''Given the nature of the human couple, the love of man and woman ...is inferior to that which can exist between man and dog. ...the question that plagues human couples: Does he love me? Does he love anyone more than me? Does he love me more than I love him? Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short... The love between dog and man is idyllic. It knows no conflicts, no... scenes.''
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Given that it is Valentine's season and The Oscar fever is underway, I thought that I would write about my personal response to Phantom Thread (one of the strongest entries for this year's Academy Awards) since it is being marketed as an unusual love story-- not the usual kitschy stuff that gets you teared up, but a dark, subversive, almost cynical stab into the heart of romantic desire-- which it is. Whether you have stomach for that kind of dark and morbid romance, is a different issue altogether.
Set in the self-involved coutoure world of Post-war London, the plot revolves around the celebrity fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day Lewis) and his muse/ model/ servant-girl Alma (Vicky Krieps).
Woodcock is a middle-aged, ruthless and neurotically narcissistic artist who utilises his lovers/ muses and chucks them off like used tissues when their function is past the emotional expiration date. His assistant/ soulmate/ business partner, his sister Cyril (Leslie Manville) is the one who does all the dirty job of disposal of the girls-on -their-way-out for him. Together, they form an intense, and almost incestuous dyad that is seemingly indestructible. Women just pass through, as temporary objects of Woodcock's lust, without in any way threatening their self-contained world that is rigidly predictable and sterile.
How Alma, the shy and submissive country waitress, the most unusual suspect, disrupts this bond and breaks through Woodcock's resistance against romantic intimacy is a startling revelation.
While discussing this film, critics are generally eloquent about the Pygmalion- like function of the artist and his active masculine gaze in relation with his passive, feminine muse as a playground for his fantasies of creative omnipotence. It forms a large part of the complexity, true, but is only a part of it.
''You have no breasts'', he declares bluntly while measuring Alma, who cringes at its mention in front of a coolly spiteful Cyril, ''but I could give you some, if I choose to'' he surmises with cold arrogance.
Reynolds Woodcock is a consummate artist indeed; and like all artists, is a nightmare to be around. Moody, difficult, self-obsessed and avoidant, he is also an expert seducer of women and, yes, a speed freak at the steering wheel of his suave sedan. He is vain, self conscious and a snob: 'chic' is a word he despises; the person who coined it, he feels, should be taken out for 'public spanking'.
He is aggressive, dominant and Godlike with his female clients, the society ladies who surrender to his mastery and charisma like limp-legged Eves: exposed, passive and totally under his command; they are anxious to impress him because he repairs the flaws that God left behind. He is a man who makes women--young, old, ugly-- look beautiful. The fitting sessions are especially long, ritualistic and fraught with sexual tension: as a man taking charge of the female body, touching them in their most intimate parts with a cool professional disengagement, he looks divinely powerful and it makes the frisson all the more palpable.
Alma, by contrast, is feminine, demure and her supreme virtue is that she can endlessly 'stand' while he sits, day-in, day-out, inspecting her critically, with equal measures of admiration and dismissal. The power equation is evident by the number of occasions he is seen seated and she standing in front of him--open, undressed, spectated.
The way he keeps dressing and undressing her is also responsible for making her look infantilized: and indeed, he is a much older, parental, cynical and dominant lover, hovering on the brink of dotage. But there is one crucial problem: he has an unresolved Oedipal issue; he has an obsessive 'mother complex'. His dead mother, who keeps haunting his dreams, is the third angle of all his love affairs that inhibits their romantic fruition. The sister is only an extension of that maternal incest-fantasy.
Food, a typically maternal object that involves nourishment and pleasure, becomes a metaphor for adult sexuality, its acceptance and rejection an oral signal of love and/or the lack of it. This is the chink in the armour of Woodcock's cynical emotional resistance: and Alma knows it.
