FILM: "The Master"

Post World War II void and trauma and its re-alienated individuals ironically spawn cults of belief in charismatic hucksters. Quell (quell my pain), on the run, stows away on a boat and is adopted by The Master, who manipulates him with degrading and mindless exercises while encouraging him to brew his potent, potentially lethal, alcohol concoctions.

I struggled to match my attention to the slow narrative pace, my need for resolution conflicted with my dread about what painful incident would follow next. Editing here skillfully serves the contrasts of character and story. The power struggle between Quell and Dodd remains unresolved by any cathartic event. So those of us who like a car chase or an explosion to create epiphany face a dilemma of plot structure: flawed and tedious or serially nuanced exposition?

Who is master, who is slave? Quell and Dodd are bound homo-erotically, but more completely by their twinned natures (Quell brutish, Dodd magnetized slime), driven by an omnivorous thwarted sexuality which provides the corrupted life energy driving each. The Master and the servant masturbate, go to jail, and lose emotional control in parallel experiences that reveal their cloven natures. Quell achieves a kind of existential freedom when he is expelled and leaves The Master. He continues his sexual questing and alcoholism, we conclude, a drifter until the downward spiral ends. In their quasi heroic and defiant choices, each is becomes nullified and banal.

The film has a fine score (though somewhat post-modern in feel), and beautiful production values, filmed in 70-mm, and lovely cinematography and editing. Would that all films attended to the formal elements of film to deepen the film experience’s visual potential.

Philip Seymour Hoffman has a voice that would seduce the most devoted celibate, and his portrayal of The Master as a kind of uber-Dyonisian-male satyr (the dance scene) is powerful. Joachin Phoenix’s Quell contorts his body into a kind of German expressionist crucifixion carving, hands nearly always placed on the hips, yet twisted in reverse, forcing shoulders forward and shaping his chest into a concave void. In one scene he is required not to blink for an extended time while being “processed” - an excruciating minor torture. (Try it during the scene, and you’ll see what I mean.)

Amy Adams plays his chillingly true believer wife, revealed as a kind of implanted Master in Dodd’s consciousness, and Laura Dern is a swindled cult member. I won’t forget the puzzled look on her face, and despite the lack of comprehension, acceptance of the Master’s word, when she challenges him about a revision of The Inquiry/Process in his second book.

The director, Paul Thomas Anderson, (Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will be Blood) is an important contemporary filmmaker, and should be attended to. I leave it to you to declare, “pretentious and boring”, reminding you that I’ve heard that one a lot, and it’s usually coming from those “car crash” enthusiasts I mentioned earlier. Seriously, the problem is art that requires a willed attention: a choice to stay open to the artist’s intention, and a lack of expectation that escapist fantasy will be deeply satisfied. You’re on your own - submitting to the experience but with awareness. Try it sometime.