Film review: The Master
It’s hard to tell if Philip Seymour Hoffman’s titular character in The Master is a visionary or a fraud, but it’s clear there’s something very compelling and powerful about him. That just about sums up Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie as well.
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Category: III
It’s hard to tell if Philip Seymour Hoffman’s titular character in The Master is a visionary or a fraud, but it’s clear there’s something very compelling and powerful about him. That just about sums up Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie as well.
The introverted director is emerging as this generation’s Terrence Malick, making penetrating and clinically obsessive stories that probe the deep, dark corners of the American psyche. As with There Will Be Blood, Magnolia and Boogie Nights, The Master is a film you have to admire even if you may not like or comprehend it.
Set just after the second world war, it stars Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd, the leader of a burgeoning cult with wealthy followers. Preaching self help mumbo jumbo based on recalling past lives and a healing “process” of pseudocatechismal free association, the character is modelled on – but too reductionist to just be – Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.
He strikes up an unlikely friendship with Freddie Quell, Joaquin Phoenix’s damaged naval wretch with a major drinking problem. Quell is an aimless loser with a twitched mouth, a hunched posture and lust in his loins. As a bit of a simpleton, he might be ripe for manipulation but the relationship is not as simple as that. In fact, it is hard to figure out what Dodd sees in him other than a guy who can distil a cocktail from diesel fuel. The unclear motivation becomes the film’s main befuddling fascination. “You’re my guinea pig and protégé,” Dodd says at one point.
Then again, this is not a simple drama. It’s neither a critique of cults nor religious fervour. No one changes from believing to rejecting the cause in typical dramatic turnaround. Anderson is not interested in obvious character studies. But look hard enough and the two men are actually more alike than different. Their push and pull dynamic is a curious psychological bromance of passive-aggressive neediness and resistance. Whatever their status, it’s never just master and servant. In a way, both are complex charlatans on the fringe, as much lost as found, trying to find a way by hook or by crook.