I will tell you the truth about why Daniel Day Lewis quit acting. Because the truth is there for us all to see, when you remove the shine of your bright eyed glee. I write this interpretation of The Phantom Thread not to ignite debates or arguments, but to state the truth. Because at its root, the truth, simply - cannot be reduced. I give fair warning that this post will be long and challenging to both read and to come to terms with its claim, as with the story of Daniel Day Lewis the actor, it comes with grave consequences and a heavy heart. A true matter of life and death. So for those without the intellectual stamina to engage in critical thought, I will spare you the agony and suggest you allow your mind to wander to a more shallow end of the pool. And to those who as Shakespeare writes, would rather choose death over life, "To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;"... I recommend you return to your slumber of the mundane. As we souls trying to awaken continue on our journey, there is no room for haul around dead weight. I begin by addressing the elephant presently in the room, which at the time of this film's release, had yet to stomp on stage. But that's neither here nor there, as today is all we really have and today Daniel Day Lewis has made his first "public appearance" in over 4 years. The legendary giant of an actor had chosen quite the non-public setting of the Big Apple to publicize his private will. Now I will extract the meat from a recent yahoo article to lay the groundwork as they are integral clues and will connect the dots of this layered story, with his life being a sort of parody, or extension of his movie making career. The article states, "Daniel Day-Lewis will no longer be working as an ACTOR," his rep (re-present-ative) at the time, Leslee Dart, said in a statement to Variety. "He is immensely grateful to all of his collaborators and audiences over the many years. This is a PRIVATE decision and neither he nor his re-presentatives will make any further comment on THIS SUBJECT." Essentially this is saying that DDL (his name abbreviated for short) will no longer be a public character, but is choosing to be a private man. Suggesting he has served his term and is NOW aware between the difference of being PUBLIC vs PRIVATE in a legal sense. I will expand on this later. Furthermore, the article again quotes DDL, "All my life, I've mouthed off about how I should stop acting, and I don't know why it was different THIS TIME (referring to the post part dum depression of making the film as we will find he admits to later), but the impulse to quit took ROOT in me, and that became a COMPULSION," For clarity, Webster's defined compulsion as, "the action or state of forcing or being forced to do something; constraint." That theme of being forced to do something against one's will, by force, is not only present in DDL's life, in the characters of the Phantom Thread's fictional lives, but in all of our fictitious lives. To quote DDL once again, he states, "BEFORE making the film, I didn't know I was going to stop acting," he told W. "I do know that Paul and I laughed a lot before we made the movie. And then we stopped laughing because we were both overwhelmed by a sense of SADNESS. That took us by surprise: We didn't realize what WE HAD GIVEN BIRTH TO." Presuming the laughter stopped AFTER making the film. Spoiler alert, the action he had given BIRTH to was compulsory in nature, carried out by force and we will see both in the movie and as in Shakespeare's Hamlet, we also face the same sea of troubles of outrageous fortunes that Daniel is navigating through. How we decide to face those troubles is the ultimate way out of the storm. To be or not To be. In what? In war? I choose peace. Finally, the article ends with the admission of DDL: At the time, Daniel said he had no intention of watching the FINAL CUT of the movie. "Not wanting to see the film is CONNECTED to the decision I've made to stop working as an actor," he explained. "But it's not why the SADNESS CAME TO STAY. That HAPPENED DURING THE TELLING OF THE STORY, and I don't really know why." The article concludes with no cliffhanger. It ends with clear confirmation that his decision to stop acting is DIRECTLY connected to his contribution to, as he puts it, "THE BIRTH" of this film, which told a story so steeped and rooted in sadness too literal to believe. The tragic hero. The failed antagonist. The role we have all been deceptively given on the world's stage. If you've made it this far, I commend you. We've pushed and fought through a field of thick and thorny brush, but rest assured we've made it through the other side, and have reached the meadow where the flowers of truth shall reveal themselves. And as with the blossom of a flower, inevitably comes the death of its petals. As the story begins, the tragic hero, Alma, recounts her blossom as her story unfolds. She imagines for the audience a palace of sorts to the likeness of a castle. One that only the eschalant of society has access to, one that she only dreamed to be a part of. Throughout the story, her character buds with exuberance as if displayed at the wedding of a royal court, only to be tossed overboard and meet the same demise of her metaphoric death once the last of her petals had fallen. Here is where you brace yourself for the ultimate truth. The same root that took hold in Daniel Day Lewis after making this film. DISCLAIMER, I speak generally as I am making the assumption that the reader of this post is part of the "known" world which has been colonized and commercialized. But I will tell you who Woodcock is, who Alma is, and who Cyril re-present in YOUR fictional, but legal life. Because all allegories are about you. A tragic yet true poetic allegory. Like the bible, like Shakespeare's Fair Youth Sonnets, ALL stories are about - you. All the world's a stage, and we are merely actors in it. Pull the curtain. Let the show begin. Black's law dictionary defines a "delivery" as the expulsion or extraction of the FETUS AND ITS MEMBRANES. Now I want you to conjure up the image of the opening scene that depicts the words Phantom Thread written in white cursive against a black backdrop. Simple, minimal, yet layered in meaning. Straight to the point of the needle. Can you see the shape I am