It couldn't have been because of the close proxmity, when Henry Higgins had Eliza Dolittle, a plebeian working class girl, move into his house under the pretext of driving out her uncouth and making her more cultured, or even the fact that she was the polar opposite of everything Higgins, the high mannerered phoenetic professor, was paving the way for opposites attracing that eventually has Higgins fall head over heels for Eliza in the famous Bernard Shaw's play "Pygmalion" (in the splendid screen adaptation "My Fair Lady"). It wasn't the distance that brought them together; it was the imperfections. The fact that he sees her as a task, a mission, a work in progress that he could shape and mould and control, which eventually also becomes the bone of contention when Eliza comes into her own and resents the professor's patronizing and condescencion, is what is Pygmalison's charm showcasing the strange dynamic between a creator and his creation.
A few years ago, there was a film from Sweden, "Force Majeure" (force of nature), that addresses this balance of power this time between a husband and a wife, who start off with an idyllic situation, happily married with a couple of kids, when nature intervenes to reveal the true fault lines in the relationship. When a calamity occurs, the husband, in a pure instinctive way, runs for cover while the wife, again all instinctive, rushes into protect her kids first before saving herself, and the rest of the movie is about the slow shift of power in the relationship from the man to the woman because of that one incident. The wife drags her husband down the patriarchal ladder at every given opportunity from thereon, be it when confronting him with her incredulity towards his selfishness in putting himself first before his family, or while bringing this topic up repeatedly (and quite subtly) in a group setting with friends, presenting her shocking reality as a hyptothetical situation and asking the group what each would had done in a situation like that, obviously trying to hurt her husband, albeit in an oblique way, with a thousand cuts of shame, guilt and humiliation. Howevermuch the ideals of marriage proclaim the equality of genders, every relationship starts off being lopsided because of power, wealth, intelligence or even fear, and as it goes on, the scales constantly shift the balance in one's favor or the other, with the balancing factors being vulnerabilities or eccentricities or weaknesses that reveal themselves during the course of the relationship. Marriage starts off being an osmosis process where everything evens out over a period of time and there is little that separates (in psychological holds) between the man and his wife, and once it settles down, it becomes a simple balance with the scales constantly trying for oneupmanship. The joke about the most intelligent person in the world ever being Albert Einstein's wife, for controlling a man with such kind of genius, reveals the true inner workings of a relationship, the genius part notwithstanding.
'Phantom thread' is one such examination of a prickly relationship between a tortured genius and his simpleton wife. The movie takes its own sweet time to establish "tortured" part of the genius, his fastidiousness, his frustration and his impatience at seemingly simple and mundane things of life, like buttering the toast a bit loudly or biting on the nuts a tad bit hard or pouring the hot tea from high atop, that might otherwise interfere with his superior thought process. When into his life walks in a waitress, who is used to doing all of the above in her professional life, starts the struggle for space, mind and (upper)hand. That the genius is a famous dressmaker for the social elites who is trained to always look at and fix imperfections in his trade adds to the mix as his personal fixations and professional tendencies bleed into one another rendering his life constantly at odds with his (imperfect) surroundings. After the initial period of reservedness and deference that wives of lesser genius generally concede to their brilliant spouses, starts the inevitable normalization process when the high regard and respect that kickstarted the relationship tend to equalize, first, and minimize, next. The observation that the distance between the couple during a walk is in direct proportion to the number of years they were married together (hilariously depicted in the dinner table sequence in 'Citizen Kane' when the couple starts off staring into each other's eyes at the dinner table at the start of their marriage, and finally end up on the oppisite sides of the same as years wear on) applies equally well to each other's habits/antics too, when what starts off being exotic ends up becoming eccentric, and what's viewed as brilliance becomes all too commonplace. Passive aggression is on full display here as they start hurting each other without so much as a word being spoken out aloud. The husband hates his tea being poured with a loud noise, and the wife suddenly has the hankering for the same sweet sound the liquid makes when it hits the ceramic container from increasing height; the husband treasures his silences during the morning breakfast period when he is usually lost in deep thought about his creations and the wife makes it a point to use the same time for having quality convsersations with him. What is usually mistaken for rapprochment and reconciliation in marriage are in fact yielding and conceding. The fun part is watching who blinks first and who extends the olive branch first.
'Phantom Thread' is P.T.Anderson's most straightforward movie till date and probably his most leisurely. Gone are his usual trademarks of tension escalations and franatic camerawork. Here the pace is deliberate and measured as the tectonic plates of the relationship slowly adjust themselves to different pressures to reveal a new topography as age progresses. The style is akin to Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon", both technically in terms of the photography with its high contrast and mood lighting and thematically too, about the travails of misanthropes. There is even a nod to the now famous candle-lit sequence of "Barry Lyndon" where the only ambient lighting in the frame is from the wicks of hundreds of candles spread all around. In all, 'Phantom Thread' is a slow burn of changing narratives similar to the subject that it deals with. Painful and brilliant!
checkout http://kanchib.blogspot.com for Srinivas's Blog.
