Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams
Rated R, 137 minutes
I think I was supposed to like “The Master” more. Prior to its release, the movie had plenty of hype, considering it was allegedly about Scientology (gasp!) and also because the producers did a heck of a lot to keep any details about the movie secret. Now that it’s out, everyone can see just how big a movie this is. And it is big, both thematically and spatially. But something – maybe my own lack of understanding of the film, or maybe its vagueness, which poses as subtlety – makes me wonder what “The Master’s” cinematic bigness means.
The film follows WWII veteran Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix, “Walk the Line”), who drifts from job to job in a PTSD daze, unable to function like a proper citizen of 1950s America. He’s an alcoholic as well, and creates strange concoctions to fill his flask. He stumbles to and fro, getting chased out of every place he stops, until eventually he finds himself in league with a charismatic older gentleman named Lancaster Dodd. Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman, “Capote”) is the master of the Cause, an intriguing, yet mysterious group of devotees who practice an assortment of rituals aimed toward detaching themselves from the world and trying to understand where their spirits have been in previous lives. Willing to try anything, Quell lets Dodd start to “process” him, and suddenly the two find themselves in a master-protégé relationship.
This relationship is constantly threatened and stretched thin, though, by Freddie’s wayward habits, as well as outsiders who accuse the Cause of being a cult. Dodd’s wife Peggy (Amy Adams, “The Fighter”), as well as a few Cause underlings, don’t like Freddie much, but Dodd insists upon keeping him close, if only because they are the only ones who will help the poor drifter. But Freddie won’t be made docile easily, and as his loyalty to the Cause wavers, so does Dodd’s patience with him.
“The Master” has a reputation of being “about” Scientology, but it really isn’t; Anderson (“There Will Be Blood”) uses the notorious religion more as a placeholder for cult mentality in general, and then calls it out for tricking those most vulnerable. Dodd preys on the spiritually weak, turning them into mindless followers of a vaguely defined entity. In one of the most fascinating scenes, a woman who has had no importance to him thus far brings up a discrepancy in the books he’s written for the Cause, and in doing so makes him acknowledge, if only inwardly, that he’s making everything up as he goes along.
It reminds us that, in a sense, Dodd and Quell are very similar characters; more than just a master-slave reference, “The Master” is a comment on their skills, or lack thereof – they both are jacks of all trades, masters of none. This is more evident for Freddie, who drifts from job to job, woman to woman, unable to settle himself anywhere. But he knows this about himself, unlike Dodd, who is equally nomadic but operates under the guise of control. Dodd is a clever trickster, but his is a life of improvisation. As the movie progresses, we get a sense that Peggy is more a Lady Macbeth character than she first appears, and soon the Master has little control over his own game.
Adams is terrific as the subtly domineering wife, while Phoenix is great (even if he slurs his words too much) as the hedonistic drifter. What isn’t clear is what Freddie really wants from his participation in the Cause. Similarly, Hoffman is charismatic as Dodd, but doesn’t show why he likes Freddie so much. The pairing is a little strange, but a confusing and intentionally vague (perhaps too much so) script could be to blame. The script, which Anderson himself wrote, is in over its own head, much like the Cause it describes.
It would be too trite to call “The Master” a good movie or a bad movie. It’s a beautiful movie, to be sure, and an interesting movie, but it treads the line between being great and trying really hard to be great. For most people, though, “The Master” will simply be indescribable, with a theme and a plot that are too big and too strange to cipher after one casual viewing. It needs a second one, although I’m not sure I want to go see it again so soon.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 10/5/12.