The Master (2012)

Photo from film's trailer

This weekend I had the pleasure of viewing Paul Thomas Anderson's most recent feature length release titled The Master. Anderson in most known for his 2007 film titled There Will Be Blood which stars Daniel Day-Lewis. Because There Will Be Blood is regarded by many critics as one of the best films of the last decade, the release of The Master was highly anticipated.

The film follows a disenchanted WW2 veteran named Freddie Quell, portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, as he drifts from place to place in the troubling period after the end of the war. He eventually finds his way onto a cruise vessel belonging to a Lancaster Dodd, played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, the leader of a strange new religion calling itself The Cause. Dodd, noticing the restless and uncontrollable nature of Quell takes the young man under his wing and calls him his protege. The rest of the film follows the budding relationship between Quell and Dodd, and their experiences with the ever growing notoriousness of The Cause.

At the end of the film I was left wondering "What was the point?" I wondered what questions Anderson had posed for the viewer and whether or not they had been answered. I then realized that from the start there may not have been direct questions asked, but rather themes placed strategically for the viewer to find. 

One of the themes, and in my opinion the most important, revolved entirely around Freddie and his desires, mainly sexual desires. Although it is never implicitly stated why Freddie does what he does, it can be gathered through cinematic elements just how sexually deprived Freddie is and how this dictates his every decision. One scene in particular is about halfway through the film in which Dodd and his followers are having a party. Dodd takes in into his own hands to dance and sing around the room. The camera at first focuses mainly on Dodd and his endeavors as an entertainer. It then cuts to a close up of Freddie as he gazes lustfully past the camera. It then cuts back to the exact shot of Dodd dancing and singing around the room, but this time all the females that had been previously clothed were now entirely naked. This shows that the eye of the camera is actually the lustful eye of Freddie. The camera can no longer be a trusted viewfinder. The viewer is no longer watching a story unfold from the outside of a fishbowl, but rather under Freddie's biased, sexual perception.

Another example of this theme, and perhaps the most telling, happens later on in the film. Dodd, Quell, Dodd's daughter and her husband head out into an unnamed desert. It is here that Dodd invents a game called "Pick a Point" in which you ride on a motorcycle as fast as you can towards the point you picked on the horizon. Dodd goes first, speeding off into the distance in unmatchable bliss. This camera follows him in a profile medium shot before switching to an extreme close up of Dodd's ecstatic face. The next shot is a wide shot of Dodd riding back towards his companions. When it is Freddie's turn to ride the bike, the camera follows him just as it followed Dodd in a profile medium shot. It then cuts to a wide shot of the motorcycle as it speeds further and further away from the camera. The next time the viewer sees Quell is as he walks up the steps of the house belonging to Doris, the woman he calls the love of his life. Freddie's desire to see his sweetheart is much greater than returning on the motorcycle to Dodd, the man who has become his father figure. His overwhelming need to be loved in a sexual way propels his decisions, and propels him away from the safety provided to him by The Cause.

It has been said that The Master is a criticism on the infamous religion of Scientology. The film does shed a negative light on Dodd's Cause, and there are many similarities between it and Scientology, but it never implicitly connects itself to Scientology, which leads me to believe that perhaps this is not the main thing Anderson was trying to convey. Instead, I believe Anderson was focused on intimate character studies and exploration of themes, such as sexual desire. As an overall film, The Master can at times be static, but I find that this is intentional and has a pleasing effect. Anderson's use of extreme close ups juxtaposed with wide shots gives the viewer a feeling of unease coupled with claustrophobia. As a viewer, we are intruding on these intimate experiences and displays of lust, and then forced to come to terms with them when thrown into extreme wide shots.

As an overall film, I would say The Master is an accomplishment for Anderson. I certainly enjoyed it much more than his previous effort of There Will Be Blood. My rating as of right now is an A- and I recommend everyone to go and see it.