I’m surprised there isn’t a thread on this movie yet. Anyway, the rest of the OP in the next post, to avoid hover spoilers.
I’m a huge Paul Thomas Anderson fan since Magnolia, but I feel his work seems to be getting more and more fractured. There Will Be Blood had some amazing elements but didn’t quite come together for me in the end.
The Master, I’m afraid, left me even more ambivalent. On the one hand, Joaquin Phoenix, the sets, every Phoenix/Hoffman scene. On the other, you have some odd scenes that don’t do much to advance the story, and you have a plot that just kind of lies there.
This is a really powerful film that ultimately fails because it doesn’t go anywhere. Which is a shame because the raw material is amazing. I think I’ll be haunted by that shot of Phoenix sprinting over the tilled fields, and I didn’t even see it in 70mm.
But every time I remember a scene like that, I’ll remember the pointless salt flats scene or the Adams masturbation scene or the digging up manuscript scene, and think, “WTF is Anderson trying to say there?”
Any other opinions?
I thought it was terrific, although not as good as There Will Be Blood (still my favorite Anderson). I’ll admit that it’s not the most plot-driven film that you’re ever going to see. I viewed it as more of an intellectual exercise, and I enjoyed trying to put the pieces together to see what made these individual men tick and why they were so attracted to each other and, in the bigger picture, what it takes for any one person to slowly gain control and break the will of another person. And I loved the hints that the true believer in the Dodd family may very well have been his wife. Which I personally think was the point of the masturbation scene, to reveal to the audience exactly how much control she has over him, and that she’s not exactly the sweet soul that we’ve been led to believe and that, quite frankly, we’ve come to expect to see from an Amy Adams character. Very smart casting there.
I can’t wait to see it again.
I’m with you Rollo, 100%, even about There Will Be Blood. You said it all much better than I would have. It is more of a character study than a This Happened then This Happened then This Happened narrative. I thought it was hypnotic, spellbinding. Confusing at times but never overwhelmingly so. It’s going to deserve multiple viewings.
The Master is going to be a very misunderstood film, starting with the $cientologists who are all upset because they think it’s about their big cheese Hubbard (it’s not, though Anderson did borrow some of LRH’s bullshit story and cultoids).
I hope the members of AMPAS don’t disregard it, because it deserves lots of nominations, in practically every category. For wins, I’d love to see Joaquin Phoenix get Best Actor and maybe Jonny Greenwood Best Score (since he was robbed of a nomination for TWBB).
I do think that Greenwood’s score was one of the few areas in which I preferred The Master to TWBB. His score for the latter was outstanding, no doubt, and its Oscar disqualification was a crime. But I thought this new score was on an even higher level. It seemed to me to have a bit more . . . nuance? That’s really the best way I can describe it. Hearing his TWBB score was a visceral experience, like being hit with a wooden plank repeatedly (but in the best possible way). I feel like I could pick out the individual themes in the music for The Master and put them together the way that I was piecing together the film itself.
I hope these two movies are the beginning of a long partnership between Anderson and Greenwood.
Hmmm. I’m going to have to disagree a bit. I agree it’s a character study (although not even the one the movie is named after), but there is still an obligation to have some cohesive thrust to the movie, IMO. It’s the difference between a great movie and a great performance. This movie is perfect for showcasing the talents of Joaquin Phoenix but fell short as a whole.
But that’s just it: I think there is plenty of cohesion in the movie, but of more of a thematic nature than a narrative one. Like I said, the movie is about the nature of leadership, what happens when a figure like Lancaster Dodd sees someone whom he thinks he can mold to fit his purposes, and what happens when he discovers that someone isn’t able to be tamed.
No, the movie doesn’t have the typical rise-and-fall action found within most movies. I know that’s what a lot of people look for in a movie, and that’s completely fine if that’s what they want. I just think a movie is under no obligation to stick to that structure. There are lots of other ways to spin a tale, and I think an unorthodox way like that found in The Master is equally as valid as that of a classic three-act film.
