VOD film review: The Master (2012)
Review Overview
Performances
10Mood
8Satisfaction
6David Farnor | On 02, Mar 2022
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams
Certificate: 12
“I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher… but above all I am a man. A hopelessly inquisitive man, just like you.” That’s how Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman) describes himself to Freddy Quell (Phoenix) when they first meet. It’s telling that he uses so many words to do it. Compared to the protagonist of Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood – simply, “an oil man” – The Master is more than an adjective and noun. He’s a whole bunch of nouns. It’s even more telling that we never hear Freddy’s own introduction. He’s an “able-bodied seaman”, but those words come out of Dodd’s mouth, not his.
Their meeting marks the start of a fascinating relationship, one that sees Dodd’s charismatically hirsute cult leader consume the former naval officer; soon, Dodd’s voice is seeping into Freddy’s flashbacks, his giant moustache sucking out the other’s identity with its hairy gravitational pull.
Washed up in the wake of the war, Freddy is a bow-legged loser who can’t talk straight – a fantastic, wonky-mouthed turn by Phoenix, who starts off playing with sand figures of women on the beach and ends attempting to connect with the real thing. There’s a sense throughout Freddy’s struggle to find himself that Anderson is reaching outwards, as with There Will Be Blood, to explore a key flaw in America’s (or, indeed, human) nature – the longing for past certainty, the need for a crutch to fill some perceived hole. Freddy’s disoriented limbo echoes the whole country in the 1950s, just as his knack for moonshining any object (a coconut, a cabbage, some mouthwash) matches Dodd’s ability to concoct addictive nonsense out of thin air. As for Hoffman, his calculating showman is intimidating yet magnetic, eulogising about rising above animal urges one minute and sinking into depravity the next.
The result is a blinding look at what happens when two powerful forces collide. One moment of stinging impact sees Freddy explode with rage, while Dodd stands in the corner of the frame, coolly watching his work pay off. Then, halfway through, his wife (Amy Adams) seizes control of Quell – and our perspective. “What colour are my eyes?” she asks, before demanding he change them. It’s a terrifying demonstration of psychological power, one compounded even further in a bathroom scene that hints that Adams is really the one driving The Cause forward.
For all this absorbing unease, though, The Master doesn’t find a satisfying ending. Instead, Anderson is happy to leave us wandering, never moving forwards but always looking back. Stunning shots of slow-motion water drifting in the wake of a boat flash up every few minutes, evoking nostalgia almost as easily as Ella Fitzgerald crooning Get Thee Behind Me Satan in the background.
Humming underneath that, Jonny Greenwood’s score is an unsettling mix of ever-shifting rhythms – a hypnotic piece that captures the sound of a population in disarray, slowly retuning itself up into one discordant mess. Most of all, though, it’s the repeated cycle of questions and answers that lulls you into a stupor. “What’s your name?” asks Dodd. “Freddy Quell,” he answers. “Say it again,” comes the reply.
Just like The Master ordering his guinea pig to walk back and forth across a room, Anderson sends us scuttling into one wall, then another, and continues to do so for two and a half hours. For followers with the stamina to dive into these dizzying waters, there’s a hint of a masterpiece waiting to be glimpsed. “Is The Master a five-star film?” you’ll ask yourself. Then you’ll ask it again. And again. And again.