Master, The (2012) [Blu-ray]
Drama
A 1950s-set drama centered on the relationship between a charismatic intellectual known as "The Master" (Philip Seymour Hoffman) a WWII veteran who creates a belief system which catches on with other lost souls - and a young drifter (Joaquin Phoenix) who
becomes his right-hand man.
Storyline: Returning from Navy service in World War II, Freddie Quell drifts through a series of PTSD-driven breakdowns. Finally he stumbles upon a cult which engages in exercises to clear emotions and he becomes deeply involved
with them. Written by Alan Young
Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Michael Reuben on February 5, 2013 -- Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film, The Master, arrives on Blu-ray bearing three Oscar nominations and a shelf of critics' awards, but it's just as likely
to divide viewers as Magnolia (1999), the most controversial of Anderson's previous works. Though lacking the earlier film's punishing length and dense plot, The Master demands just as much effort from viewers—maybe more. On the surface,
The Master tells a simple story of two outsiders who share a mysterious connection, but the story always seems to be moving sideways, with neither of the main characters ever coming into clear focus. The more we learn about each of them, the more
elusive they become. By the end of the film, one would be hard-pressed to say that either man has completed what, in movie parlance, would be called a character's "journey", and yet one senses intuitively that something has happened. You walk out
of the theater (or media room) searching for words to describe just what that something is.
Anderson has been pushing the narrative boundaries of conventional filmmaking for a long time now, experimenting with how stories can be told, even questioning the very nature of what a cinematic story can be. Boogie Nights and Magnolia
fractured traditional dramatic structure into a series of interconnected mini-dramas. Punch-Drunk Love attempted to reinvent romantic comedy by flipping every traditional element upside down (including using Adam Sandler's familiar man-child as the
romantic lead). There Will Be Blood appeared to tell a story of the early days of oil drilling but gradually revealed itself to be about a soul's damnation, as foreshadowed in the title and the multiple meanings of the film's final line ("I'm
finished").
The Master is Anderson's boldest experiment yet with narrative form, because it kicks away much of the familiar scaffolding we use to keep our footing in a story, while at the same time commanding our attention with entrancing images, hypnotic
sound and enthralling performances. Themes, connections and emotions multiply on subsequent viewings. The Master is a film that will be slowly discovered and assimilated over time. I've seen it twice, and I already want to see it again. But it only
takes one viewing to recognize that Anderson has created something remarkable.
The central character of The Master is a World War II Navy veteran named Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), who may or may not be suffering from shell shock, or what we now call "PTSD", after fighting on the Pacific front. We see Freddie receiving
treatment in a military hospital, along with other veterans, but as details of his life before the war emerge during the course of the film, it becomes evident that Freddie was already badly damaged before he joined the Navy. It's possible, even likely,
that the war simply enlarged the fractures that life had already cracked into his character.
What we quickly learn about Freddie is that he drinks indiscriminately, including home brews made with petroleum products; is obsessed with sex; and has what would today be called anger management issues that make him prone to sudden violent outbursts
and physical confrontations. After the war, he's unable to hold down a steady job.
One night, while working as a field hand on a Northern California farm, Freddie flees an altercation with fellow workers and, by chance hops onto a yacht departing San Francisco Bay. The temporary captain is Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a
charismatic and evasive purveyor of a therapy-cum-philosophy dubbed "The Cause". Freddie initially laughs at Dodd's pronouncements, as he laughs at most things that make him uncomfortable, but he is gradually drawn into Dodd's world on the long voyage to
New York City, the home of the yacht's owner, a wealthy society lady who supports Dodd.
As Freddie accompanies Dodd on his travels promoting and developing The Cause, the two men strike up a unique relationship that, at first, Dodd's fiercely protective wife, Peggy (Amy Adams), finds encouraging. After their first meeting, she tells Freddie
that he's inspired Dodd, but before long she's become distrustful of Freddie's drinking, for which her husband shares a taste, and of his sexual proclivities, which Peggy somehow seems to sense and, with the unerring instinct of a long-time spouse,
identifies in her husband as well. In one of the film's many surreal sequences, Freddie watches Dodd sing to a group of his followers, and in Freddie's imagination, every woman in the group becomes a sex object (I'm being deliberately vague for those who
have not yet seen the film). But in the next scene, Peggy punishes Dodd for Freddie's thoughts, as if she knew exactly what was in his mind and blamed her husband for sharing it (or perhaps inciting it).
Even though The Master depicts much of Dodd's home-baked philosophy and contains many scenes of his treatment method known as "processing", the film isn't really about The Cause (which Anderson avowedly modeled on Scientology). Nor is it about
Freddie's voyage of self-discovery, because Freddie has no desire to know himself. Rather, the film is about the mysterious, charged connection between these two men that neither of them can quite explain, but that keeps yanking them back into each
other's orbit. Throughout the film, Dodd repeatedly tells Freddie he's sure they've met. At first, it seems like a harmless trick to establish rapport, but when Dodd eventually "remembers" their meeting, you're not sure what to make of it. By then, there
have been so many cues—thematic, verbal, visual—establishing Freddie and Dodd as kindred spirits that they could almost be aspects of the same person.
When they first meet, Freddie asks Dodd what he does, but Dodd answers a different question. He says what he is. After listing a number of occupations, he says: "But above all, I am a man, a hopelessly inquisitive man. Just like
you." Even if one treats this as merely a con man's patter, their positions are almost immediately reversed, when Dodd reveals his affinity for Freddie's home brew and asks what's in it. "Secrets", says Freddie, with a grin, perhaps sensing that no
other answer is better calculated to intrigue Dodd. Now it's Freddie who's conning Dodd, since his rot gut is nothing more than a mixture of whatever whiskeys are available, plus paint thinner. Dodd wants more, and Freddie is only too happy to oblige,
because it guarantees him food and lodging. Who's conning whom?
