With that said, I’m becoming increasingly frustrated by
his films. I don’t object to their complexity or challenges, but I have
misgivings about the general lack of joy to be found at any moments in The Master. Boogie Nights and Magnolia
are films I can watch over and over, finding joy amid the tremendous sorrow
every time. There was real vibrancy and panache in Anderson’s directing style.
He combined the dexterity of Altman maintaining multiple characters and threads
with the energy of Scorsese. Then he started to go quiet.
I wonder now if the flare he exhibited in his earlier
films was what he had to do to win the approval of studio execs so he could
eventually make films the way he ‘really’ wanted to. Maybe that’s unfair
because it suggests he doesn’t fully stand behind those films, which is not
what I mean. It’s just that The Master,
fascinating though it is as a character study, feels cold and lifeless. That’s
not what I expect from the man who found some smidge of optimism in the
otherwise detrimental storylines of Magnolia.
Anderson’s latest is focused on two men, each of whom
could hardly seem more dissimilar in temperament, but are kindred spirits, at
least in the eyes of one of them. They are Freddie Quell, a U.S. Navy WWII
veteran, and Lancaster Dodd, the spiritual leader of a new movement known
simply as “The Cause.” To observe Freddie is to recognize a man in moral,
spiritual, and psychological decay. He is, to put it crudely, a madman. He is
an alcoholic who has a gift for crafting strange brews of substances such as
paint thinner, photo development chemicals, or torpedo fuel, and then imbibing
them. When we see him lay on top of and start humping a sand sculpture of a
nude woman that his sea mates have made on the shore of some idyllic island in
the south Pacific, or we see him masturbating into the ocean, we might
disregard this as the antics of a young man lost in war and deprived of the
pleasures of female company. When his behavior at home after settling back in
seems not far removed from such crass sexual acts, we begin to understand he is
a man in need of serious help.
Joaquin Phoenix plays Freddie in a performance of such
unearthly physicality it makes you almost queasy to watch him. He stands
slouched with his back arched in a way that I imagine must cause great
discomfort over time. He keeps his elbows bent outward, hands on hips with
thumbs pointed down. His posture constantly reveals a man uncomfortable in his
own skin and unsure of how to present himself before the world. Phoenix sinks
so deeply inside this troubled character that I’m surprised the performance
followed his experiment in which he pretended to go nuts and have a breakdown
in real life. He is truly fulfilling the promise of a great acting career that
his brother River might have had without his tragic death in 1993.
Lancaster Dodd is an inviting and slightly warm
individual. He welcomes Freddie onto his chartered yacht (even though he
drunkenly stumbled on board) and takes him under his wing. There is hardly a
part Philip Seymour Hoffman has played flawed and I’ve never seen him miscast,
whether it’s a sensitive and caring nurse, the effete Truman Capote seeking
human truth in unspeakable horror, or the defeated Willy Loman on the Broadway
stage. As Dodd, he is steadfast, manipulative and just about boiling over with
anger. He is building a movement on a foundation of quicksand, but he believes
in it. Freddie’s vulnerability is exactly the kind of thing a man like Dodd
preys upon. He is the perfect specimen to become not just a follower of his
philosophy, but to even manage it with him side-by-side. Certainly Dodd’s own
son, Val (Jesse Plemons, bearing an uncanny physical resemblance to Hoffman) is
not the man to follow in his footsteps. He sees through the ruse, or what he
perceives to be such.
Anderson’s films stand out for two primary reasons: great
writing and great acting. This film is no exception. In addition to two
outstanding leads, Amy Adams plays Dodd’s wife Peggy. It’s yet another in a
series of small, but tough and surly young women Adams has gotten way too good
at. I think she has yet to develop into a great actress, but she certainly can
if she can break away from roles that I continue to find very similar. Laura
Dern has a small, but pivotal, role as a devoted follower of “The Cause” who
gets a small taste of his true colors when she challenges him on a
contradictory point in his latest writings.
The pacing of the film feels less deliberately dense than
in Anderson’s earlier films. It has a more meandering feel, which I find
interesting considering the number of main characters is significantly lower. I
just found it very hard to connect with the presentation of the material. It feels
so much like Anderson has engaged us in an intellectual exercise, but forgotten
that the primary purpose of narrative cinema is to entertain through
storytelling. It reminded me very much of a Stanley Kubrick film. Kubrick often
faced criticism of making films that were cold and detached while being
perfectly crafted. I have no doubts about The
Master’s greatness on a technical level – it’s clearly made by a man whose
understanding of narrative construction on film tops almost anyone else working
today – but at the end of a ‘great’ film I want to feel like I can’t wait to
see it again. This is the third Anderson film in a row that I haven’t felt
that. Most of Kubrick’s films took the better part of a decade for many people
to see the genius. Maybe there’s something in The Master that will bring me back one day, but that day isn’t now.
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