The Understated Elegance of <i>Phantom Thread</i>

Phantom Thread is the second collaboration between the writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson and the actor Daniel Day-Lewis—and if the latter is to be believed, it will be the last. Day-Lewis has announced that he is retiring following this performance. I don’t doubt the sincerity of this vow, but I dearly hope he will change his mind. (Steven Soderbergh did, after all.) At 60, Day-Lewis has many more years—and, with luck, memorable performances—ahead of him.

Anderson’s previous collaboration with Day-Lewis, , was very nearly before it undid itself in. Like that film, is the story of a difficult, exacting man. But befitting their respective titles, it unfolds in a gentler key. Reynolds Woodcock (Day-Lewis) is a master dressmaker in mid-century London: prim, meticulous, and—as one character describes him—“fussy.” He lives and works in a grand house with his sister, Cyril (Lesley Manville), and a series of muses who are discarded once they cease to inspire him.