THE MASTER

I wish that people hadn't pumped the idea into my head that The Master was about Scientology. Because, guess what? It wasn’t. Instead, the film delved into the psyche of religious (or cult) leaders and their followers in general. The film played out like it was mirroring the unstable thought patterns of the characters. That may be why it had so many fantastic technical aspects to look at but at the same time lacked the decent storytelling that well-balanced/interesting films should provide. Little was offered within film that made me care about it or its characters, except maybe for the character Freddie Quell’s moonshine making abilities and even that wasn’t terribly engrossing.

Freddie Quell, played by a gaunt and leathery-skinned Joaquin Phoenix, was a demented person who went off to war only to come back even more mentally deranged then he was before. The film saw him try to work through many of his problems. In fact, the sluggish first third of the film just follows him making moonshine, acting a fool, and kinda-sorta dealing with his craziness. He ends up finding The Cause, which provided him with a way to spotlight his daddy issues AND his mommy issues. The Cause was led by Lancaster Dodd (daddy), played by a rotund and soft-looking Philip Seymour Hoffman. The choice to cast Dodd and Quell with these contrasting body types was nice. It gave you a visual difference between the men to focus on so you wouldn't be too bogged down with the fact that mentally they were quite similar. I mean, they were both wackadoos. Dodd was a crazy genius type with a lot of anger. And what struck me the most about him was that he was not near as charismatic as I believe a religious leader should be. Yes, characters in the film seemed to love him but it was unclear as to why. Even his wife Peggy Dodd (mommy), played by a wholesome-looking Amy Adams, seemed to have no good reason to love and devote herself to the man. But then again, she was a difficult character to get a real grasp of since she technically had two roles to play. Publicly she was a doting wife and privately she was an authoritative and strong women...as a matter of fact, one might call her a ‘master.’ Her complexity did catch me by surprise at first but after the film past the two hour mark the surprise had turned into disdain.

(The Weinstein Company)

There may be deeper meanings behind The Master than what I picked up, but I don’t feel the need to subject myself to a second viewing of it to see what I missed. Simply put, if you like for a movie to have a plot and be somewhat entertaining, The Master may not be the movie for you. If you like for a movie to be over two hours long and to be frustratingly tedious, The Master might have been made specifically for you. Although, I have a hunch that the film was made more for Paul Thomas Anderson, himself, than it was for anyone else in the viewing audience.