‘Phantom Thread’ & Misunderstanding Autism for Personality
Originally published in Counter Arts on April 2, 2025.
Paul Thomas Anderson may be 21st-century cinema’s best writer of complex male characters and the intrinsic and destructive nature of egotism, and his penchant for such characters, whether you agree with the superlative, infects 2017’s Phantom Thread, about a middle-aged dressmaker named Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) — a brilliant, perfectionistic, demanding, ornery, stubborn man who appears to fit tidily into the aforementioned bucket. And he does, to a degree, but nowhere near as tidily as canon egocentrics Dean Trumbell, Daniel Plainview, Lancaster Dodd, or Jack Horner; unlike them, Reynolds is low-spectrum (“high-functioning”) autistic, and many of his behaviors which could be attributable to egotism are actually — and independently — autistic ones.
I was diagnosed with level 1 ASD (autism spectrum disorder) in my early-30s, and it clarified and recontextualized neuroses I struggled most of my adult life to understand, explain, or reconcile, and which until my diagnosis I viewed as flaws I needed to overcome but couldn’t: abrupt changes of plan (such as an impromptu invitation to a social event), routine wrenches (such as being out of a food I always ate at the same time daily), and sensory assaults (especially noises — such as my dogs barking at a dog walking in front of our yard) were instantaneous power-downs, after which I’d spend hours in a disassociated, despondent state that looked a lot like pouting or silent seething or a wordless, childish temper tantrum until I’d recovered.
I couldn’t prevent this type of reaction and I couldn’t fake being unaffected, but I was self-aware, and I judged myself for it, apologized for “acting like a baby,” and hated myself for constantly apologizing without making improvements; I hated wondering if my wife was getting sick of the many-times-weekly (sometimes daily) “episodes,” if she herself was wondering if I was in fact making an effort to improve my behavior, or if I was instead making excuses.
Twenty minutes into Phantom Thread, after meeting waitress Alma (Vicky Krieps) and inviting her to dinner, Reynolds brings her to his cottage and says during conversation that he’s a “confirmed bachelor,” defending his bachelorhood by claiming “I’m incurable…marriage would make me deceitful, and I don’t ever want that.” The insinuation is evident, and the line defines the beginning of his arc, but it’s also curious when recalling the film’s first proper scene (after opening on a stunning establishing montage sequence), in which Reynolds sketches concepts during breakfast and is “interrupted” by his then-muse Joanna, who politely offers him pastries. He’s perturbed and sneers at her, and she replies, “Where have you gone, Reynolds? There’s nothing I can say to get your attention aimed back at me, is there?” He dispassionately tells her he can’t begin his day with a confrontation, and his sister, manager, and emotional bodyguard, Cyril (Lesley Manville), who joined them mid-breakfast, dumps Joanna for him.
What an asshole! you’d be justified in thinking. It’s not a great look against others’ judgment of character. Yet I sympathized because, while I’ve not dumped a muse over pastries (or ever had a muse…or ever turned down pastries), routine is sacred for me, as it gives parameters to fixations (such as Reynolds’ sketching during breakfast), and when either a routine or fixation is disrupted, it throws me off for an embarrassing stretch of time, sometimes the entire day depending on the severity of the disruption. When Reynolds tells Alma he’s “incurable,” there’s an undercurrent of the type of self-esteem deficiency I know well, as if Reynolds has tried and failed to reason with what socially would be called quirks but are rather something more biological.
Later, in a mirroring scene, Alma sits where Joanna sat and “loudly” clanks her knife against the butter plate, scrapes the butter on burnt toast, and rustles about pouring herself coffee or tea. Reynolds fights himself over the distraction, initially trying to suppress and overcome his perturbation, but then asks her to “please don’t move so much.” Alma, whom I view as a strong female character (not everyone agrees), bucks back — a seminal show of personal fortitude that separates her from the likes of Joanna and aligns her more closely to Cyril (and perhaps his deceased mother, whom he reveres) — thus setting in motion the gears for his slow submission to her, whom he eventually asks to marry.
Reynolds is a world-renowned designer and a perfectionist. I can’t claim any accolades, but I, too, suffer from “perfectionism.” If it’s not good enough, I won’t finish it — whatever it is — until I’ve either “fixed” its perceived flaws or learned what I hadn’t known but needed in order to make it as good as I envisioned at conceptualization. My perfectionism — and the standards I set for myself — is a byproduct of fixation, an obsessive overemphasis; a foundational box on the ASD clinical checklist.
Reynolds is an elegant, charismatic chatter among princesses and Alma (who trips over a chair when introduced — an important detail for this point), but second-guesses himself or freezes entirely when confronted by a displeased muse (whether Joanna or Alma) or client (Mrs. Rose, played by Harriet Harris) or a surprise encounter with a pair of fans who approach his table at dinner (Cyril thanks and discards them); when the interactions or power dynamics are defined and maintained within their known boundaries, he’s incredibly charming, but when not, he’s lost, and when he’s lost he flusters and snaps.
Alma doesn’t “belong” among the elitist upper-class or Reynolds’ workforce, but from his first impression, she’s out of place and “rough,” a person he’s enamored with but instinctively associates with his past muses (of which we presume there are many based on comments from Cyril and Joanna). She is, of course, Not Like the Others, and her uniquely bullheaded personality horns him out of his so-called “shell” by the end: he rebukes her impromptu invitation to a New Year’s Eve party to dance (ahem), she storms off, and he finally follows, arriving at the party clueless but there nonetheless (God I felt this); in the last sequence, he knowingly eats an omelet she made with poisonous mushrooms and reaffirms his love for her, presumably conscious of her effect on his “flaws” and grateful for it.
Anderson may have written Reynolds to be just a perfectionist who has clear expectations for his life and work and rigidly adheres to them, and if that’s the case, he inadvertently wrote the most accurate autistic character I’ve ever seen in a film. Such a genesis would fittingly illustrate how misinterpreted low-spectrum autism is; when it doesn’t show itself in external ways, its signs often overlap with and are conflated to traits from various personality types. To write autism authentically, a writer wouldn’t need to know he or she was doing it: as it was for me, the identification comes from the aggregate of tendencies, and Reynolds checks enough boxes for clinical diagnosis.
Phantom Thread is much, much more than Reynolds and what he represents to me and in general — it is, in my opinion, the best film of its release decade — but I’ve never prior or since seen a character whose biggest “flaws” I can relate so closely to, and I hope autism traits continue to become more familiar societally so that they can be identified more accurately and autistic people, whose undiagnosed percentage is considerable, find clarity and relief, don’t think of the traits as flaws, and can consequently devise anticipatory action plans for triggers or episodes.