seeing? With its native hue of resolution? It is a fetus in the mother's womb, cohesive and uncut. All pieces are still consistent. Void of space between the lines as it continues from beginning to end with no CUT. This symbol is the fetus, as it evolves in the womb of a pregnant mother, connected to the wall of her uterus and what I will refer to as the "extra embryonic material" of baby, or more scientifically referred to as, the PLACENTA. As a side note yet an important note, the word placenta is of Greek origin and it translates to "cake", which should give you pause the next time you celebrate, or as I like to more accurately put it, memorialize the person attached to the "birth" date, blow out/ex-spire its candles to make a wish, and as Marie Antoinette so brutally said, "let them eat cake". Are you beginning to see where I am headed? Now's your chance to like Woodcock tells Alma (in a more derogatory way), exit stage left. Go home if you can't handle the truth. Because the truth is bitter and has no concern for your love. You can offer up a plate of the most delicate asparagus coated in the finest butter, and the truth will shit all over your plate without remorse. I must address one more useful fact before we get to the MATTER of fact. The term birth is akin to "berth" which Black's Law defines as 1. a place where passengers sleep on a ship or train. 2. where a boat is moored when loading and discharging passengers or cargo. In other words, the arrival of a vessel at sea that enters a port and docks with permission of the dock master. An interesting fact, till this day the dock master of a port still issues a berth certificate which has been registered and incorporated into some sort of commercial body of law. A copy of this certificate is handed to the captain of the arriving ship. Coincidence? Are echoes of citizen-SHIP ringing in your head yet? We've only yet to arrive at the crime scene, the violent act has yet to occur. The sin is still brewing. But I'm sure this puzzle is beginning to take shape in your mind. Now I want you to recall as best you can, your memories of being born. I will use my own story as the prop as it tells the tale of the most recent metaphoric ship to arrive here on MY Earth. From the moment of fertilization to the 40 weeks thereafter of our first child, was all a blur. In over my head, all I could anticipate was the birth of my to be child. Ill-informed, naive and ignorant that within my wife grew a single cell zygote, and was developing into a multi-organ'd fetus with a very special organ and a very special function known as the extra embryonic material that bonds baby and momma in the womb. I gave it little thought as I was preoccupied with work and the mundane of life. And before I could stop to take it all in and meditate on the gravity of the situation, 40 weeks passed by in the blink of my bright eyes. And it happened one night. In the middle of the night. I found myself driving myself, my wife, and my expected baby to the scene of the crime.
As my wife lay strapped to the hospital bed with a catheter intruding one end, and a needle pierced through another, she struggled in labor as if reduced to a ward in an insane asylum, trying to fight off both the pain of labor and the humility of incarceration. But we "had faith" in the institution we had trusted, and believed they knew what was best for her, thus we had no hesitations as my wife was monitored by machines like a mouse in a cage, a test subject of sorts, injected with foreign fluids, violating her most intimate space as they conducted "internal checks" at an excessive rate, and worst of all, induced a numb sensation throughout her body as they administered a drug in the form of an epidural that sent shockwaves of depressants through her central nervous system; sending her body to a momentary death. A death just long enough to deprive her of the natural God given sensations of bearing her first child. That Nirvanic and beautiful pain was stolen in the sake of discouragement and pity... Vanishing by the wayside of artificial chemicals whose potion was crafted to sensor the truth. But Alas, our baby had traveled through the metaphoric canal, still connected to the nautical naval, now ready to exit the waters of mother; The contractions (meaning to bring together or to abridge) had emerged closer, her cervix had gone through waves of dilatations (breadth, widening, the opening of the puerta/door/portal) and baby's crown was finally visible. Ahhh!!! With nervous excitement and blood filled anticipation, I ready myself to meet a Queen, a King, I don't know the gender yet, but I do know they are sovereign and royal as I can with clarity see a CROWN! The ghost of my wife in all her visible agony, yet void of complete sensation, then pushed out the evolutionary entirety of our 23 chromosome donation that has for 40 weeks evolved from a single cell zygote into a fully developed unique, original, vintage fetus with a 46 chromosomes "original package" that belonged to her and only her. And she is born. It all happened so fast, gleefully and still flushed with nerves I let the dockmaster do their job as they checked the vitals of the baby. Then they handed our child to her mother for the first time and in my vulnerable state of ghostly presence, the dockmaster asked me, "Dad, would you like to CUT THE CORD?" As if an honor only meant for the most deserving had been bestowed upon me, a twisted milestone of sorts. I stupidly, ignorantly, and hastily fall for the trap. And I commit the crime of aborting my own child from all her extra embryonic material. Her possessions. The ark that guided her genetic covenant through the allegorical 40 days and 40 nights of her Noah's flood. The Church that housed and sheltered her most holy of sacraments, and the baby Jesus that was her sacrificial lamb and bore her crossing of her motherland from the country where no man returns. In an instant. Without even asking my baby or considering her wishes, I abandoned her property that was so pure and innocent, unblemished, and without defects. She is now the phantom of the opera as the French saying goes, "Le Mort Vivant". The living dead. All the while, her placenta was still pulsating and yet to be naturally delivered from momma. And as Shakespeare so eloquently put