After a virulent episode of food poisoning (out of spurned and frustrated love, a vindictive Alma feeds Woodcock poison mushrooms) through which she nurses him back to health, like a mother looking after an ailing child, and during which he hallucinates the dead mother and refuses professional medical intervention quite stubbornly and without explanation, he proposes marriage to her. We are confused ; we can't quite figure out what happened to cause such a romantic epiphany.
At the heart of their dark and disintegrating marriage, lies the most subversive discourse on desire that I have ever seen in mainstream Hollywood cinema. While Alma pitches her passive aggressive resistance to counter his indifferent superiority--she eats grossly, makes maximum noise at the breakfast table, flirts with other men; in short does everything to put him off that she knows would unfailingly do so--we stay pretty much unsurprised. This is what was expected of such an unequal marriage after all. The girl was practically his servant, standing in line in her calico uniform, with his seamstresses most of the time. They are both consumed by unhappiness, locked in a stalemate of hatred and hostility.
As their marriage continues to deteriorate inexorably, heading towards its inevitable collapse, Alma plucks poison mushrooms from the backyard again and cooks a seemingly sumptuous hell's broth with steely equanimity. We are to helplessly watch the poor old husband eat the toxic food--or is it toxic love of the vampish wife?--when he sensually swallows the food, giving her a knowing, complicit smile and says, with infinite passion, ''now kiss me my girl before I'm sick''. An astoundingly unruffled and smiling Alma declares, ''I want you on your back... tender, helpless, open.'' And this, for me is a rare moment of triumph: content-wise and stylistically.
He knew.
He knew all along. And chose to play into her hands, participating in this near-fatal role-play; putting his own life on the line. He too, with Alma, was pushing the limits of their morbid love. But why?
He is a person whose existence is entrenched in habit, so much so, that a surprise romantic dinner oppresses him like an 'ambush', for which he crucifies Alma and expresses his intention to break up with her. So why does he, so uncharacteristically, indulge in such a wild and dangerous erotic game?
He does, because with each episode of sickness, he experiences a temporary regression into infantile passivity, surrendering to the maternal love and care of Alma. Alma becomes the absent mother during that brief interval, giving his lifelong Oedipal crisis a logical resolution. The absent object of desire is momentarily reclaimed that fills the hole of Woodcock's longing and makes him whole again, albeit for a while.
Like a BDSM role reversal, Alma, the timid and shy muse assumes unlimited power and control over the dominant male artist with a narcissistic ego, who is only happy and relieved to let go,even though for a moment, in the sinister privacy of their shared fantasy, their morbid sado-masochistic dependency.
It is in this radical moment of erotic role reversal that they rewrite the aesthetic paradigm of the male artist and the female muse. It is not accidental that she is called 'Alma', the immediate association being 'mater', together, literally meaning, the 'kind/nourishing mother'
As Woodcock lies foetally curled on her lap, abjectly at her mercy, a glowing and dreamy Alma confesses to the doctor that she would feel happy to meet him in the blessed afterlife, in case he were to die during one of these scenarios. She is proud to proclaim that she would continue to love him through all the possible afterlives to come.
Delusional? Demented? Criminal? Or is it superhuman romantic idealism?
That seduction and sexual love is propelled by a dark dynamic of power and control and a compelling need to appropriate and possess the romantic other, is no news to the readers of Alexander Sacher Masoch. Even discourses within popular culture ratify this unflattering psychosexual reality-- such as through songs, Harlequin romances,and blockbusting movie plots. It is mainly a cynical acknowledgement of the fallen nature of human sexuality.
What Phantom Thread does is that it opens a space for romantic idealism, of sublime beauty within the larger and mostly cynical context of morbid co-dependency. It demands us to be non-judgemental while we look at the unconventional and rather pathological attachment of Woodcock and Alma with horrified fascination. We realize that the best love-stories are the ones in which the contours of each others' fantasies fit perfectly.
Did I say 'fit'?
