a house that does not change is a dead house

"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." - Flannery O'Connor

The days move from good to good, from glory to glory. And they do so by undergoing darkness (sleep, death) before the next day arrives.....
What is important to see is that death and resurrection is never, in Biblical religion, a way of returning to how things used to be. It is not mere resuscitation. The resurrected life is always a transformation of the life before death. Each day of creation was more glorious than the one before. Adam was glorified when he was given a wife. And each new covenant in the bible is more glorious than the one before. This fact stands in opposition to all the "dying and rising" myths of paganism, which only assert the return of an endless cycle, and bring about no change in history. - James B. Jordan
 

Phantom Thread is a masterpiece. There Will Be Blood is the greatest American film of the aughts. Phantom Thread is the greatest American film of the twenty-teens. I think that makes Paul Thomas Anderson our greatest living film director.

I don't know how to write about the film without spoilers. I expect you guys to see the film soon. Read this or don't. I'm not getting into many specifics, but I do riff on what I think is the main theme, which is a minor spoiler. I went in completely blind (except having watched the trailer once whenever it first dropped several months ago) and was happy to do so.

Phantom Thread is a story of a man who breaks out of a cycle, who through a glorious death and resurrection (a series of them, in fact) learns to move from good to good, from glory to glory, whose life is transformed through the experience of death.

When we meet Reynolds, he has disposed of his most recent lover. It is strongly implied and easy to imagine that this incident is yet another in a long line of such. Reynolds is stuck in a pagan "dying and rising" myth. Every time he does the same thing. Every time he gets the same results.

When he meets Alma, there is no reason for us to expect anything except more of the same. Except maybe we do. Because PTA has inserted a framing device into the film that structures the film. The first shot of the film is of Alma, speaking to someone, speaking to us, of what it is like to love this man and be with this man. We suspect that she may be the one to break the cycle.

Reynolds is full of life. He is full of himself. Those who enter his circle as lovers submit themselves to him. Alma instead challenges him. She eventually kills him. Because this is what Reynolds needs. He needs to be emptied of his own life, to lose his self, to learn to live beyond himself. He needs to die to self.

And this is the film's genius. And the film's joy.

The film is slyly funny. Sometimes it's in the dialogue. Sometimes it's in the camera movement ("tracking shots are a question of morality") and/or the way that an actor is placed and moves in the frame.

In the end, we learn with Reynolds that life is fleeting, that we must live memento mori, that we are at our best when we keep death near. When we admit that we are weak. When we know that we are dust.

Some of us are harder hearted than others, insisting on a pretended strength.

May an Alma rise up, loving, kind, to kill us when we won't kill ourselves. Then we might experience New Life. Glory to greater glory, each day more glorious than the one before.