Saw The Hunt a couple of weeks ago, starring mad Mads Mikkelsen. Only he's not so mad in this. Not as mad as he was in Casino Royale and not nearly as bonkers as he seemed in Valhalla Rising (a hugely underrated flick, in my view).
Mikkelsen is mostly about hidden emotional undercurrents. And in The Hunt, where he plays a nursery school teacher wrongly accused of child abuse, he is at his best. Indeed, this performance got him an award at Cannes. It's also bang-on timing. The country is grappling with its attitudes to child abuse in the wake of the Jimmy Saville and Lord MacAlpine scandals. Saville, a long-term abuser, MacAlpine an innocent man wrongly accused. We seem to have developed a profound national confusion over the issues with little idea of a way forward. The Hunt illustrates our problems neatly.
Anyway, it's out this Friday so if you fancy a dark Scandinavian exploration of a personal identity crisis, this one's for you.
Review - click here.
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The Master review (0)
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.