where this is going. There's certainly an overt Hitchcockian element to the proceedings, from Cyril sort-of serving as the ever-present housekeeper Mrs. Danvers in REBECCA to the VERTIGO-like forced makeovers of Reynolds' women into his ideal vision of beauty to the mother fixation straight out of PSYCHO and even the name Alma, which was also the name of Mrs. Hitchcock. Anderson takes the relationship of Reynolds and Alma into a wholly unpredictable direction that ultimately puts all the pieces strewn throughout the film into place. The performances of the three leads are superb and just watching Day-Lewis at work is a privilege. Watch the little bits of nuance he adds to every look and every gesture. Watch the incredulous glare he shoots Alma when she points out that his instructions weren't clear--she talks back to him and his look is one of simultaneous rage and desire, and it's just a little silent moment that speaks volumes about Reynolds. Day-Lewis turned in one of cinema's all-time great performances for Anderson with THERE WILL BE BLOOD, and it's a shame they won't--for new--be collaborating on anything in the future. Much like the Woodcock siblings, PHANTOM THREAD can be cold and stand-offish, but it's a bit more instantly accessible than Anderson's brilliant but often impenetrable THE MASTER or his labyrinthine Thomas Pynchon adaptation INHERENT VICE, and like all Anderson films, PHANTOM THREAD is one that reveals more with each subsequent viewing. Functioning as his own cinematographer, Anderson works old-school, shooting on film and using BARRY LYNDON-esque natural lighting that gives PHANTOM THREAD a thoroughly natural aura that makes it look like something that was made 50 years ago. It's not quite THERE WILL BE BLOOD, but if indeed this is the last time we're seeing Daniel Day-Lewis onscreen, then he went out with a portrayal almost as indelible as BLOOD's Daniel Plainview or GANGS OF NEW YORK's Bill the Butcher. To whom is the torch passed? Is there another actor out there who's this good?
INHERENT VICE (US - 2014) Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Katherine Waterston, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Jena Malone, Maya Rudolph, Martin Short, Joanna Newsom, Eric Roberts, Serena Scott Thomas, Michael Kenneth Williams, Martin Donovan, Sacha Pieterse, Sam Jaeger, Timothy Simons, Jordan Christian Hearn, Hong Chau, Jeannie Berlin, Michelle Sinclair, Peter McRobbie, Keith Jardine, Andrew Simpson, Jefferson Mays, Christopher Allen Nelson. (R, 149 mins)
INHERENT VICE, Paul Thomas Anderson's long-planned adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's most accessible, commercial novel, is a wildly careening, frequently meandering shaggy-dog/stoner noir set in the fictional SoCal haven Gordita Beach in 1970. As it plays out, it certainly brings to mind what might happen if someone remade CHINATOWN with Jack Nicholson's Jake Gittes replaced by Jeff Bridges' The Dude, or perhaps The Big Sleep if authored by Kurt Vonnegut. While INHERENT VICE has its share of laugh-out-loud scenes and quotable dialogue ("Molto panacaku!") and comparisons are perhaps inevitable, it's a much darker film than THE BIG LEBOWSKI, almost filled with as much somber sadness as absurdist humor. With its twisting, turning, labyrinthine plot at times akin to trying to watch THE TWO JAKES without ever seeing CHINATOWN, INHERENT VICE is likely to frustrate many moviegoers who think it's the wacky comedy the trailers and TV spots are selling. It is, for the most part, but it's also distinctly the work of Anderson, the guy who gave audiences a cast sing-along and a storm of frogs at the end of the three-hour MAGNOLIA, a film they expected to be a Tom Cruise vehicle, and whose PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE had Adam Sandler fans demanding refunds when they realized it wasn't an Adam Sandler movie. You can draw a straight line from the "Regret" deathbed speech by Jason Robards' Big Earl Partridge in MAGNOLIA to hippie private eye Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix), whose days spent in a weed-induced haze are primarily his way of getting over the one that got away.
