Phantom Thread

6/10 —— Last film of 2024!  This was incredibly well executed from a technical standpoint and it says some interesting things in a unique way about how soul destroying and suffocating the relentless pursuit of perfection is. A man so caught up in narcissistic perfectionism that he is unable to feel anything - but especially not joy. The only time he is able to feel anything is during illness because he needs care. I think it has good and interesting ideas but it suffers some from being too emotionally distant from the viewer. I know emotional distance is its thesis, but it reached a point of such extreme monotonous coldness that it felt overbearing and left me a little indifferent in the end. Perhaps I need to think on it more. But when it does work (like the surprise dinner scene) it really soars, and the score is nothing short of brilliant. Ultimately it does a lot well but it failed to bring much needed nuance and motive to these characters, and a sense of necessity or urgency to the story. It teeters between intrigue and boredom from scene to scene, a rare predicament for a movie to fall in.