That is perhaps the reason why the most furiously incompatible types often make the most bafflingly successful couples. Outer success has nothing to do with the repulsive beauty of this rich tapestry of erotic diversity, the phantom thread that weaves it is Desire.
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Given that it is Valentine's season and The Oscar fever is underway, I thought that I would write about my personal response to Phantom Thread (one of the strongest entries for this year's Academy Awards) since it is being marketed as an unusual love story-- not the usual kitschy stuff that gets you teared up, but a dark, subversive, almost cynical stab into the heart of romantic desire-- which it is. Whether you have stomach for that kind of dark and morbid romance, is a different issue altogether.
Set in the self-involved coutoure world of Post-war London, the plot revolves around the celebrity fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day Lewis) and his muse/ model/ servant-girl Alma (Vicky Krieps).
Woodcock is a middle-aged, ruthless and neurotically narcissistic artist who utilises his lovers/ muses and chucks them off like used tissues when their function is past the emotional expiration date. His assistant/ soulmate/ business partner, his sister Cyril (Leslie Manville) is the one who does all the dirty job of disposal of the girls-on -their-way-out for him. Together, they form an intense, and almost incestuous dyad that is seemingly indestructible. Women just pass through, as temporary objects of Woodcock's lust, without in any way threatening their self-contained world that is rigidly predictable and sterile.
How Alma, the shy and submissive country waitress, the most unusual suspect, disrupts this bond and breaks through Woodcock's resistance against romantic intimacy is a startling revelation.
While discussing this film, critics are generally eloquent about the Pygmalion- like function of the artist and his active masculine gaze in relation with his passive, feminine muse as a playground for his fantasies of creative omnipotence. It forms a large part of the complexity, true, but is only a part of it.
''You have no breasts'', he declares bluntly while measuring Alma, who cringes at its mention in front of a coolly spiteful Cyril, ''but I could give you some, if I choose to'' he surmises with cold arrogance.
Reynolds Woodcock is a consummate artist indeed; and like all artists, is a nightmare to be around. Moody, difficult, self-obsessed and avoidant, he is also an expert seducer of women and, yes, a speed freak at the steering wheel of his suave sedan. He is vain, self conscious and a snob: 'chic' is a word he despises; the person who coined it, he feels, should be taken out for 'public spanking'.
He is aggressive, dominant and Godlike with his female clients, the society ladies who surrender to his mastery and charisma like limp-legged Eves: exposed, passive and totally under his command; they are anxious to impress him because he repairs the flaws that God left behind. He is a man who makes women--young, old, ugly-- look beautiful. The fitting sessions are especially long, ritualistic and fraught with sexual tension: as a man taking charge of the female body, touching them in their most intimate parts with a cool professional disengagement, he looks divinely powerful and it makes the frisson all the more palpable.
Alma, by contrast, is feminine, demure and her supreme virtue is that she can endlessly 'stand' while he sits, day-in, day-out, inspecting her critically, with equal measures of admiration and dismissal. The power equation is evident by the number of occasions he is seen seated and she standing in front of him--open, undressed, spectated.
The way he keeps dressing and undressing her is also responsible for making her look infantilized: and indeed, he is a much older, parental, cynical and dominant lover, hovering on the brink of dotage. But there is one crucial problem: he has an unresolved Oedipal issue; he has an obsessive 'mother complex'. His dead mother, who keeps haunting his dreams, is the third angle of all his love affairs that inhibits their romantic fruition. The sister is only an extension of that maternal incest-fantasy.
Food, a typically maternal object that involves nourishment and pleasure, becomes a metaphor for adult sexuality, its acceptance and rejection an oral signal of love and/or the lack of it. This is the chink in the armour of Woodcock's cynical emotional resistance: and Alma knows it.
After a virulent episode of food poisoning (out of spurned and frustrated love, a vindictive Alma feeds Woodcock poison mushrooms) through which she nurses him back to health, like a mother looking after an ailing child, and during which he hallucinates the dead mother and refuses professional medical intervention quite stubbornly and without explanation, he proposes marriage to her. We are confused ; we can't quite figure out what happened to cause such a romantic epiphany.
