Daniel Day-Lewis (The Last of the Mohicans, The Unbearable Lightness of Being) is the Brett Favre, Sugar Ray Leonard, or Michael Jordan of acting. I say that for two reasons. He’s the best at what he does (and there aren’t many out there who would disagree, and even if they tried, they wouldn’t have much of a foot to really stand on), but also because he threatens to, and often does, retire from his craft, only to, after a non-predetermined set of time, return to peak performance. He retired from stage acting in 1989 when he walked off the stage during a production of Hamlet. After 1997’s The Boxer, he took up cobbling for five years (where he made exactly one pair of shoes before Martin Scorsese pulled him out of retirement to star opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Gangs of New York, a film that netted him his third Best Actor Oscar nomination at the time. He then went into hiding for another three years before The Ballad of Jack and Rose (perhaps only one of two misses in his career…the other being The Nine, which didn’t live up to its hype). Between these two misses, Day-Lewis gave, perhaps, the most memorable performance of his career as oil tycoon Daniel Plainview in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, a role that won him his fourth nomination and second Oscar for Best Actor. After 2009’s The Nine, he disappeared for another three years before returning as President Abraham Lincoln in Steven Speilberg’s Lincoln, which landed him his fifth Best Actor Oscar nomination and third win. That was in 2012. 2017’s Phantom Thread is his return film, and one that he assures us is the last of his career. Will it earn him his sixth Oscar nomination? I am guessing that it will, though he will have no chance of winning acting’s top prize. This year belongs to Gary Oldman for Darkest Hour. But if this is how Day-Lewis will go out, he’ll do so in a role that isn’t as captivating as many of his previous ones, but one that is so subdued that you’ll find yourself comparing against these past masterful roles and wondering how he is so easily able to create characters that are so different from one another when it seems like such a challenge for so many of the other actors of our generation, even some of our better ones.

I mean when you really think about it, how is it that the same actor who excelled in such films like A Room With a View, The Last of the Mohicans, My Left Foot, The Age of Innocence, There Will Be Blood, The Boxer, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Gangs of New York, Nine, In the Name of the Father, Lincoln, and The Crucible. While maybe not in my list of my favorite all-time actors, this IS a list of heavyweight performances. Five Oscar nominations for these 13 performances and he probably should have had nominations for The Last of the Mohicans and The Age of Innocence as well. He truly is the most talented actor of our generation. It would be a shame if this is his final role, but if it is, it’s one that makes watching the movie worth it. In all honesty, I thought Phantom Thread was a two-hour bore-fest, but it did allow me to go down memory lane and wonder how this man with so many boisterous performances could be the same man who is playing this neurotic dressmaker who you could how the public could adore, but one who would make spending even an evening at home with him seem like torture. His performance as Reynolds Woodcock in Anderson’s (The Master, Magnolia) isn’t weak because of the film’s quietness. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. He takes material that would suffocate the life out of the film if its lead had been anyone else and makes it a case study, one that might cause you to ask yourself if this is Day-Lewis’s most complex character of his career.

In Phantom Thread, Lewis and Anderson reunite for the first time since striking gold (or maybe oil?) with 2007’s There Will Be Blood. This is the director’s most linear movie to date. With movies like Punch Drunk Love, Inherent Vice, The Master, Magnolia, and Boogie Nights, Anderson sort of zigzagged all over the place, sometimes following his predefined set of rules and sometimes letting plausibility go completely out the window. That’s not the case with Phantom Thread. It’s the exact opposite and I think that of what you expect out of an Anderson movie and because it stars Day-Lewis, that you might be looking for something deeper that isn’t there. As mentioned, I didn’t love this movie and often felt bored out of my mind while watching it (so much so that I compared Day-Lewis’s roles against one another).

