Plinth

I had this sensation before I looked into the definition of 'phantom thread' and discovered its aptness considering. The phrase describes a phenomenon associated with dog-tired Victorian seamstresses who would continue their sewing motions, stitching non-existent threads long after the day's work had finished. The phrase calls forth the disconcerting, ghostly aspect of artistic creation. An imprinting on the subconscious that wants expression.

In a similar way to how the film spills over its runtime and haunts me even now, I started watching it way before it was released. I watched the trailer, perplexed. It's about what-? A historical period drama that follows a renowned couturier making luxury dresses for high society in 1950s London: Daniel Day-Lewis plays this rigid and grey and serious fashion designer who falls in love with a waitress. At the end of the trailer, we cut to the title card whose font has fussy, decorative swashes. I was troubled and intrigued in equal measure. If I hadn't known that this film was made by Paul Thomas Anderson, perhaps I would have lost interest then and there. But the truth is, I was already prepared to love it.

To make you fall in love is not the goal of cinema, but sometimes film is a prime site for an abundance of human affection. The kind of love we're talking about here is appreciation. I have long professed my love for Paul Thomas Anderson's films, referred to the director as a genius.

As demonstrated by Anderson's latest film Phantom Thread, both love and genius are ineffable. Rationally speaking, our fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock is manipulative, dark and unpleasant; but, through the stained glass of love's madness, we still root for him. Who in the end can say what makes Alma fall for Reynolds Woodcock, or what Woodcock sees in his muse, or what it is in Woodcock's designs that make them works of genius? Genius is a slippery word, not least because when we use it we are often referring to incommunicable qualities, the je ne sais quoi, that we nonetheless understand implicitly. After all, if there were a formula, we would all be geniuses. When we talk of genius we transcend the scale of good and bad. If your partner who you love very much does something bad, you don't stop loving them. You love them because, well, you just do.

Let's wade in: There's a moment, during Alma and Reynolds' first date when Reynolds invites her to try on a dress. It's unclear at what point their romantic rendezvous became a rote fitting. Reynolds is now examining her as a mannequin, but you wonder when that started happening too. This shift is signposted for us by Reynolds having donned glasses, but is it a shift at all? When he saw her that first time, over breakfast, was he looking at a prospective lover or a new model for his designs? Then again, can't it be both, and more? There's cinematic joy in deciding.

For now, Reynolds Woodcock is fitting a dress. The scene gets fist-bitingly uncomfortable when Cyril, Woodcock's sister, enters, sits, and begins taking notes. You get the sense of this having occurred so many times before that nothing need be said about her note-taking, and indeed nothing is said. Alma begins to squirm even more under the frosty and watchful eye of Cyril, as Reynolds pulls measuring tape around Alma's waist, legs, chest. 'You have no breasts,' he says. Alma begins to apologise. 'No, no,' he replies. 'You're perfect. It's my job to give you some. If I choose to.' There's satin black humour in this. Partly because as much as here Reynolds might sound godlike - creating a woman, already imagining her as lover and muse - he's fussy and fallible, his desire multifarious and frail and only human. Meanwhile, Alma is more perfect than she realises, and not just because of her measurements. She's the woman that Reynolds doesn't yet realise he needs. Again, you won't be able to pinpoint when exactly the shift occurs, but the muse will supersede the artist.

The trouble with the cult of the male genius is that for every saint communing with god, for every Thomas Aquinas dictating to multiple scribes simultaneously, for every Vladimir Nabokov writing postmodern masterpieces in his third language, there is a Véra Slonim typing out his books, managing his money, not to mention raising his child. It's a toxic power dynamic for these Véras and Almas; but genius is also a toxic and unreachable ideal for men to aspire to. I do not mean to imply, as I may have done, that Phantom Thread promotes a socio-political message; far from it. There's a willingness here to tell story through mood and character. Alma is the perfect antagonist to provoke change in Reynolds, because she refuses to be contaminated by his rules, his monomaniacal focus, especially when it comes at her own expense.

When asked by The Guardian whether Reynolds represents an archetype of toxic masculinity, Paul Thomas Anderson seemed unconvinced, replying, 'He's just your standard-issue self-absorbed, spoiled-baby fashion designer in Fitzrovia in 1955. He's not ripping his shirt off and doing jello shots.' And Anderson is right in that Reynolds' nature is not clean-cut. To say that this film is about toxic masculinity misses much of its richness, its ambiguities. It is as much about 'toxic masculinity' as it is about actual toxins, the intoxicating power of love, the poison that is also the cure. But more than any of that, you get the sense that you're watching two people figure out how they work together, romantically. If Reynolds is reminiscent of an archetype, it is because he is atypical, fully-formed, human, and so is Alma.

Phantom Thread might not be a work of genius, but it is exquisite. Exquisite is a word I rarely use, but mean. It's beautiful to say, and delicate, with the tip of the tongue producing a soft cadence on the t. I reserve this word for a work so delicate and beautiful and intensely felt, throughout its whole, that each detail feels less chosen than like it chose its creator. Genius, as the film has helped me explore, is a notion that has its demons, a word I plan to use less. Perhaps we need to invent another. What would you call a work of art - a film, say - which feels like it has been realised with such love and care it seems to cure you of an ailment you didn't even know you had?

By Sammi Gale.