There are films that present the crisis of a human when he becomes captivated by one idea in life, including director Paul Thomas Anderson’s film Phantom Thread, which presents a complex story of a talented person in his field of work as a women’s fashion designer, and this complexity extends to multiple spectrums, whether with his talent or with women or, even with life in general.
Actor Daniel Day-Lewis presented the character of Reynolds Woodcock, the talented tailor who was able to hone his talent, so he became very much in demand by the women who wanted him to design their dresses, and one of them even wanted to be put in her grave when she died wearing a Woodcock-designed dress. This talented person was also able to devote all the details of his life to this art, which gave him a renowned name in higher society, and he was satisfied with this glory, even when Alma asked him: Why didn’t you get married? He answered with deep conviction: I design dresses. As if designing dresses is the ultimate glory.
The life of the designer, Reynolds Woodcock, depended on the clothes in which he excelled in making, and although his career was tied to the world of women, it was devoid of a real woman who would have a real impact on his life. He used to act with the women in a Machiavellian way according to the requirements of his profession. The mother he lost early in his life was the spiritual inspiration for whom he designed the first dress in his professional career. So, he kept conversing with her ghost and thought that it gave him the strength to continue on this path, which is why he said: It is good that the dead watch over the living.
Then comes his sister Cyril, who is the manager who organizes and supervises the management of his administrative and financial affairs, and also holds the same convictions. Therefore, there is a distance between them that is characterized by harmony and coexistence, until she catches a sense of when he gets bored of the girls that model for him and would want the model to leave the fashion house, so she is the one who relieves his embarrassment and informs the girls about their departure. As for the female workers at the Woodcock fashion house, they appear to be very serious and committed, and they look old. There are no smiles, conversations or side conversations between them while working. Cyril’s strictness and Woodcock’s seriousness have created a place that produces beautiful dresses, but without a beautiful life in that fashion house that was created for work and work only.
The female clients of Woodcock hold him in warm gratitude. His talent showcases their beauty, forging a continuity between them. Woodcock accompanies them through life’s stages, a captivating gentleness and measured intimacy marking his interactions. This intimacy manifests in the affectionate kisses he shares with more than one client. But these kisses are kisses of gratitude, not desire or passion, so they do not perceive him as a man, but a talented designer who designs dresses that add charm and beauty, he only sees in them women who flaunt his distinctive designs and have the most beautiful dresses, and he often believes that he has virtues over women.
The fourth vein of femininity that nourishes the talented tailor Woodcock is the bevy of models whose bodies inspire his creations. Each woman within his house enjoys a special intimacy with him; however, this closeness hinges on her continued suitability as a muse. Any physical change, or a shift in Woodcock’s artistic vision, severs this bond. Cyril, then, becomes the bearer of bad news, informing the departed model of their dismissal. This fate befell Joanna and Herta Hardy. Woodcock, thus, finds himself consumed by a mixture of anxiety and bewilderment as he searches for a new muse, a girl who will reignite his creative fire and grant him the privileges of innovation. This disquietude remained his constant companion until a chance encounter with a young waitress named Alma Elson.
The Russian novelist Nabokov wrote to Véra: You came into my life — not as one comes to visit … but as one comes to a kingdom as queen. But Alma Elson did not enter the life of dress designer and Reynolds Woodcock as a queen, rather, she entered as a simple model girl. On the other hand, Alma thought that she had entered the life of that handsome designer because she was a woman who he fell in love with. This contradiction in emotional perception created between them a confused relationship based on the hidden conflict that was the theme of the film.
In the restaurant, and in their first scene together, designer Woodcock was looking at the waitress Alma, not with the eyes of the man who was attracted by that beautiful girl. Rather, he was examining her with the eyes of a fashion designer, seeing in her an ideal body to become the new model for the house. While that simple waitress was captivated by that admiration and saw in him the man with whom she would live a time of emotional brilliance.
When Woodcock conversed with Alma, he was not exploring the female within her, rather, he recognized her personality and her ability to play that role. Her obedience fascinated him, her smile misled him, and her simplicity seduced him. He felt he’d unearthed the raw talent he could mold into his designs. So, during their first fitting, the real surprise for him as a designer wasn’t that her body fit his creative needs, but rather that she displayed a crucial quality for any female model: the ability to withstand the long hours on her feet.
Woodcock’s admiration for Alma resulted in an aesthetic flavor that made him overlook important signs in her expressions that expressed her personality. He asked her in their first meeting: Did the color of her eyes resemble the color of her mother’s eyes, and she answered in the negative. When he asked her: Does she carry a picture of her mother, she answered in the negative. Then Woodcock issued his first command to Alma, regarding the picture of her mother: Carry it with you. So, she asked him directly: Does he carry a picture of his mother?! These answers, despite their simplicity, were indicative of a woman who had some independence and privacy in her thinking, as well as a level-headedness. She said to him in the same meeting when he was looking at her: “You will lose if you compete with me in staring.” But Alma’s immersion in the role of a model obscured the features of her different personality.
