The Master is a film that deserves 4 stars, but I can guarantee that there will be floods of people that dislike it. A slow paced character study dealing with mental illness and religious cults is not to everyone’s taste. When asked to describe the plot, the director, Paul Thomas Anderson, says the film is “high on character, low on story”.
We follow Freddy Quell (Joaquin Pheonix), an American WWII veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress, as his alcoholism and sexual obsession prevent him from re-entering society. Serendipitous he finds himself on the yacht of Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymore Hoffman), the eponymous ‘Master’, based on L. Ronn Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology. The film then focuses on their relationship as Dodd welcomes Quinn into his family as they attempt to spread the ‘Cause’ (i.e. Scientology, thinly veiled) across the nation.
Their relationship is taut in the extreme. Both appear to have everything to lose and little to gain by association with one another, but they put themselves through it anyway. Freddy is a scoundrel with a sailors roaming spirit and Dodd is the deluded and domineering leader of his flock who is likely ‘making it up as he goes along.’
The performances in the film are incredible. Hoffman is, as ever, of the highest standards. His character, who makes up in grandeur what he lacks in modesty, introduces himself as “a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher; but above all, I am a man.” Hoffman brilliantly delivers a camp performance that tips into rage as and when his authority is doubted. And Joaquin Pheonix delivers a hauntingly off-centre performance with a stoop-shouldered physicality to match. Even with his drunken drawl regularly slipping into incoherence, the demons he carries are ever present. Special mention must also be given to Amy Adams who plays Dodd’s young pregnant wife, Peggy.
Displaying a repressed sexuality that is common in the ‘50’s housewife’ evocation, but charged with a gritty determination and an anger integral to the central plot. The most outstanding sequence of the entire movie is that of psychotherapy in the house in Arizona. Freddy undergoes a series of ‘applications’ which I can only describe as Freudian torture. Simultaneously excruciating, mind-bending and fascinating. I was so engrossed by it, I have absolutely no idea how long this part of the film went on for, seemingly instantaneous and never ending.
Do not be put off by the trailer. Even watching it now after seeing the film it feels somewhat flat and lifeless. It lacks the essential electricity the film had throughout that kept my hairs on end. The familiar 50s pastels colouring, in the context of the entire film, have the same effect as Hoffman’s creepy paternal humour, they make you feel the unease in the ordinary.
It is a film that asks the question ‘Who and what should we take seriously?’ A threat of becoming a “sworn enemy in the next life” carries the weight of the narrative, but the police are merely ‘silly’. Similarly, it is a film that requires the audience to take it seriously. Nearing a running time of two and a half hours, The Master does have the potential to bore, but stay with it you will enter the dark and interesting recesses of the psyche of America’s recent past.
4/5 stars