it, her "Fair Youth", had ended before it had the chance to begin. The dockmaster and his goonies then yanked my baby's extra embryonic material out of her mother and disposed of it as if dumping a bag of trash. Unappreciated and neglected. Still alive and pulsating with blood, on its way to becoming a deposit and the MATTER of fact. THEE specimen that gave rise to the birth certificated decedent estate known as my daughters name. Held in title. Held in trust. Abandoned, unclaimed by it's rightful owner, and pirated at the Cestui Que Vie trust law of the holy sea. Oh Henry VIII, you murderous king! You are to blame! You are the fault which caused me to de-fault on my child! She is not at fault! How could she be? She is but a precious jewel who's my job it was to protect. Ahhh!!!! You useful idiot! Not only have I failed to protect my child in her arrival, I am an assailant to the crime. A stumbling fool caught red handed with the weapon. Running with scissors never ends well. And as the saying goes, "the first cut is the deepest". And this is just the first of many natural shocks the flesh is heir to. Allah Shakespeare speaks truth once again. Like a drunken fool, I had offered up her dowry as she readies for her consummation. Enter Woodcock stage left. The proverbial Woodcock is behind the curtains in the backroom, fashioning her a new wedding dress, as the marriage between Church and STATE is about to commence. And with the weaving of a spell, with bright eyes I am handed a form. This form that con-forms to the will of another. An unseen force, yet one that strikes fear and as Alma puts it. Demands respect. Demands every piece of you. I handed the form over to my wife who was still in a state of pain and agony. And with her sign of nature, through her voluntary consent, and on my dumb watch, she offers her sig-nature as the legal guardian and informant letting the receiver know the cargo is ready for the taking. Like a chattel branded with hot iron and coal, my baby has been given a name. Not not just a name, but has been assigned a TITLE in ALL CAPS to signify her place in office. Still bright eyed with incompetence, I am told that I must take this evidentiary piece of paper to an elusive office of vital records to Re-chord her TITLE in a ritualistic registration. Ahh, she is now regal like Alma, the courting ended faster than it began. She had been placed on a pedestal and her dimensions have been taken by the metaphoric Woodcock with meticulous precision as his bookkeeper Cyril jots down her statics for the re-cord. Head circumference, length of arms, length of legs, body, belly. It is done. Her identification has been alchemized. And she is now part of the House of Woodcock. What was once the property of one becomes the property of another. From gill breathing sperm to encapsulated egg, this single cell zygote which has the handprint of God, Da Vinci's Sistine chapel, has been desecrated. Though the water creature fish had fully developed into a healthy amphibian fetus, simultaneously living in the waters yet breathing oxygen through the interface of her mother through the holy bond they genetically shared via the placenta. To finally, a walking, breathing, spirit filled bipedal in its entirety... I ruined, in the act of the cut. Dis-ease. To be out of ease. Without peace. Unwhole. In the eyes of the Church, this child now needs salvaging which can only come through salvation. The church is there to offer her Jesus, Buddha, and Allah. In the eyes of the STATE, she is incompetent and inconsistent. Another loony in the loony house. The STATE is there to offer its services of administration, benefits, and the management of her Cesqui Vie Trust as an incestuous and wretched trustee. And Woodcock. The middleman. The one who sewed her phantom limb back together again. Daniel Day Lewis. The useful idiot, so pompous and well respected. Revered by the masses. Whose name carries clout! The truth is out of our control yet it is inside of us all. Oh you stranger on TH-cam! The gull to speak such blasphemies about my life!?! You digital avatar dare rain on my parade?! Well more often than not, the things we most cherish in life, are the things most toxic for our health. Ask Alma, as she desperately tries to gain the love and affection of Woodcocks, yet ironically faces the constant growing scorn of his condescending abuse. Toxic and un-natural. The marriage of CHURCH and STATE. Ultimately Alma is marginalized to an empty vessel without a soul. Le Mort Vivant. She has fallen for his trap. And is now the living dead. From the moment they had first locked eyes in the restaurant, Woodcock had found his mark. She was both his mark and his beast, his frankenstein to defame. He would chip away at her spirit, until she had little resemblance to the purity she once had. Expressed by his insatiable appetite, she would be something too grotesque to salvage. The first meeting of the two at the restaurant is the most important scene as it begins her downfall. Naively she enters into a contract with him as she takes his glutenous order. He asks her to re-member it, to make it part of her as if a member of one's family. He takes the original paper, symbolic of the evidentiary contract. He asks her out for dinner, knowing she would accept as she never stood a fighting chance. She then seals the deal in the act of handing him a document giving her Name (title), date, and initials, and most important; her voluntary sign of nature. He found his mark. She had given her signature and symbolically registered it into his keeping. The act of registration. This was not the first time the house of Woodcock needed a new body. Not a woman, not a soul inspired by God, but a vibrant, youthful body of whose soul was to be sucked away. That was the real deal. She had entered into a commercial trust that would revolve around her body being the collateral for the agreement evidenced by her birth certificated decedent (dead) estate. The part of her that was living once, as Shakespear says, " For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil". That mortal coil, reader, is the toroidal, spiral, umbilical cord that attaches baby to mother through the interface of the placenta, which is then alchemically sewn back together by the dressmaker with his phantom thread.
