After eight years away, Daniel Day-Lewis is back. The three-time Oscar winner (“My Left Foot,” “There Will Be Blood,” “Lincoln”) has ended his self-imposed retirement to star in “Anemone,” a film directed by his son, Ronan Day-Lewis.
The project, co-written by father and son, will world premiere at the New York Film Festival before opening Oct. 3 via Focus Features. The story centers on a recluse in the forests of Northern England whose life is disrupted when his estranged brother (Sean Bean) resurfaces. The cast also includes Samantha Morton, Safia Oakley-Green, and Samuel Bottomley.
Day-Lewis famously announced he was “retired” in 2017 after “Phantom Thread,” his final collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson. At the time, he claimed he would never act again, but speaking to Rolling Stone this week, the actor admitted that the announcement might have been premature:
I never intended to retire, really. I just stopped doing that particular type of work so I could do some other work. Apparently, I’ve been accused of retiring twice now. I never meant to retire from anything.
So what changed? His son. According to DDL, Ronan wouldn’t make the film without him:
As I get older, it just takes me longer and longer to find my way back to the place where the furnace is burning again. But working with Ro, that furnace just lit up. And it was, from beginning to end, just pure joy to spend that time together with him.
If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because Day-Lewis has “retired” before—most notably in the late ’90s when he left acting to become a cobbler in Italy, before returning with Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York.” This latest comeback feels different: smaller, more personal, a collaboration with family rather than a grand statement.
Still, it’s Day-Lewis. His return will dominate conversation this fall, especially with “Anemone” rolling out during awards season. Whether the performance adds a fourth Oscar to his mantle is another question entirely.
It’s great having this acting giant back on the big screen, and hopefully “Anemone” is only the start of another major post-retirement comeback.
NOTE: Interesting detail from this interview is that it seems to include a mini-review from Rolling Stone film critic David Fear:
A truly extraordinary drama about brothers, mothers, and, yes, fathers and sons. And it’s as much an introduction to a new talent as it as reintroduction to a veteran one.
Taking its title from the name of a delicate flower whose petals close when a storm approaches, Anemone tells the story of a former British soldier named Ray (Day-Lewis), who lives in the remote woods the North of England. His sibling, Jem (Sean Bean), has traveled to the small shed that his stoic, hermit-like brother calls home. It seems that Ray’s teenage son, Brian (Samuel Bottomley), is on the verge of following the same self-destructive path as his dad. Both the boy’s uncle and his mother, Nessa (Samantha Morton), want to save him before it’s too late. To do that, Ray will have to confront his past. And that’s not going to be easy.
It’s an intense, joyous, sorrowful, and sometimes absurd family drama that occasionally veers into the sort of strange, hyperreal territory that involves giant fish, freak hail flurries, and an elongated, camel-like creature with a human face and a tiny penis.
Criterion's December lineup has some great additions to the library, but the title that jumped out at me is Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man," which officially joins the Collection on December 8.