Movies: reviews, reflections, and things of that nature

Movie Review: The Master

It’s challenging to explicitly articulate how I feel about Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest experiment, The Master, after just one viewing. With its estranged set of characters and languid structure, the film crumbles the concept of clarity, and it yearns for multiple viewings in order one to gain an understanding of Anderson’s thesis. However, his deliberate aimlessness archives the true beauty of cinema, and he successfully illustrates the frustration we as humans can harbor when we are forced to explain ourselves.

The Master contends emptiness against self-actualization when Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), a volatile, misguided alcoholic falls into the confident hands of Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour-Hoffman), a theatrical philosopher who also revels in drunkenness. Dodd is the father of “The Cause”, a religious movement intended to give members peace by spiritually connecting them with their souls through simple yet intense thought exercises. Although these exercises appear to be fruitless, their repetitive executions persuade people into thinking they have been healed. With this confidence, Dodd believes he can raise Freddie from his savage, primordial state to a higher plane of humanness.

Slowly, Freddie learns about the insincerity of “The Cause”. Dodd’s own son, Val (Jesse Plemmons), somberly states that “He is making it all up as he goes along,” and dissenters make rational invectives that this religious group is nothing but a cult. Even Freddie’s primitive perspective notices how pointless Dodd’s exercises and speeches are.

Dodd and Quell’s relationship staggers between friendship and mutual hatred. The two are ostensibly counterparts to one another; Quell is an unleashed animal incapable of being tamed, while Dodd is a puppeteer who has mastered the art of conversation. However, their altercations display how alike they are as men; by relying on the bestial technique of yelling and cursing to secure their points, Lancaster and Freddie automatically lowers themselves to primates, becoming equivalent for a few awful moments.

Freddie and Lancaster play their roles particularly well. However, their relationship doesn’t allow them to be themselves completely. Lancaster cannot simply talk his way into healing Freddie. His exercises are all ideal, but they don’t provide concrete improvement. Lancaster’s repetitive processes of spiritually guiding a person into his or her past are frustratingly intangible, and the overall vagueness never truly cleanses anyone; it’s not until Freddie takes it upon himself to physically encounter his past that he finally gets some sort of catharsis. Freddie is certainly guided by “The Cause”, but Lancaster misses several crucial elements to completely cure him.

At times, Anderson misses some opportunities in The Master too. He has several characters aside from Lancaster and Freddie to play with, but they simply melt into the background. PTA started his career with major epics, Boogie Nights and Magnolia, two films that featured an array of strong, unique characters. He progressed by keeping the lens on just 1 or 2 people with Punch Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood. This film could have been a perfect amalgam of his past and present, but he doesn’t really develop an arc for anyone besides Lancaster and Freddie. The emptiness is however filled by the gorgeous cinematography and alluring score. Together, they create an unsettling tone that bleeds with tension and despair.

I’ve been thinking about The Master for about a day and a half, and I still haven’t established a strong opinion on where the characters end up. It’s funny that Lancaster’s “Cause” implies that we are never quite where we ought to be anyway. We simply have trails that can lead us to happiness, and only he can take us there. Hopefully, more viewings will lead me down a trail of understanding (only Anderson can lead me there). Until then, I’ll have to just think about it all.

8.5 out of 10

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6 Responses

Glad you’re back my N, both on FB and EnderP. Probably going to see Master again tomorrow… I’m still hung up on, what I saw as, the failed trajectory of the movie. I was loving all of the buildup/setup/exposition/whatever of the two main characters and their flowering relationship, as well as the moments displaying insights into the eccentricities of each character. But I just felt like it all came to a stop…I’m not sure at what moment exactly, probably something like 2/3 of the way in. It just seemed to be repeating itself over and over, introducing very little if any new developments with the characters. For example, Joaquin Phoenix must have performed the same basic display of steadily escalating madness like 5…6…7? times throughout the film, with little to no change (you know what I mean? The whole – “Yeah everything’s fine, I’m fine…….not *throws punch/attacks person*) The film seems to end where it started.

And I actually found the movie frustratingly conventional too. Forget all of this “fever dream” horseshit. Aside from the nude dance scene and the bizarre movie theater call (was that a dream? Didn’t Joaquin Phoenix say something about him dreaming about that call?), the film seemed to be fairly coherent, in terms of a pure “what is happening right now” way. I guess that I found that pretty frustrating since the film definitely had an art film look to it. Shots are framed in unique ways…weird camera placements, beautifully exposed photography, lots of blurred objects in the frame, etc. And the ad campaigns for the film definitely played it up as being a more unconventional narrative film. I craved a little more ambiguity since the nature of this story would seem to welcome a more feverish, stream of consciousness-style storytelling.

The juxtaposition of the Cause’s “humans are not animals” mentality with the reality of how human beings act was great – Phoenix’s impossibility of rising from his insane animal instincts and Hoffman’s constant fluctuations between esteemed Cause leader and quivering, tantrum-throwing asshole.

I’m still attempting to hone in on a thesis of the film, if there actually is one. There’s such an amalgam of themes…friendship and love, manipulation, religion/cults in general, madness, healing, and the aforementioned human as animal or something else. Like I said, I’m going to watch it again. But unless the film somehow subtly planted itself in our brains and will grow into a masterpiece, I think that our immediate disappointment (as I’m assuming an 8.5 for this film is indicative of some amount of disappointment from you…I know I as expecting the film to be a 9-10 for sure) is telling in and of itself. I remember leaving There Will Be Blood feeling exhilarated, like I had just seen a masterpiece. The Master worries me because it didn’t elicit very strong feelings in either direction. I would have much rather walked out with a Cosmopolis-style hatred of the film, thinking it was pretentious as all fuck than this sort of in between – meh – response that I have. We’ll see I guess!

By the way, I loved a few scenes though. The first interrogation scene between Hoffman and Phoenix was intense and emotional. The nighttime nude dance hallucination was beautiful. The sequence of the arrest and jailing was just perfect. And I loved the montage introduction of Phoenix’s madness in the beginning of the film.

You make great points, which I definitely agree with. However, I’m more accepting of the motif of repetition, as it replicates the nature of The Cause’s processes.

The film also loses me towards the end! It’s when Freddie visits Lancaster in London, and they have their final farewell. Up until that point, I am there with PTA. However, anything after that is a complete mystery to me. Freddie picking up that woman, fucking her, and then asking her what her name is repeatedly. I don’t quite know if this is his way of mocking The Cause or subtly embracing it. UGH!

I too left the theater unsure and uneasy. It was reminiscent to my experience with No Country For Old Men rather than There Will Be Blood.

And yeah, I’m glad to be back on EnderP too. It was just so hard to write a “review” for The Master. Even conversing about the film with friends right after seeing it was hard to do.