Woodcock made it clear on their first intimate rendezvous that he was not interested in her love, but her equity, strictly a matter of business. He would use her and abuse her without remorse, just a subject to be profited from. Commercialized. He would parade her around in the manner that his aristocratic clients would do in his dresses. His job was to fashion, to fabricate and weave a story of lies, and extort her essence by deriving an artifact in the form of a dress that had a link to her God given biological estate. And he did this with the phantom thread as the bond holding that TRUST in place, re-attaching her metaphoric deposit, a.k.a. the phantom limb. Her anty, her chip in the game. Her placenta. As Shakespeare Hamlet says, "Ay there's the rub." She was to suffer the same fate as Joanna did in the very early onset of the story once Alma's asset had been fully depreciated and sucked dry. Nothing more than a tax write-off to be sent to salvage. Alma, being a native of the land, Cyril instructed Woodcock to visit "the country" to find their next SUBJECT. Cyril said, "I will be there tomorrow". Alma, the indigenous woman, had begun her journey innocent and without defect. Sovereign. And had fallen into a conspiracy too evil to be believed. We readers, if you are still there, have suffered the same trap as Alma. Our God inspired/spiritual native, indigenous manhood and womanhood has been stripped of its sovereignty. We've been domiciled and domesticated from the people of the land to the souls lost at sea. Dead souls at that. A resident of the Situs. A citizen of the STATE. In her fit of jealousy and insecurity, Alma confronts the French princess by reminding the princess that the House of Woodcock was her residence. Do not make the same mistake as Alma. Do not be Hamlet and let the seed of injustice rot into a fruit of passion and revenge. You must be a pacifist and learn to forgive and forget. In full disclosure, I haven't even finished watching the film, but I think I know how this story will end. As Hollywood partakes in the soft disclosure of the truth, with an insidious twist that is; Alma becomes the tragic hero by devising a plan to murder and poison Woodcock. She is the Hamlet of Denmark. Enraged in madness, stooping to the same level as her abuser. She has made the decision to not let bygones be bygones, or let dead dogs lay, she seeks vengeance to, "settle the score". The world is a game and I'm just a player in it. That is my prize and I will compete for its deed. I think I will end here. I've beaten this horse to death and there is no more water for it to drink. Now that you've made it to the end, you can now re-watch this movie with a new frame of reference. The reference of TRUTH. Once you see the truth you can't unsee it. It will crawl out from the underbelly of the beast and shine like the brightest star. Daniel Day Lewis knows this. He has perpetuated this story in many of his "his-storically" based films. Glazing over the past, romanticizing, dramatizing, and propagandizing the "jus cogens" to the people fallen victim. Crimes of humanity. The trafficking of the innocent. Oh the twisted irony of the holly-wood. Now go. And return the authority back to yourself by the only means possible. Not through the sword, but through the word. Become the author of your own story and correct the fault that was not yours to begin. I gave you a shovel. Now dig.
Wow. Was not expecting such a magnificent and imaginative essay. You should watch the end of the movie though, I wonder if you’ll have a different perspective?
@@justgettingstarted-n7r Hello, thank you for your kind reply . yes, I have finished the movie and it ends in a contractual agreement between woodcock and alma to remain in a perpetual state of war. People unable to see the underlying message of the movie are distracted by the seemingly emotionally charged games of an unhealthy relationship, not realizing that this relationship is metaphoric for the State and it's beneficiary being played out in reality by the viewer and their fictional government. The beneficiary being from their sovereign beginning, willfully subjects himself to an imprisoned and dis-eased state of being represented by the "second coming" or after -birth material held on deposit or the "in God we trust". This is touched on in the scene where Alma and woodcock on honeymoon visit a casino and gamble their souls away. Your extra embryonic fetomaternal material is the subject matter, your "chip in the game". Alma finally agrees without remorse to conform/adopt her given custom role symbolized by the wedding dress fashioned by Woodcock. Please read the tale of the Procrustes to understand what I mean by "custom". And then correlate it to the customs and border department which determines your identity matches and conforms to its legal denomination when re-entering a fictional jurisdiction. Another telling and true satirical scene at the end of the film was them dancing in a ballroom full of what any man/woman of sound mind would consider lunacy. People dressed up in fictional costumes, pretending to be animals, characters and clowns; as if patients in an insane asylum. Which conveniently, is how the State declares you... Unhealthy. Incompetent. Delirious. Someone who accepts crazy roles to play out on stage, drunken in the madness of the disheartening truth. In need of care.. In need of administrative assistance (ad-minister: to give ministry) to salvage. To be given salvation. Confess your sins and you shall be made whole. Well guess what, you are whole. Unless you hysterically ignore your true beginning. Your Divine (bloodline) connection to the creator. And replace that beginning with a State certified identity that shares your given name as its title. Luke 5:31. They that are whole need not a physician. But they that are sick. I just watched the new little mermaid with my family and this movie is all about the same story, told in a different manner. Once you know the truth, you can't un-see it. It's plastered ALL over the silver screen and popular music. Listen to Kurt Kallenbach new word order on buzzsprout.
hard to hate this legend
PTA with the drip.
Ha
He got that shit on
the soundtrack was really nice for this film
i give it 5 bags of pop corn and three little kashmir sweaters coz it was such good fun.
love his trackies
They're Haider Ackermann
@@bennylaines4414 do you know the specific name of them?
Him and Day-Lewis work so well together
Love PTA
Great! I'm gonna go try this now and give up in 15 minutes
Will the full version be uploaded?
Any idea where the full interview is?
