“Genius,” wrote Baudelaire, “is no more than childhood recaptured at will.” This was 168 years ago, before the popular conception of artistic genius could evolve into what it became by the middle of the 20th century: a condition midway between affliction and gift, by dint of which all human (and especially male) lapses—petulance, selfishness, social maladaptation, abuse—are forgiven by the magnificence of “the work.”
(Of course, Baudelaire also died of syphilis at age 46, ensuring the permanence of his reputation as a genius.)
Things being the way they are now, in the early 21st century, when artistic genius has been radically devalued as an excuse for humans who mistreat other humans, it seemed clear that Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film—the exquisitely perverse, perversely exquisite Phantom Thread—was steering toward a reevaluation, possibly even a whole-cloth renunciation of our collective genius myth.