Reynolds Woodcock (Day-Lewis) is a well respected and in-demand dressmaker who has some of the elite royal clients. It’s 1950s London and Reynolds lives with his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville – Mr. Turner, A Five Star Life). Cyril is more than a sister though. He manages Reynolds’s businesses and also keeps his personal admirers rotating in and out of his life. She understands Reynolds more than anyone, including maybe even Reynolds himself. He is not a man who deals well with surprises so she ensures that his itinerary will be close to identical each day. He’s also not necessarily fond of interacting with people in social settings. His work is his work and that is where he thrives. His home life is his home life and, like all of us, this is where he can escape the rules of society and be the person he’s truly comfortable with. Unfortunately, like many of us, he wants the best of both worlds. He favors the companionship of women, but relationships don’t work for him (even as much as he’d like them to). It’s like many of us who are comfortable in a routine but who also want to reap all of the benefits of change while not being willing to sacrifice along the way. That just doesn’t work. But he’s tried in the past and he tries again with Alma (Vicky Krieps), a waitress at a local restaurant whom he takes a liking to upon his first glance. The two strike up a relationship and she becomes a person who he centers much of his dressmaking around, despite having a body shape that isn’t ideally suited for the general public (she’s a little thicker in the midsection). Unfortunately, like with most relationships, there are plenty of ups and downs. Watching Reynolds and Alma navigate these waters isn’t great viewing, but the payoff is worth it.

There were a couple of key takeaways that I left this movie with. One was that this could be a great way for Daniel Day-Lewis to end his career. I’m not sure if he’s ever had a softer, more restrained role in his career. So does that mean this is one of his most likable performances? Hardly. It goes hand in hand with my other takeaway from this movie. And that is that each of us has a public life and a private life and sometimes those two lives are nowhere close to one another. That felt like the case with Reynolds. The most sought-after dressmaker was beloved by the public. He could put on that mask while in the public eye and be the person everybody wants him to be. But at home, he was so regimented with his routine that even the slightest distraction could be seen as a nuance. But because this is a movie, we are able to see both the public and private sides of this man. A life with Reynolds would seem like it would be anything but pleasant, as was seen by Cyril, Alma, and others. I’ve read that Day-Lewis gets so immersed in some of his characters that it takes him to come out of that role and back into reality. It has been said that this is often the reason for the duration of time between his films. With Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis accepts the challenge of portraying a soft-spoken man who was revered by so many with his work to taking that same soft-spoken character back to the confines of his estate and showing the audience just how awful and miserable that same man can be in his personal life without needing him to be violent, belligerent, or even raising his voice. His simple, unrelenting need to let people know when they are upsetting him or to say what he is thinking without trying to sugarcoat it makes you wonder if there is something inherently wrong with his brain or if he truly just doesn’t care about anyone else’s feelings. It very may be his most challenging role to date because of the muted Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde approach he takes on. There are times you like Reynolds. There are times you want to see through his flaws. There are times you want to forgive him. And there are times that you don’t like him at all because of how he seems to care only about himself and how easily he hurts others.

All fans of Day-Lewis should see this movie. It’s hard to think that this man only has really 14 starring role movies to his credit. This certainly is not the best film he’s been in and might barely even squeak into the Top 10 that he is remembered for (if, in fact, this is his final movie). But it is one of his best and most challenging performances. It is a pleasure to watch him so effortlessly flash the brilliance associated with a character who is so meticulous in everything that he does. With that sheepish grin and boastful confidence, Day-Lewis brings us into 1950s London and allows us to watch him just like the other characters in his life. We don’t know any more or any less than they do. We experience each new situation in the same way that they do. We don’t know what kind of unpredictability the day will bring and how Reynolds will react to it. What we do know is to be ready for anything and everything, while realizing we may not like all of his responses and counter-actions.

Plot 8/10
Character Development 9/10
Character Chemistry 10/10
Acting 10/10
Screenplay 7.5/10
Directing 9/10
Cinematography 9.5/10
Sound 10/10
Hook and Reel 6.5/10 (far too slow for my liking)
Universal Relevance 7/10
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