Splattermelt sweet valley
PTA needs to make a crime thriller film
He did with Inherent Vice.
@@Garrett1240 I found and experienced it to be more of chiller than a thriller :D
Daphne du Maunier?
daphne dumonyaaaa LOL
I will tell you the truth about why Daniel Day Lewis quit acting. Because the truth is there for us all to see, when you remove the shine of your bright eyed glee.
I write this interpretation of The Phantom Thread not to ignite debates or arguments, but to state the truth. Because at its root, the truth, simply - cannot be reduced. I give fair warning that this post will be long and challenging to both read and to come to terms with its claim, as with the story of Daniel Day Lewis the actor, it comes with grave consequences and a heavy heart. A true matter of life and death.
So for those without the intellectual stamina to engage in critical thought, I will spare you the agony and suggest you allow your mind to wander to a more shallow end of the pool. And to those who as Shakespeare writes, would rather choose death over life, "To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;"...
I recommend you return to your slumber of the mundane. As we souls trying to awaken continue on our journey, there is no room for haul around dead weight.
I begin by addressing the elephant presently in the room, which at the time of this film's release, had yet to stomp on stage. But that's neither here nor there, as today is all we really have and today Daniel Day Lewis has made his first "public appearance" in over 4 years. The legendary giant of an actor had chosen quite the non-public setting of the Big Apple to publicize his private will.
Now I will extract the meat from a recent yahoo article to lay the groundwork as they are integral clues and will connect the dots of this layered story, with his life being a sort of parody, or extension of his movie making career. The article states, "Daniel Day-Lewis will no longer be working as an ACTOR," his rep (re-present-ative) at the time, Leslee Dart, said in a statement to Variety. "He is immensely grateful to all of his collaborators and audiences over the many years. This is a PRIVATE decision and neither he nor his re-presentatives will make any further comment on THIS SUBJECT."
Essentially this is saying that DDL (his name abbreviated for short) will no longer be a public character, but is choosing to be a private man. Suggesting he has served his term and is NOW aware between the difference of being PUBLIC vs PRIVATE in a legal sense. I will expand on this later.
Furthermore, the article again quotes DDL, "All my life, I've mouthed off about how I should stop acting, and I don't know why it was different THIS TIME (referring to the post part dum depression of making the film as we will find he admits to later), but the impulse to quit took ROOT in me, and that became a COMPULSION," For clarity, Webster's defined compulsion as, "the action or state of forcing or being forced to do something; constraint." That theme of being forced to do something against one's will, by force, is not only present in DDL's life, in the characters of the Phantom Thread's fictional lives, but in all of our fictitious lives.
To quote DDL once again, he states, "BEFORE making the film, I didn't know I was going to stop acting," he told W. "I do know that Paul and I laughed a lot before we made the movie. And then we stopped laughing because we were both overwhelmed by a sense of SADNESS. That took us by surprise: We didn't realize what WE HAD GIVEN BIRTH TO." Presuming the laughter stopped AFTER making the film. Spoiler alert, the action he had given BIRTH to was compulsory in nature, carried out by force and we will see both in the movie and as in Shakespeare's Hamlet, we also face the same sea of troubles of outrageous fortunes that Daniel is navigating through. How we decide to face those troubles is the ultimate way out of the storm. To be or not To be. In what? In war? I choose peace.
Finally, the article ends with the admission of DDL:
At the time, Daniel said he had no intention of watching the FINAL CUT of the movie. "Not wanting to see the film is CONNECTED to the decision I've made to stop working as an actor," he explained. "But it's not why the SADNESS CAME TO STAY. That HAPPENED DURING THE TELLING OF THE STORY, and I don't really know why."
The article concludes with no cliffhanger. It ends with clear confirmation that his decision to stop acting is DIRECTLY connected to his contribution to, as he puts it, "THE BIRTH" of this film, which told a story so steeped and rooted in sadness too literal to believe. The tragic hero. The failed antagonist. The role we have all been deceptively given on the world's stage.
If you've made it this far, I commend you. We've pushed and fought through a field of thick and thorny brush, but rest assured we've made it through the other side, and have reached the meadow where the flowers of truth shall reveal themselves.
And as with the blossom of a flower, inevitably comes the death of its petals.
As the story begins, the tragic hero, Alma, recounts her blossom as her story unfolds. She imagines for the audience a palace of sorts to the likeness of a castle. One that only the eschalant of society has access to, one that she only dreamed to be a part of. Throughout the story, her character buds with exuberance as if displayed at the wedding of a royal court, only to be tossed overboard and meet the same demise of her metaphoric death once the last of her petals had fallen.
Here is where you brace yourself for the ultimate truth. The same root that took hold in Daniel Day Lewis after making this film.
DISCLAIMER, I speak generally as I am making the assumption that the reader of this post is part of the "known" world which has been colonized and commercialized. But I will tell you who Woodcock is, who Alma is, and who Cyril re-present in YOUR fictional, but legal life. Because all allegories are about you. A tragic yet true poetic allegory. Like the bible, like Shakespeare's Fair Youth Sonnets, ALL stories are about - you. All the world's a stage, and we are merely actors in it.
Pull the curtain. Let the show begin.
