The Master review

I have drafted a review of The Master. In short I was beguiled.

You can read a version here at Total:Spec. Another version below.

I have to add two things which I didn't mention in the review. One: the design and costumes in this film are bewitching. It's like leafing through a vintage copy of Cosmo. Secondly, I am guilty of not writing about Amy Adams who plays the wife of Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). She is excellent as the slightly dowdy and oh so austere partner in the project. Sadly she is left to work in the shadow of Hoffman and Phoenix. In the final scene of the film however she is breathtakingly severe. Like an overly vexed headmistress.

I recommend you see this.

The Master (15) The Director's cut review

If I were to join a cult...

If I were to join a cult, if I wanted to throw in my lot with a magnetic and beguiling leader, I might just do it if it were Philip Seymour Hoffman. Now clearly one of cinema’s great actors, Hoffman’s latest performance as the leader of an enigmatic cult in The Master is matched only by the intensity and power of his co-star Joaquin Phoenix. Together the two combine to provide a gripping intellectual journey of rare potency.

Written and directed by There Will Be Blood (2007) maestro Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master charts the relationship between a charismatic cult leader and his protege in the US immediately after the war.

Freddie Quell (Phoenix) is a volatile and itinerant former naval serviceman attempting to overcome his wartime trauma. Unable to hold down a job, and self medicating with toxic homebrews, Freddie is thrown together with Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman) by chance after yet another night on the booze. Dodd, known by his disciples as the Master, takes a shine to Quell - and develops the profound determination to heal his “insanity” and “animal” behaviour using his own self invented “process” of hypnosis and regression.

Trial by whacky theory

In a sense Freddie becomes the Master’s obsessional test case, the one great trial that could prove his whacky theories. And Freddie is seduced by the man, his attention, by the process and the Master’s sheer force of personality. And yet Quell’s true nature is never far from the surface and, committed as he may be, it has a tragic habit of exploding into view.

This is a movie about a relationship. On one side a self deluded charismatic attempting to forge a new culture and set of beliefs in what must have seemed like a spiritual vacuum following the war. On the other, an individual desperately seeking deliverance from himself. If only his “self” didn’t keep getting in the way. Each looks to the other for validation and vindication, and yet both head toward inevitable disappointment.

The Master is a towering work, as powerful, enigmatic and engrossing as its immediate predecessor. And Just as There Will Be Blood was defined by Daniel Day Lewis’ performance, so The Master will be defined by Phoenix and Hoffman. Their rendering of two characters, both in their own ways on the edge, is as arresting as cinema gets. The pair shared the Best Actor Award at the Venice Film Festival while Anderson scooped Best Director. It should come as no surprise.

Seductive charm

Hoffman exudes the seductive charm of the cult leader, swinging effortlessly from bookish authority figure to public speaker with the common touch. Phoenix broods with barely restrained emotional turmoil. He is both frightening and yet deserving of sympathy. We want him out of the room and yet we are fascinated by the latent risk he presents. It is a triumph of acting and a feat of accomplished character design.

What’s remarkable, and admirable, is the picture’s unashamedly cerebral tone and intention. In the post war period the US was, perhaps, a culture in flux as its people struggled to come to terms with the horrors of the conflict and the way it cast doubt on all the old orthodoxies. The Master’s character reflects the country’s plunge into the strange and the bizarre, the founding of new religions and philosophies, it’s turn to the esoteric and the arcane. 

One wonders whether this echoes the position of the US today as it grapples to contend with a new world. Economic disaster and transformation, the unsettled nature of the post 9/11 order, rising superpowers, the first black president - all have upturned established beliefs, undermined old assumptions, whether they were right or wrong. The Master compels us to ask what will emerge from this fresh state of uncertainty, what new modes of thought, what new variance of culture or deviance will prove a draw?

Destabilising the Master

In his way Freddie presents a challenge to Dodd’s own established order. His disturbed behaviour destabilises the Master and his followers. And the more Dodd is challenged, the more dogmatic and intolerant he becomes. And the more he must face the possibility of his own fallibility. His future rests precariously on whether we “recall” or “imagine” our selves. It’s a subtle but critical distinction. We “recall” facts and certainties. When we “imagine” , we contrive. Is the Master’s dogma built on truth or invention? Such are the tests for all religions and belief systems. The Master reveals the shifting sands on which philosophies are built.

And its that possibility that conveys us to the final mesmerizing, almost hypnotic scene of confrontation. A scene that will endure as a cinema classic.

Sign me up Master, for I am yours. 

/ends

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