Phantom Thread (Film Review)

2017 Focus Features
Written and Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lesley Manville, and Vicky Kneps; MPAA Rating: R
Nicsperiment Score: 10.0/10.0

It's been no secret through the ages that an artistic temperament is often difficult. Those of us who have it, but only a modicum of talent to go along with it, generally have to lose it, as few sane people will want to put up with our bullshit. However, those with a wealth of talent seem quite able to get away with it.
Phantom Thread stars Daniel Day-Lewis as an exceedingly fussy, particular, difficult, but brilliant dress designer in 1950's London. He's made a life for himself bound by extreme routine and specificity, along with his stone-willed sister, played by Lesley Manville, who seems to be the only person to whom he'll relent.
It's clear from the beginning that Day-Lewis' character has picked up and discarded countless muses along the way, but none like his most recent fixation, played by Vicky Kneps. He meets her when she waits on his table at a countryside restaurant, seemingly smitten when she's able to produce his overly complex order to perfection. In her, he sees a blank canvas, someone who will cater to his every whim, but the waitress has other designs. Unbeknownst to the haute couture designer, he's just met the only woman paradoxically malleable and stubborn, not to mention codependent and slightly sociopathic enough, to be his match.
Daniel Day-Lewis has been Earth's most obvious candidate for greatest leading actor for some time, and he loses himself so much in the demanding neuroses of this role, he is reportedly now retiring from acting. Kneps stands toe to toe with him, believably smiling in docility while she's poisoning the fashion genius' tea. Director, Paul Thomas Anderson, is up with Day-Lewis in the realm of "person on the planet who is the best at what they do," and has been in that discussion since the 1990's, with 2014's Inherent Vice his only misstep. His previous collaboration with Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood, was a career highlight for both, and somehow with Phantom Thread, they've struck oil again. Anderson clothes the film in a slight gauzy atmosphere,eschewing sharpness for a more timeless, classical look. Every frame overflows in cinemotographic excellence, making quite clear that Anderson has had period imagery cycling through his mind for some time. The subject of his film here is difficult. No one would want to spend much time with this nearly reprehensible match made in purgatory, but yet, under Anderson's lens, the film is a joy, a banquet for the eyes, and thanks to Johnny Greenwood's score, the ears. Anderson's decade-long partnership with the Radiohead guitarist has proven bountifully fruitful, and Greenwood's hypnotic string and piano-heavy work for Phantom Thread is some of his best as a composer.
These two Day-Lewis/Anderson joints are monumental entries in the highest pantheon of modern cinema. That we won't experience any more work between the two is criminal.