THE MASTER
Paul Thomas Anderson,
2012, USA
It would appear
that Paul Thomas Anderson is pushing his characters ever more into states of ambiguity,
if not obliqueness. “Boogie Nights”
and “Magnolia” are positively broad soap
opera compared to his later work, “There
Will Be Blood” and “The Master”. “The
Master” seems to have divided audiences more than ever. And then it is the
film of the year in “Sight and Sound” magazine. Well okay. When I sat down in
the theatre, leaving in my headphones to avoid the tedium of commercials, I saw
four other people seated. For some reason, two got up and left (I don’t know if
they came back later on because I sat in front of them, which I prefer) and
there were two at the back. For all I know, the film screened to just three
paying customer (I assume everyone else was at “Skyfall”).
Happily, I had
forgotten what on earth “The Master” was
going to be about when I sat down to watch: I had deliberately avoided all
writings and warnings about it and had forgotten the little articles of gossip
about it that I had accidentally browsed. This meant that I sat for half hour
or more, fascinated by the oddball character drama before me, marvelling at
Joaquin Phoenix’s incredible performance… and wondering where it was all going (I
was curious as hell; some others might be bored) … and then, suddenly, Phillip
Seymour Hoffman’s elusive Lancaster Dodd shows his true colours and subject
Phoenix’s Freddie Quell to a question/answer session that threw everything into
new and exciting light. “The Master”
was long predicted to be about the growth of Scientology, I suddenly recalled,
and all at once the film leapt into gear.
It is indeed one
of those divisive films that are said to be beloved by “critics” (who know
nothing about enjoyment and are apparently an species unlike others) and met
with bored horror by “the audience” (who apparently retain the facility for enjoying films rather than criticism),
whatever on earth that proposed division means. Some are saying that there is
no story/narrative, that it’s boring and that there is not character progress
or whatever. That is not how I experienced the film at all. Compare with the
more wilfully indulgent and oblique and much loved “Tree of Life”, which succeeds as stream-of-consciousness cinema, as
cinema as memory and as rumination on all of the above; by comparison, “The Master” has a pretty straightforward
if slender narrative.
Freddie Quell comes
home from World War II suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: war has
allowed him to unleash his Id but he is unable to put it back into the bottle
when returning to civilisation. We first meet him on the beach, spiking coconut
juice with alcohol and making love to a giant sand-woman amongst his fellow
veterans… but then he seems to take it too far and go on too long and no one
seems interested in him; he goes to masturbate in the sea. It is quickly
apparent that he is a loner. Moving from job to job, through wonderful period
detail, failing to maintain relationships although he seems mostly to act from
goodwill, he finally stumbles upon a yacht where Lancaster Dodd is holding
court. Dodd, it turns out, is developing a new religion/cult based upon
uncovering repressed previous lives. He is a charismatic and compelling
charlatan who seems to treat Quell both as friend and primary test-subject. Quell
finds some relief in falling under Dodd’s spell, finding that Dodd is genuinely
interested in him, asking him about himself and seeming paying attention in a
way nobody else is. With no place else to call home, Quell gives himself over
to Dodd and Dodd’s “The Cause”.
“The Master” does coast and drift, just as CalumMarsh says, but not every film needs to cut to the bone – this isn’t exploitation cinema,
after all; and if you are willing to coast
and drift, to wallow in the atmosphere, the set design and the potpourri of
actors at the top of their game, then you may find Anderson’s meanderings gives
the film the feeling of a novel’s dense prose. Here is a film more successful
at allowing narrative to take a back seat than “Tree of Life”, because it allows character to lead and the
story/narrative to slip back and act as support, which is pretty much the
reverse of how many films work. Story is not the only thing.
The dramatic
tension comes from this question: Will
Quell get away from Dodd and the cult? That, for me, was the real tension
at the point that he goes back to Dodd to see if he can call his cult home again.
At this point, Dodd is now a big-shot presiding over his followers, but it is
also apparent that his wife is pulling many strings and has never wanted Quell
around. At this point, Dodd’s pitiable characteristics and his villainy are
never clearer: in an awkward and oddball scene typical of Anderson as a rain of
frogs, Dodd tries to literally serenade Quell back into the fold under the most
uncompromising conditions: Don’t fall for
it! I was encouraging Quell, despite Quell being quite the most frightening
and wretched of people.
Quell doesn’t.
Quell beds a
large woman, perhaps reminiscent of the sandcastle woman at the start of the
film, and ambiguously tries Dodd’s techniques on her. This is wonderfully
ambiguous. It is both playful and sinister. My reading is that Quell has
somehow, miraculously, taken something positive from Dodd’s cult and is using
those techniques as a method to try and connect with others; it is also
snarking at those techniques too, in the manner of a boy mocking the things
that his parents and teachers say.
As a tale of
those that would manipulate lost and needy souls, as a tale of a lost soul
trying to find a place to be, “The Master”
feels quite the stuff of literary award-winners. Halfway through, I knew that
this was a classic for those that go along with the aesthetic, the ambience and
the pace. And, if nothing else, the performances of Joaquin Phoenix, Phillip
Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams (who gets the really rewarding slowburn as Dodd’s
wife even as Phoenix is all elbows and Hoffman is all bombast) mark “The Master” as one of the most notable
actor’s platforms ever constructed.
About ten minutes
before the end, I heard the two people at the back of the cinema holding a
discussion: I would guess that she was protesting to leave. When the credits
came up, I did indeed find that I was the only one left in the cinema. Hey, it
was like my own private screening, which amused me because, well, if nothing
else is obvious, it is not a film for everyone.
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