L:
Saw Gangs Of New York too long ago, and I'm not even sure I watched it all the way through (I'm bad that way). But, yeah, I think Scorsese's a tad overrated generally, though he's good with set pieces. And what's with the gangster obsession?
Day-Lewis, on the other hand, is a brilliant, riveting actor in anything. He alone makes the quirky movie "Phantom Thread" work (strongly assisted though by the two women), with its oddly comic ending. It's on Netflix.
Me:
I just watched Phantom Thread. Quirky is for mild. I liked it a lot. It moves slowly but is never boring or tiresome. And, as you say, DDL is hot stuff here as an actor. What a difference between him as Woodcock and as Bill the Butcher!
I’m not entirely clear why it’s called Phantom Thread. My best guess is that it has some connection to his mother as a key to him that then invisibly stitches him and Alma together, allowing her to manipulate him into needing her. When he talks to no one in his room, saying, paraphrase, “I need you. I want you always with me,” I take it he’s referring to his mother and it’s that that Alma is able intuitively to exploit in getting him, reducing him and keeping him bound to her.
I’m not sure I’m seeing the ending as comic. She seems to have triumphed, at least for the moment, and he seems to accept that dynamic. I sense he knows when eating the poisoned mushroom omelette so deliberately and slowly, it dripping with butter, which he so detests, that the omelette is actually tainted.
We’re at the very end left with her fantasy of what life will be like with him, happy, loving, with a child, profitable and altogether fulfilling, while they’re actually smack in the midst of the perversity of their relationship.
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