Black's law dictionary defines a "delivery" as the expulsion or extraction of the FETUS AND ITS MEMBRANES. Now I want you to conjure up the image of the opening scene that depicts the words Phantom Thread written in white cursive against a black backdrop. Simple, minimal, yet layered in meaning. Straight to the point of the needle. Can you see the shape I am seeing? With its native hue of resolution? It is a fetus in the mother's womb, cohesive and uncut. All pieces are still consistent. Void of space between the lines as it continues from beginning to end with no CUT. This symbol is the fetus, as it evolves in the womb of a pregnant mother, connected to the wall of her uterus and what I will refer to as the "extra embryonic material" of baby, or more scientifically referred to as, the PLACENTA.
As a side note yet an important note, the word placenta is of Greek origin and it translates to "cake", which should give you pause the next time you celebrate, or as I like to more accurately put it, memorialize the person attached to the "birth" date, blow out/ex-spire its candles to make a wish, and as Marie Antoinette so brutally said, "let them eat cake". Are you beginning to see where I am headed? Now's your chance to like Woodcock tells Alma (in a more derogatory way), exit stage left. Go home if you can't handle the truth. Because the truth is bitter and has no concern for your love. You can offer up a plate of the most delicate asparagus coated in the finest butter, and the truth will shit all over your plate without remorse.
I must address one more useful fact before we get to the MATTER of fact. The term birth is akin to "berth" which Black's Law defines as 1. a place where passengers sleep on a ship or train. 2. where a boat is moored when loading and discharging passengers or cargo. In other words, the arrival of a vessel at sea that enters a port and docks with permission of the dock master. An interesting fact, till this day the dock master of a port still issues a berth certificate which has been registered and incorporated into some sort of commercial body of law. A copy of this certificate is handed to the captain of the arriving ship. Coincidence? Are echoes of citizen-SHIP ringing in your head yet? We've only yet to arrive at the crime scene, the violent act has yet to occur. The sin is still brewing. But I'm sure this puzzle is beginning to take shape in your mind.
Now I want you to recall as best you can, your memories of being born. I will use my own story as the prop as it tells the tale of the most recent metaphoric ship to arrive here on MY Earth.
From the moment of fertilization to the 40 weeks thereafter of our first child, was all a blur. In over my head, all I could anticipate was the birth of my to be child. Ill-informed, naive and ignorant that within my wife grew a single cell zygote, and was developing into a multi-organ'd fetus with a very special organ and a very special function known as the extra embryonic material that bonds baby and momma in the womb. I gave it little thought as I was preoccupied with work and the mundane of life. And before I could stop to take it all in and meditate on the gravity of the situation, 40 weeks passed by in the blink of my bright eyes.
And it happened one night. In the middle of the night. I found myself driving myself, my wife, and my expected baby to the scene of the crime.
As my wife lay strapped to the hospital bed with a catheter intruding one end, and a needle pierced through another, she struggled in labor as if reduced to a ward in an insane asylum, trying to fight off both the pain of labor and the humility of incarceration. But we "had faith" in the institution we had trusted, and believed they knew what was best for her, thus we had no hesitations as my wife was monitored by machines like a mouse in a cage, a test subject of sorts, injected with foreign fluids, violating her most intimate space as they conducted "internal checks" at an excessive rate, and worst of all, induced a numb sensation throughout her body as they administered a drug in the form of an epidural that sent shockwaves of depressants through her central nervous system; sending her body to a momentary death. A death just long enough to deprive her of the natural God given sensations of bearing her first child. That Nirvanic and beautiful pain was stolen in the sake of discouragement and pity... Vanishing by the wayside of artificial chemicals whose potion was crafted to sensor the truth.
But Alas, our baby had traveled through the metaphoric canal, still connected to the nautical naval, now ready to exit the waters of mother; The contractions (meaning to bring together or to abridge) had emerged closer, her cervix had gone through waves of dilatations (breadth, widening, the opening of the puerta/door/portal) and baby's crown was finally visible. Ahhh!!! With nervous excitement and blood filled anticipation, I ready myself to meet a Queen, a King, I don't know the gender yet, but I do know they are sovereign and royal as I can with clarity see a CROWN! The ghost of my wife in all her visible agony, yet void of complete sensation, then pushed out the evolutionary entirety of our 23 chromosome donation that has for 40 weeks evolved from a single cell zygote into a fully developed unique, original, vintage fetus with a 46 chromosomes "original package" that belonged to her and only her. And she is born.
It all happened so fast, gleefully and still flushed with nerves I let the dockmaster do their job as they checked the vitals of the baby. Then they handed our child to her mother for the first time and in my vulnerable state of ghostly presence, the dockmaster asked me, "Dad, would you like to CUT THE CORD?"
As if an honor only meant for the most deserving had been bestowed upon me, a twisted milestone of sorts. I stupidly, ignorantly, and hastily fall for the trap. And I commit the crime of aborting my own child from all her extra embryonic material. Her possessions. The ark that guided her genetic covenant through the allegorical 40 days and 40 nights of her Noah's flood. The Church that housed and sheltered her most holy of sacraments, and the baby Jesus that was her sacrificial lamb and bore her crossing of her motherland from the country where no man returns. In an instant. Without even asking my baby or considering her wishes, I abandoned her property that was so pure and innocent, unblemished, and without defects. She is now the phantom of the opera as the French saying goes, "Le Mort Vivant". The living dead. All the while, her placenta was still pulsating and yet to be naturally delivered from momma.