On the other hand, Alma was smarter and more understanding of Woodcock’s character. She said to him jokingly at the beginning: You claim to be strong. This phrase was not just a joke, rather, Alma discovered that Woodcock had built a world of his own, in which his serious way of working as an artist-designer and his peculiarity as a human being with his own rituals was evident. And everyone around him was complicit in supporting him, whether it was his sister Cyril, the workers in the fashion house, or even the models, all of them supported Woodcock in weaving these imaginary threads around his personality that obscure the truth inside him.
Although his profession is based on aesthetic clarity, he sees it as a profession of secrets. He says to Alma: You can sew anything into the coat’s fabric: secrets, coins, words, small messages. When I was a boy, I started hiding things in the linings of my clothes, things that only I knew were there.
But in contrast to this darkness inside him, we find that he prefers the bright and sunny light in the fashion house, and this is one of the psychological paradoxes of Woodcock’s character. He favors secrecy and does not like anyone else to have it. We saw when he spoke to Alma, removing her lipstick, justifying that action by saying: I would like to see who I am talking to. It is an indication that he seeks physical transparency, because he overlooked signs in her words that indicated that she might be a suitable aesthetic model, but at the same time, she is a woman with a difficult, complex, and jealous psyche. She told him early on: You are a handsome man, and there are inevitably many beautiful women surrounding you. In another case, Alma violently seized an obese woman’s dress because she liked that beautiful dress too much.
From the first rehearsal, when Woodcock was taking Alma’s measurements, he abandoned the gentleness and those looks that had seduced her at the beginning of their acquaintance and replaced them with the rigor and seriousness of the work. When he told her after that that she would sleep in another room, she realized why Woodcock approached her, and she understood the extent of the intimacy that would be between them. But with her strong personality, she decided within herself to go on the path of working as a model, but not like Woodcock’s previous models.
Woodcock was able to familiarize everyone around him with his rituals and privacy, and everyone accepted this, rather, they believed that this should continue in order to remain creative in fashion design. But Alma, the new model girl, was professionally naughty with these rituals, including her way of eating. So, through her own cunning, she harbored the intention of changing him. She sensed from the beginning that he is not a strong man, but rather he protects his fragile interior by claiming strength. So, when he first looked tired and needed rest, she then realized that when he was sick, he was sweet and blooming, that’s why his weakness delighted her, which created in him the temptation of human need. “Sometimes it’s good for him to slow down,” she said happily of an exhausted Woodcock.
Alma laid her grip on him and made him feel that she was able to be present in his life in her own different way and not the way he wanted. When she tried to surprise him with dinner alone, his sister Cyril said that he did not like surprises, but Alma answered her: “I try to surprise him and love him the way I want, but I have to get to know him in my own way.”
At that dinner, the first confrontation between the two took place. He complained and bullied her about the surprise she had prepared for him, and when the discussion between them got heated, she said to him: All your rules, your walls, your doors, your people, your money, these clothes, everything here, none of it is normal or natural, everything here is a plaything.
The sentences Alma said were not merely angry sentences, rather, she had an accurate reading of Woodcock’s world and his personality, and perhaps she said to him things that no one had dared to say before and to be honest with him about the vanity of his imaginary world that he had built with imaginary threads. Perhaps she told him the things he wanted to be told one day.
Following that sharp and hurtful speech, he did not order her departure, their relationship just kept going. He had declared sovereignty, and she had the ability to manage that relationship in her preferred way. So, she prepared for him that meal that made him sick, and here she regained her pleasure in seeing him exhausted, sick, and in need of her tenderness and care. And this time she not only won her desire to see him sick, but she also won the battle for his care against his sister Cyril and became the one to take care of him.
“Marriage would make me misguided, and I have no desire to be so,” Woodcock used to say, but Alma, with her feminine strength, made him ask to marry her. He abandoned his conviction of becoming an eternal bachelor. But by making this decision, he made a grave mistake. Because the reverence, affection, and love he had received from Alma before marriage had dissipated, and she began treating him like a wife to the point that she did not care about eating in the way that provoked him.
When his sister Cyril said to him: Should I order her to leave? Woodcock was strict in his work and in his emotions. He no longer had the power to keep her out of his life. He could no longer back down, even though he realized that she had spoiled the rules of his game and that when she said: I want you lying on your back, helpless, tender, open, and I alone can help you, he was aware that this weakness and need had become real, and that he had to say to her with utmost need: Kiss me, my girl, before I’m sick.
This film tells the story of a man who works in a profession surrounded by women. He is skilled at designing dresses and has the ability to amaze them with his ingenuity and talent. But at the same time, he was protecting himself and his world by creating enough distance between himself and the women to give him the ability to be only the brilliant designer and not the man in love. He feared for his art and talent, and when Alma discovered the fragility of his heart, she took possession of him and made him her boy, subject to the power of need and human weakness. He surrendered to her because he was tired of that controlling role that he had played throughout his previous life.
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