I liked it. The world needs more two-hour extreme close-ups of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s glorious golden mustache.
I’m on Erdosain’s side. Terrific acting, but the script did not cohere. Half the scenes were fascinating and half the scenes seemed to be overlooked edits from a movie twice as long. And too many scenes may or may not have been dreams, hallucinations, or fantasies.
It will be infuriating if The Master gets too much love come award season. Fascinating failures are often worth seeing, and this movie certainly was. But you have to admit that they are failures because half a fascinating movie is not a success.
Amazing movie. To me, the best since Magnolia.
My question, what do people think it lacked? Cohesion? I am not sure how it lacked that. It was a straight forward story.
I think people wanted some type of moral. Like Boogie Nights and Magnolia, it showed people in outsider societies looking for and dealing with love, family and inclusion. It didnt cast judgement but did not hide lifes ugly side. Although Magnolia was heavy with morals, this was more like Boogie Nights.
Saw this last week, thought it was the weakest of PTA’s films so far. Great performances, but I could never understand why the Master took such a shine to Fred. The booze?
Also, and I’m ashamed to admit this, but in the scene where the Master was being challenged by the skeptic, at the end of the exchange something happened to cause the audience to gasp, which I missed because I dropped my popcorn. What was said/done?
so is Joaquin Phoenix all forgiven now for being a rude jerk during his fake-rapper-I’m Still Here phase?
The Master was getting frustrated and shouted, “Pig fuck!” at the end of one of his arguments. I thought it was a little mannered. As mad as I could get, I can’t imagine shouting Pig Fuck! in a formal situation.
To me, yes. He is simply amazing in this film.
PIG FUCK!
Which might have been fantasies or hallucinations other than the scene where all of the ladies suddenly got naked?
Doris’ age seemed odd to me. He returned from the war and she said that she was 16. That would have made her alot younger when they first met. I guess she might have matured early.
Then he went back and her mother said she was 23…was that really seven years later. Might she have said she was only 16 in order to putt him off?
The phone call in the movie theater seems like it was or could have been a hallucination. There’s no way the Master could have known where Freddie was and he didn’t seem too thrilled to see Freddie when he actually showed up.
I didn’t see anything inconsistent in the age of Doris (Day!). She started writing to him while he was in the navy. They didn’t seem to have known each other particularly well or at all before meeting in the garden outside of the letters. I wonder if it was a patriotic thing back in the day to write to local overseas troops during WWII. It doesn’t sound too far-fetched that a 12 or 13-year-old girl would have a crush on some local boy shipped off to war and would write him letters.
As for the seven years passing between him ditching her and returning to talk to her mother, that sounds pretty reasonable too. He took a merchant marine gig, worked in the department store, picked fruit with migrants, he hooked up with the Master for a long time, and then an unspecified amount of time passed between the motorcycle in the desert and showing up a Doris’s house. Seven years sounds about right.
I saw this film for the first time this weekend, and was mostly puzzled by it, including @JohnT ‘s question about the characters’ motivations for virtually all their actions. But coming after the Trump phenomenon of 2015-2020, it seemed to me a complete parable about cults, and their inexplicable appeal to the simple-minded. I saw the Joaquin Phoenix character, especially the mindless violence he vented onto his Master’s critics (with verbal disapproval but endless love from the Master) as perfect. Hoffman gave a fabulous performance as a charismatic conman who praises himself to the ceiling and who seems to be a sincere believer in the gibberish he spouts and who is weirdly idolized by his many followers. The absolute nonsense he jabbers about, the neo-Scientology jargon that he keeps improvising (his son telling Phoenix “he just makes it up as he goes along” was great), coupled with Hoffman’s conviction as he spouts it, is terrific.
The plot is nonsense, so trying to figure out stuff like why Hoffman and Phoenix are drawn to each other is a red herring. This was an attempt to explain the inexplicable by simply showing it on full display.