And so things go, as Freddie moves in Dodd's world but retains his outsider's perspective. He does Dodd's exercises, but takes them no more seriously than the VA's Rorshack tests. At some level, he knows, like Dodd's son, Val (Jesse Plemons), that Dodd
is making it up as he goes along, but he doesn't care. When Dodd is criticized by a skeptic, John More (Christopher Evan Welch), or his latest book is dismissed as nonsense by his publisher (Kevin Anderson), or Dodd is arrested on a warrant sworn out by a
wealthy contributor who has had second thoughts, Freddie leaps to his defense, violently so. Freddie may be skeptical of Dodd, but he won't tolerate disloyalty in anyone else. Nothing angers him quicker.
In this, too, he is matched by Dodd, whose temper is equally intense, though somewhat better controlled, when he is challenged by anyone—including Freddie. In a remarkable scene midway through the film, the two men are placed in adjoining jail cells,
Dodd on the warrant and Freddie for interfering with the police. Freddie arrives already at gale force from battling the officers who subdued him, and it takes Dodd a while to rev up to his level. But Freddie keeps provoking him, and eventually the two
men are standing on opposite sides of their prison bars, face to face, yelling at each other at full volume. What has become of The Cause now?
Anderson has always been deliberate in his choices of words, and it can't be an accident that he gave Dodd's organization an ambiguous name that can refer to a movement or a crusade but also to a basis, source or origin. Dodd's processing is intended to
identify the "cause" of people's present-day problems in past experiences and "free" them from the hold of the past. More than anyone else, it is Freddie who challenges Dodd's method by stubbornly refusing to be molded by Dodd's processing. Even after he
has revisited his past traumas, Freddie remains who and what he is, which is no doubt why Dodd finds it so hard to let Freddie go. Though they are separated at the end of the film (obviously at Peggy's insistence), can one really be certain that the
separation is permanent? Freddie once walked away from Dodd, and all it took was a phone call to bring them back together. Who can say when circumstances may once again cause the negative and the positive to collide (to borrow one of Dodd's facile
phrases)?
User Comment: stingil from Los Angeles USA, 8 August 2012 • I was fortunate enough to see this film much earlier than most. To me it seems like Anderson is really hitting his stride with this one. It was odd to me that upon
exiting the theater the thing that I wondered about most of all is what the hell is he going to do next!
The Master is not an easy movie to sit through, and at times you don't even know what the movie wants. But then you realize that the movie doesn't want anything. All it asks is for you to observe. More so than his earlier films, "The Master" and "There
Will Be Blood" really venture into the realm of the film as being a purely cinematic presentation of a life. Anderson doesn't pass judgment or any point of view, he merely stretches the canvas which allows his characters to speak for themselves.
Yes, there is a beginning, middle and an end, but is there? Do we really have a sense of catharsis at the end of "There Will Be Blood"? or do we simply understand "man" a little better?
Anderson insisted, as I'm sure he would say the same for this film, that "There Will Be Blood" wasn't a metaphor for anything. It was what it was. No hidden meaning, no sophisticated and often formulaic subtext. It's simply man. As Hoffman's character
says in the trailer for "The Master" - "But above all, I am a man".
The movie deals with an interesting idea of the leader vs. the soldier, master vs. slave. It breaks down the anatomy of a relationship so you may interpret it in any way you'd like.
It's beautifully shot on 65/70mm film which is the way I saw it and the way I recommend for you to see it if you get a chance to. Feels almost as if Anderson is giving the finger to the digital revolution by shooting his film on a resolution so high that
digital can only dream of getting there in about ten years or so.
The acting and the dialog is superb as you'd expect. Phoenix and Hoffman are on a different level here, especially Phoenix in a role of a life time. There are definitely times in this film that he completely disappears into that role. There is also some
great supporting work from Laura Dern and others.
It would be difficult to place this film in his body of work. More than anything it feels like the natural continuation of what he started with "There Will Be Blood". Not to say that he will continue on this path but just that this is definitely a more
narrowly focused film than some of his earlier ensemble work.
I found it to be less engaging than some of his other work and yet there was never a dull moment. You're always on your toes, trying to understand what's going on and where the movie is leading you.
It really is simply, just like man, a fascinating piece of work.
Summary: The Master in action.
[CSW] -2.1- Is "The Master" supposed to be a parody of the beliefs of the founder of a rather infamous and controversial new "religion" that was started in the 1950's? If so I either didn't know enough about that religion to catch the connection or else
the almost non-existent plot wasn't strong enough for me to understand it. In either case I couldn't have summed up this movie any better than what this reviewer had to say: "I really wanted to like this movie, so much so that I anxiously
waited for the couple of months to finally see it. Disappointed is an understatement of what I feel. While the actors show promise, the plot production is almost non-existent. Yes, some sick and drunk ex sailor who is obsessed with sex stumbles upon a
delusional self-indulgent philosopher who attempts to rid him of his demons. Aside from that premise, absolutely nothing else happens. This movie is way too long, at least an hour too long in fact, painfully slow, and your attention drifts from wanting
some sort of sign that is indeed not a waste of time to utter anger as you try to grasp the fleeting emotion of some hope of entertainment. The idea is there, it's brilliant in fact, but the delivery is empty and overhyped."
[V5.0-A4.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.
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