Phantom Thread: Manipulating Audiences Expectations Anonymous 12th Grade

Many have called writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 film Phantom Thread a return to form after two misfires. Not only is Phantom Thread a glorious return to form for Anderson, it will go down in film history as a classic. What makes Phantom Thread so brilliant is not only Anderson’s meticulous attention to detail, his taught interesting direction and script, the performances of Day-Lewis, Kreips, and Lesley Manville’s Cyril, and Anderson’s subtle yet brilliant cinematography, but how Anderson and his actors flip their audience’s expectations on their heads.

Phantom Thread reunites the reclusive Daniel Day-Lewis after working together in 2007’s There Will be Blood. Set against the glamorous world of 1950’s postwar England, Day-Lewis stars as Reynolds Woodcock, an eccentric, world-renowned seamstress tasked with crafting the most elegant dresses for the wealthiest and most powerful women of the world. When he goes to breakfast one morning, he meets a beautiful waitress named Alma Elson (played the charming Vicky Kreips). Initially, she is timid and very bashful. But something about her piques Woodcock’s interest in her, and she becomes his muse. They begin to spend a tremendous amount of time together and the two begin...