That would be Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston, Sam's daughter), who suddenly reappears, walking through Doc's front door a year after they split. She's gone semi-establishment, with a sugar daddy in wealthy real estate developer Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts). Wolfmann is missing, and Shasta tells Doc that she was offered a chance to take part in a haphazard plot by Wolfmann's wife Sloane (Serena Scott Thomas) and her boy-toy Riggs Warbling (Andrew Simpson) to orchestrate Wolfmann's disappearance and ship him off to a mental institution. Fearing for her own safety, Shasta leaves Doc's and promptly disappears herself as Doc soon becomes embroiled in a complex plot that inevitably leads back to Shasta. Drifting in and out of the story are Doc's chief nemesis, raging, flat-topped detective and part-time actor Bigfoot Bjornsen (Josh Brolin); Sortilege (Joanna Newsom), Doc's imaginary Girl Friday who functions as his conscience and the voice that brings Pynchon's prose to life; ex-con Tariq Kallil (Michael Kenneth Williams), who points Doc in the direction of Wolfmann's neo-Nazi bodyguard Glen Charlock (Christopher Allen Nelson), who turns up dead; Charlock's sultry sister Clancy (Michelle Sinclair, aka porn star Belladonna), who's only into doing two men at once; Doc's current girlfriend and assistant D.A. Penny Kimball (Reese Witherspoon); session saxophonist and recovering drug addict Coy Harlingen (Owen Wilson), who's forced into being an informant by both the cops and the FBI; Doc's attorney Sauncho Smilax (Benicio Del Toro), whose specialty is maritime law; coke-snorting, sex-addicted dentist Rudy Blatnoyd (Martin Short); runaway rich girl Japonica Fenway (Sacha Pieterse); incompetent, nose-picking FBI agents Flatweed (Sam Jaeger) and Borderline (Timothy Simons); and various shady figures like Japonica's wealthy father Crocker Fenway (Martin Donovan), drug lord Adrian Prussia (Peter McRobbie), and Aryan Brotherhood strongarm Puck Beaverton (Keith Jardine); and a huge shipment of heroin swiped from Golden Fang, a corporation used as a front for the nefarious Indo-Chinese drug trade.
At the heart of INHERENT VICE is the relationship between Doc and Shasta, and one of the highlights of the film is a long and extraordinarily erotic sequence that should likely make a star out of Waterston (you'll know it when you see it). Phoenix is in every scene, and displays some comic chops and timing that really allow him to stretch and cut loose in ways you've never seen before. His banter with cartoonish supercop Bjornsen is often screamingly funny, and whether he's bellowing at diner cooks, kicking down doors, or delicately eating a frozen chocolate dipped banana in a way that bears an alarming resemblance to fellatio (with Phoenix's dismayed expressions looking like those of a disgusted Benny Hill) or tacitly dissing Smilax (working as Doc's criminal defense lawyer) with "Don't you practice marine law? Well, we've got kidnapping and murder, but we can throw some pirates in if it makes you more comfortable," Brolin has never been better than he is here. Amidst the drug humor and the increasingly ridiculous situations in which Doc finds himself, there's a downbeat streak of melancholy running throughout the film, from exterior elements like political upheaval and societal horrors (the Manson family is invoked on a couple of occasions) with characters lamenting the passage of time, opportunities squandered, and love lost.
That's not to suggest it goes as deep as a MAGNOLIA or a THERE WILL BE BLOOD, but INHERENT VICE, like THE MASTER, is an Anderson film that probably can't all be taken in on one viewing. Where THE MASTER was often impenetrable and cold, it markedly improved on a second and third viewing, once the plot was known and the more intricate details could be studied. With INHERENT VICE, it's due not to thematic complexity and deeper meaning, but simply because there's so many characters weaving their way through the impossibly complicated storyline, which mostly hangs together but occasionally feels like one of those BIG SLEEP situations where the plot is so tangled that the screenwriters adapting Raymond Chandler's novel weren't even sure who killed one of the victims, forcing them to seek the guidance of Chandler himself only to find out that he didn't know either. At two and a half hours, INHERENT VICE marks the first time that an Anderson film actually feels long. Perhaps because it's mostly an engagingly silly stoner comedy (this may have more blazing than the entire Cheech & Chong filmography), the epic length does make things drag at times...not enough to deem it a buzzkill, but for a guy whose past films never feel as long as they are (how many 189-minute films move as briskly as MAGNOLIA?), the bloat doesn't always feel justified here. Still, minor missteps aside, INHERENT VICE is a very good film by a director usually counted on to deliver great ones, one of the few filmmakers whose every new work is a legitimate event, and in the current American movie scene, Anderson's "very good" is still better than most filmmakers' "best."
Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Laura Dern, Ambyr Childers, Jesse Plemons, Rami Malek, Kevin J. O'Connor, Madisen Beaty, Christopher Evan Welch. (R, 138 mins)
Don't look for any straightforward storytelling in THE MASTER, easily the most impenetrable and difficult work yet from Paul Thomas Anderson. Drifting away from the kinetic, propulsive, last-third-of-Scorsese's GOODFELLAS-style structure of BOOGIE NIGHTS (1997) and MAGNOLIA (1999) and feeling colder and even more stand-offish than his most recent film, THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007), THE MASTER is not something easily digested in one viewing or even five. I'm not even sure if I like it, and that's never been a reaction I've had after seeing a Paul Thomas Anderson film (BOOGIE NIGHTS is probably my favorite film of the 1990s). There's a lot to admire in THE MASTER, but it's a film that never lets you in, and not in the way of needing everything explained to you. It keeps you at a distance and really doesn't let you know entirely what's going on or what the stakes are or why some people behave the way they do.
Joaquin Phoenix, in his first film since his I'M STILL HERE/"retiring from acting to become a rap star" prank/debacle that claimed James Gray's excellent TWO LOVERS as a casualty, stars as Freddie Quell, a disturbed WWII vet trying to adjust to postwar life. He's belligerent, antisocial, drinks too much (making his own concoctions with distilled paint thinner), and seems to have an immature fixation on the female anatomy. His unpredictable, often violent behavior gets him tossed from job after job, and by chance, he stows away on a boat that's hosting an extended wedding party for the daughter of Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Dodd is a doctor, a philosopher, and the guru of a new religious belief known as The Cause (intended by Anderson to represent L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, though the film isn't specifically about the religion itself). With nowhere else to go, and with Dodd enjoying his unusual beverage concoctions, Freddie becomes Dodd's de facto right-hand man in his quest to legitimize The Cause, even physically assaulting those who dare to question Dodd's teachings. From then on, the film focuses on the relationship between Dodd--"The Master"--and Freddie, and there's any number of interpretations to draw from it. Are they two sides of the same coin? Have they met, either in this life or in another? Is Freddie a spy who might turn on Dodd? Is Freddie welcomed into the Dodd family much like Mark Wahlberg's Dirk Diggler became part of the family of Burt Reynolds' Jack Horner in BOOGIE NIGHTS? Is this all a complicated man-crush or is unrequited, or even forbidden love?
THE MASTER looks stunning, from the beautiful cinematography to the painstaking production design and period detail. Hoffman is a commanding presence, and he's matched by Amy Adams as Dodd's devoted, controlling wife Peggy, who may be more in charge of The Cause than Dodd's devoted followers think. You've never seen Adams like this before, putting a disturbing spin on her inherent red-headed feistiness to where Peggy is either very brainwashed or she the one really calling the shots. Is she jealous of Dodd's bond with Freddie? Why does she tell him he can do whatever he wants as long as she or people they know don't find out about it? And why does she do this while jerking Dodd off and calmly demanding "Come for me"?
It's Phoenix who gets the film's most difficult and problematic role, and he too often succumbs to hamming it up and going overboard with the tics and mannerisms, but he has to keep up such a tortured intensity between Freddie's contorted stature and his weird body language that the actor looks like he's in constant physical pain. It's a brave performance and an almost impossible role to play, and I'm still not sure whether my issues are with the character or with the way Phoenix is playing him. But there's no denying how brilliant he is in his "sessions" with Hoffman's Dodd, or when Dodd makes Freddie go through an entire day of repetitively walking across a room and describing the wall and the window, or in one amazing scene of sustained, top-of-their-voice shouting from Phoenix and Hoffman as their characters argue in adjacent jail cells.
I'm still not sure what to make of THE MASTER. On one hand, it's too original, bold, and inventive to dismiss, but on the other, it's the first time I've felt Anderson was being pompous and pretentious, and a "Slow Boat to China" serenade isn't quite "I drink your milkshake!" In equal measures brilliant and overwrought, ambitious and aloof, hypnotic and baffling, THE MASTER is like no other film you've ever seen (except maybe John Huston's long-buried 1946 documentary LET THERE BE LIGHT, from which Anderson quoted several lines of dialogue), which is what we've come to expect from Paul Thomas Anderson. And like it or not, he's made the film he wanted to make. I'm just not quite sure what he wanted.
