Saturday, October 13, 2012

The Master - 1 smile


After seeing the much-hyped “The Master,” I was puzzled and a little angry, wondering what this movie was trying to say or why it was even made. The first hour of the movie contains a good story. It’s post-World War II and Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), an emotionally disturbed loner who had trouble fitting in with his fellow sailors in the Navy, has landed a job as a portrait photographer at a swanky department store. But Freddie doesn’t fit in and doesn’t last long at the job. In the darkroom where he develops pictures, he has sex with women and chugs down the concoction he makes out of photo-processing chemicals. Then Freddie meets Lancaster Dodd (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), a rotund, fast-talking man constantly surrounded by people who treat him like a sage, hanging on his every word, laughing at his jokes. Lancaster describes himself as a ‘doctor, writer, and theoretical philosopher.’ He is married to Peggy (Amy Adams), a friendly woman who is much more aware than she initially seems. He has a son, Val (Jesse Plemons), who, later, tells Freddie that his father is ‘making it up as he goes.’

Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson sets everything up so well that you wait for the plot, the real meaning of the film, to kick in. Instead, nothing happens. There are a series of incidents and you’re not sure how much time has passed between events. Freddie stows away on Lancaster’s boat in San Francisco and then they’re in New York. Freddie and Lancaster spend the night in adjacent jail cells, with the bars the only barrier that keeps them from beating each other up. In one mystifying scene, the women at a house party all suddenly lose their clothes while Lancaster sings. Freddie’s sexual addiction, which was emphasized in the early portions of the film, suddenly disappears. And what’s with the scene in the desert? None of the characters in “The Master” are interesting although Phoenix and Hoffman are exceptional. However, because none of the characters are interesting, you don’t really care what happens to them, not that Anderson makes anything clear. Some critics claim that this movie is intentionally elusive and mysterious, but that’s just a sophisticated way of saying Anderson’s script isn’t all that good. Anderson poses questions about faith, emotional damage and the human capacity for change, but he never explores them with any depth. It seems Anderson is making a movie for himself and not for a typical audience. 10/ 5/12

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This film was #10 in my top ten worst films of 2012. The acting was good and Joaquin Phoenix may well get a nomination but the story line STANK!! I think it was loosely based on Scientology and L.Ron Hubbard, it was a waste of time for me..........