And as Shakespeare so eloquently put it, her "Fair Youth", had ended before it had the chance to begin.
The dockmaster and his goonies then yanked my baby's extra embryonic material out of her mother and disposed of it as if dumping a bag of trash. Unappreciated and neglected. Still alive and pulsating with blood, on its way to becoming a deposit and the MATTER of fact. THEE specimen that gave rise to the birth certificated decedent estate known as my daughters name. Held in title. Held in trust. Abandoned, unclaimed by it's rightful owner, and pirated at the Cestui Que Vie trust law of the holy sea. Oh Henry VIII, you murderous king! You are to blame! You are the fault which caused me to de-fault on my child! She is not at fault! How could she be? She is but a precious jewel who's my job it was to protect.
Ahhh!!!! You useful idiot! Not only have I failed to protect my child in her arrival, I am an assailant to the crime. A stumbling fool caught red handed with the weapon. Running with scissors never ends well. And as the saying goes, "the first cut is the deepest". And this is just the first of many natural shocks the flesh is heir to. Allah Shakespeare speaks truth once again.
Like a drunken fool, I had offered up her dowry as she readies for her consummation. Enter Woodcock stage left.
The proverbial Woodcock is behind the curtains in the backroom, fashioning her a new wedding dress, as the marriage between Church and STATE is about to commence. And with the weaving of a spell, with bright eyes I am handed a form. This form that con-forms to the will of another. An unseen force, yet one that strikes fear and as Alma puts it. Demands respect. Demands every piece of you.
I handed the form over to my wife who was still in a state of pain and agony. And with her sign of nature, through her voluntary consent, and on my dumb watch, she offers her sig-nature as the legal guardian and informant letting the receiver know the cargo is ready for the taking. Like a chattel branded with hot iron and coal, my baby has been given a name. Not not just a name, but has been assigned a TITLE in ALL CAPS to signify her place in office. Still bright eyed with incompetence, I am told that I must take this evidentiary piece of paper to an elusive office of vital records to Re-chord her TITLE in a ritualistic registration. Ahh, she is now regal like Alma, the courting ended faster than it began. She had been placed on a pedestal and her dimensions have been taken by the metaphoric Woodcock with meticulous precision as his bookkeeper Cyril jots down her statics for the re-cord. Head circumference, length of arms, length of legs, body, belly. It is done. Her identification has been alchemized. And she is now part of the House of Woodcock.
What was once the property of one becomes the property of another. From gill breathing sperm to encapsulated egg, this single cell zygote which has the handprint of God, Da Vinci's Sistine chapel, has been desecrated. Though the water creature fish had fully developed into a healthy amphibian fetus, simultaneously living in the waters yet breathing oxygen through the interface of her mother through the holy bond they genetically shared via the placenta. To finally, a walking, breathing, spirit filled bipedal in its entirety... I ruined, in the act of the cut.
Dis-ease. To be out of ease. Without peace. Unwhole.
In the eyes of the Church, this child now needs salvaging which can only come through salvation. The church is there to offer her Jesus, Buddha, and Allah.
In the eyes of the STATE, she is incompetent and inconsistent. Another loony in the loony house. The STATE is there to offer its services of administration, benefits, and the management of her Cesqui Vie Trust as an incestuous and wretched trustee.
And Woodcock. The middleman. The one who sewed her phantom limb back together again. Daniel Day Lewis. The useful idiot, so pompous and well respected. Revered by the masses. Whose name carries clout!
The truth is out of our control yet it is inside of us all.
Oh you stranger on TH-cam! The gull to speak such blasphemies about my life!?! You digital avatar dare rain on my parade?!
Well more often than not, the things we most cherish in life, are the things most toxic for our health. Ask Alma, as she desperately tries to gain the love and affection of Woodcocks, yet ironically faces the constant growing scorn of his condescending abuse. Toxic and un-natural. The marriage of CHURCH and STATE. Ultimately Alma is marginalized to an empty vessel without a soul. Le Mort Vivant. She has fallen for his trap. And is now the living dead.
From the moment they had first locked eyes in the restaurant, Woodcock had found his mark. She was both his mark and his beast, his frankenstein to defame. He would chip away at her spirit, until she had little resemblance to the purity she once had. Expressed by his insatiable appetite, she would be something too grotesque to salvage.
The first meeting of the two at the restaurant is the most important scene as it begins her downfall.
Naively she enters into a contract with him as she takes his glutenous order. He asks her to re-member it, to make it part of her as if a member of one's family. He takes the original paper, symbolic of the evidentiary contract. He asks her out for dinner, knowing she would accept as she never stood a fighting chance. She then seals the deal in the act of handing him a document giving her Name (title), date, and initials, and most important; her voluntary sign of nature. He found his mark. She had given her signature and symbolically registered it into his keeping. The act of registration.
This was not the first time the house of Woodcock needed a new body. Not a woman, not a soul inspired by God, but a vibrant, youthful body of whose soul was to be sucked away. That was the real deal. She had entered into a commercial trust that would revolve around her body being the collateral for the agreement evidenced by her birth certificated decedent (dead) estate. The part of her that was living once, as Shakespear says, " For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil". That mortal coil, reader, is the toroidal, spiral, umbilical cord that attaches baby to mother through the interface of the placenta, which is then alchemically sewn back together by the dressmaker with his phantom thread.