At the heart of their dark and disintegrating marriage, lies the most subversive discourse on desire that I have ever seen in mainstream Hollywood cinema. While Alma pitches her passive aggressive resistance to counter his indifferent superiority--she eats grossly, makes maximum noise at the breakfast table, flirts with other men; in short does everything to put him off that she knows would unfailingly do so--we stay pretty much unsurprised. This is what was expected of such an unequal marriage after all. The girl was practically his servant, standing in line in her calico uniform, with his seamstresses most of the time. They are both consumed by unhappiness, locked in a stalemate of hatred and hostility.
As their marriage continues to deteriorate inexorably, heading towards its inevitable collapse, Alma plucks poison mushrooms from the backyard again and cooks a seemingly sumptuous hell's broth with steely equanimity. We are to helplessly watch the poor old husband eat the toxic food--or is it toxic love of the vampish wife?--when he sensually swallows the food, giving her a knowing, complicit smile and says, with infinite passion, ''now kiss me my girl before I'm sick''. An astoundingly unruffled and smiling Alma declares, ''I want you on your back... tender, helpless, open.'' And this, for me is a rare moment of triumph: content-wise and stylistically.
He knew.
He knew all along. And chose to play into her hands, participating in this near-fatal role-play; putting his own life on the line. He too, with Alma, was pushing the limits of their morbid love. But why?
He is a person whose existence is entrenched in habit, so much so, that a surprise romantic dinner oppresses him like an 'ambush', for which he crucifies Alma and expresses his intention to break up with her. So why does he, so uncharacteristically, indulge in such a wild and dangerous erotic game?
He does, because with each episode of sickness, he experiences a temporary regression into infantile passivity, surrendering to the maternal love and care of Alma. Alma becomes the absent mother during that brief interval, giving his lifelong Oedipal crisis a logical resolution. The absent object of desire is momentarily reclaimed that fills the hole of Woodcock's longing and makes him whole again, albeit for a while.
Like a BDSM role reversal, Alma, the timid and shy muse assumes unlimited power and control over the dominant male artist with a narcissistic ego, who is only happy and relieved to let go,even though for a moment, in the sinister privacy of their shared fantasy, their morbid sado-masochistic dependency.
It is in this radical moment of erotic role reversal that they rewrite the aesthetic paradigm of the male artist and the female muse. It is not accidental that she is called 'Alma', the immediate association being 'mater', together, literally meaning, the 'kind/nourishing mother'
As Woodcock lies foetally curled on her lap, abjectly at her mercy, a glowing and dreamy Alma confesses to the doctor that she would feel happy to meet him in the blessed afterlife, in case he were to die during one of these scenarios. She is proud to proclaim that she would continue to love him through all the possible afterlives to come.
Delusional? Demented? Criminal? Or is it superhuman romantic idealism?
That seduction and sexual love is propelled by a dark dynamic of power and control and a compelling need to appropriate and possess the romantic other, is no news to the readers of Alexander Sacher Masoch. Even discourses within popular culture ratify this unflattering psychosexual reality-- such as through songs, Harlequin romances,and blockbusting movie plots. It is mainly a cynical acknowledgement of the fallen nature of human sexuality.
What Phantom Thread does is that it opens a space for romantic idealism, of sublime beauty within the larger and mostly cynical context of morbid co-dependency. It demands us to be non-judgemental while we look at the unconventional and rather pathological attachment of Woodcock and Alma with horrified fascination. We realize that the best love-stories are the ones in which the contours of each others' fantasies fit perfectly.
Did I say 'fit'?
That is perhaps the reason why the most furiously incompatible types often make the most bafflingly successful couples. Outer success has nothing to do with the repulsive beauty of this rich tapestry of erotic diversity, the phantom thread that weaves it is Desire.
