The Perverse, Tender Worlds of Paul Thomas Anderson

What is the sound of a needle entering fabric? Something more significant, it seems, than the sound of one hand clapping. You hear a tiny pop followed by the rustle of violated muslin—a shudder in the silence of the universe. Scrupulous directors make sure that the sound of their movies is grossly efficient, so that the dramatic meaning of a scene is apparent even in the worst theatre or home system in the country. They also layer in, for those who care about such things, a secondary level of sound—think of the swishing skirts in Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence.” In “Phantom Thread” (2017)—the needle-and-fabric movie—the director, Paul Thomas Anderson, uses such details to build an exquisitely perceptible epic of minute events.