Woodcock made it clear on their first intimate rendezvous that he was not interested in her love, but her equity, strictly a matter of business. He would use her and abuse her without remorse, just a subject to be profited from. Commercialized. He would parade her around in the manner that his aristocratic clients would do in his dresses. His job was to fashion, to fabricate and weave a story of lies, and extort her essence by deriving an artifact in the form of a dress that had a link to her God given biological estate. And he did this with the phantom thread as the bond holding that TRUST in place, re-attaching her metaphoric deposit, a.k.a. the phantom limb. Her anty, her chip in the game. Her placenta. As Shakespeare Hamlet says, "Ay there's the rub."
She was to suffer the same fate as Joanna did in the very early onset of the story once Alma's asset had been fully depreciated and sucked dry. Nothing more than a tax write-off to be sent to salvage.
Alma, being a native of the land, Cyril instructed Woodcock to visit "the country" to find their next SUBJECT. Cyril said, "I will be there tomorrow". Alma, the indigenous woman, had begun her journey innocent and without defect. Sovereign. And had fallen into a conspiracy too evil to be believed.
We readers, if you are still there, have suffered the same trap as Alma. Our God inspired/spiritual native, indigenous manhood and womanhood has been stripped of its sovereignty. We've been domiciled and domesticated from the people of the land to the souls lost at sea. Dead souls at that. A resident of the Situs. A citizen of the STATE. In her fit of jealousy and insecurity, Alma confronts the French princess by reminding the princess that the House of Woodcock was her residence. Do not make the same mistake as Alma. Do not be Hamlet and let the seed of injustice rot into a fruit of passion and revenge. You must be a pacifist and learn to forgive and forget.
In full disclosure, I haven't even finished watching the film, but I think I know how this story will end. As Hollywood partakes in the soft disclosure of the truth, with an insidious twist that is; Alma becomes the tragic hero by devising a plan to murder and poison Woodcock. She is the Hamlet of Denmark. Enraged in madness, stooping to the same level as her abuser. She has made the decision to not let bygones be bygones, or let dead dogs lay, she seeks vengeance to, "settle the score". The world is a game and I'm just a player in it. That is my prize and I will compete for its deed.
I think I will end here. I've beaten this horse to death and there is no more water for it to drink. Now that you've made it to the end, you can now re-watch this movie with a new frame of reference. The reference of TRUTH. Once you see the truth you can't unsee it. It will crawl out from the underbelly of the beast and shine like the brightest star. Daniel Day Lewis knows this. He has perpetuated this story in many of his "his-storically" based films. Glazing over the past, romanticizing, dramatizing, and propagandizing the "jus cogens" to the people fallen victim. Crimes of humanity. The trafficking of the innocent. Oh the twisted irony of the holly-wood.
Now go. And return the authority back to yourself by the only means possible. Not through the sword, but through the word. Become the author of your own story and correct the fault that was not yours to begin.
I gave you a shovel. Now dig.
Wow. Was not expecting such a magnificent and imaginative essay.
You should watch the end of the movie though, I wonder if you’ll have a different perspective?
@@justgettingstarted-n7r
Hello, thank you for your kind reply .
yes, I have finished the movie and it ends in a contractual agreement between woodcock and alma to remain in a perpetual state of war. People unable to see the underlying message of the movie are distracted by the seemingly emotionally charged games of an unhealthy relationship, not realizing that this relationship is metaphoric for the State and it's beneficiary being played out in reality by the viewer and their fictional government.
The beneficiary being from their sovereign beginning, willfully subjects himself to an imprisoned and dis-eased state of being represented by the "second coming" or after -birth material held on deposit or the "in God we trust".
This is touched on in the scene where Alma and woodcock on honeymoon visit a casino and gamble their souls away. Your extra embryonic fetomaternal material is the subject matter, your "chip in the game".
Alma finally agrees without remorse to conform/adopt her given custom role symbolized by the wedding dress fashioned by Woodcock. Please read the tale of the Procrustes to understand what I mean by "custom". And then correlate it to the customs and border department which determines your identity matches and conforms to its legal denomination when re-entering a fictional jurisdiction.
Another telling and true satirical scene at the end of the film was them dancing in a ballroom full of what any man/woman of sound mind would consider lunacy. People dressed up in fictional costumes, pretending to be animals, characters and clowns; as if patients in an insane asylum. Which conveniently, is how the State declares you... Unhealthy. Incompetent. Delirious. Someone who accepts crazy roles to play out on stage, drunken in the madness of the disheartening truth.
In need of care.. In need of administrative assistance (ad-minister: to give ministry) to salvage. To be given salvation. Confess your sins and you shall be made whole.
Well guess what, you are whole. Unless you hysterically ignore your true beginning. Your Divine (bloodline) connection to the creator. And replace that beginning with a State certified identity that shares your given name as its title.
Luke 5:31. They that are whole need not a physician. But they that are sick.
I just watched the new little mermaid with my family and this movie is all about the same story, told in a different manner. Once you know the truth, you can't un-see it. It's plastered ALL over the silver screen and popular music.
Listen to Kurt Kallenbach new word order on buzzsprout.
Incredibly overrated movie, surprisingly.