THE MASTER Review
By Darin Skaggs
One of the greatest working directors today is Paul Thomas Anderson. He has only made five feature films, Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood. Almost all of them have made a big impact on me. Now Anderson has come out with his sixth film called, The Master. It makes for an intriguing film with wonderful performances and beautiful cinematography. The film also leaves you nearly flabbergasted at what the film’s themes are and confused at what it is trying to say.
The Master is a film about a war vet named Freddie Quill played by Joaquin Phoenix. He is a man who leaves the war and is not all there. He goes from job to job getting in more trouble with every job. Eventually he ends up on a boat. On this boat Freddie meets a man named Dow played by an Anderson regular, Philip Seamore Hoffman. This man is the leader of a group called The Cause. The two automatically bond and form a weird and sometimes awkward relationship.
The performances in this film, like in all of Anderson’s works, are spectacular. Amy Adams, who plays Dow’s wife and is not in the film very long, gives one of the films best performances. The film also has great supporting cast, with great acting from Jesse Plemmons as Dow’s son, Laura Dunn who plays a devout follower of The Cause. One of the greatest performances in the movie is from Hoffman, but the outstanding performance comes from Joaquin Phoenix. He gives it his all in the film. At one point he can be quietly mumbling and another moment he violently lashing out. His body posture through the whole film is like a man who is broken and he only gets worse throughout the film.
The film has many different elements but its main focus is on The Cause, which is a group that believes in some sort of reincarnation and that we can look back and see who we once were. One lady wakes up from a tranche and says see thinks she was at one point a man. When Freddie enters Dow’s life he seems to become the wrench inside The Cause’s grinders and in some strange way at other times he makes them move faster. Their relationship is confusing. At one point they seem to have a father/son relationship in which Dow is trying to make him just like him and make him the best man he could be. Also they seem to become best friends, for no good reason I may add. The both of them have a strange friendship and a competitive spirit. Dow doesn’t just bring out the best in Freddie but Freddie brings out the best in Dow. Dow calls Freddie “the bravest man he’s ever met.” Freddie takes this as a challenge and those words start him to become as good if not better than Dow.
When I finished watching other films by Anderson I basically got what it was about or what it was trying to say. It is impossible to fully understand what an Anderson film is saying, but it is possible to understand a little bit. Punch-Drunk Love is about anger and depression. There Will Be Blood is about greed and loneliness. Magnolia is about fate. When I came out of The Master I had no idea what this film was trying to say. I honestly did not know if what I saw was a good film or not. I knew it had things I loved, such as I previously mentioned the performances are amazing. A lot of the shots are amazingly beautiful and will stick in your head for a while. You will most likely after watching the film will say, “What was that?”, and the average movie goer will come to the conclusion that they did not like it or get it. I’ve given this film a lot of thought and finally have a few theories about what it is about and what Anderson was trying to say with his shots and plot movements.
There are a few confusing moments and directorial decisions in the film that happen that are not one hundred percent clear. There is a “special drink” that Freddie keeps making and that Dow admits his love for. This storyline completely goes away in the second act. There is a character, Dow’s son that does nothing and almost has no point throughout the film. Freddie literally tells him, “Do something”. Besides those minor setbacks, none of these plotlines take away from the film at all.
This is another amazing achievement by Paul Thomas Anderson. This is a film you cannot blow off; you have to spend time with it. You need to stay with it and analyze it for a while. It has great looking shots throughout the film and some of the greatest performances of the year. It is one of the most interesting films of the year and that I have ever seen.
