The Master DVD Review

So accomplished is director Paul Thomas Anderson’s catalogue of work, that every new film he presents is met with a degree of excitement and expectation reserved for only the most celebrated and enduring of filmmakers. Despite a relatively short career (one comprising less than two decades), Anderson has already hit the high notes with an excellent portfolio of work that includes, amongst others, Boogie Nights, Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood. Anderson has never really produced a poor film, and the notion of seeing him reunited with long-term accomplice, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, to cast their creative eyes over the thorny subject of a pseudo-religious cult, is a prospect certainly worth relishing.

Ultimately, The Master is a film which provokes an immense sense of awe, chiefly through the performances of its double-act of leading men; but it’s one which also instils a lingering sense of doubt and, dare I say it, disappointment.

As the Second World War draws to a close, US seaman Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is little more than a drunken, sex-obsessed husk. As his comrades frolic on Pacific island beaches, Freddie is quietly mixing drinks, cavorting with women made of sand and draining and drinking the fuel from his ship’s torpedoes. It is abundantly clear that Freddie is struggling with post-traumatic stress, his efforts to maintain a steady job post-war end in disaster, violence, and soaked in home-made booze.

Ultimately Freddie’s penchant for hooch leads to the accidental poisoning of an elderly co-worker forcing him to flee his job for his own safety. Tired, desperate and inebriated, Freddie stows away on a passing boat unaware that it currently plays host to an eccentric cabal known as The Cause, led by their enigmatic and beguiling leader Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman), known to his acolytes as “Master”.

Freddie is welcomed into the fold and joins the ensemble in spreading Dodd’s good news, learning the ins-and-outs of the exercise known as “processing”, while simultaneously battling those outside influences who would seek to derail The Cause.

Hoffman’s Master is of course a thinly-veiled reference to author and founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard; and his performance as the mesmeric leader of The Cause is a thing to behold, as Hoffman imbues the leader with a tangible sense of self-assurance and thoughtfulness. Watching the commanding Dodd deliver his sermons to an adoring congregation, with their bizarre lectures on quasi-psychology and spirituality is as tempting as it is baffling. As a study of the cult of personality, it’s genuinely unnerving. Whilst every reasonable bone inside you should reject the nonsense on offer, it’s all too easy to see how Freddie and the rest of the herd become so affected and entranced by the Master’s teachings, so powerful and believable is Hoffman’s delivery.

As a counterpart to Dodd’s measured sermonising, Freddie’s alcohol-soaked, rotten futility is excellent too. Joaquin Phoenix brings a demoralising physicality to a role that under normal circumstances would elevate itself above the rest. The fact that it’s a performance that plays second fiddle says more about Hoffman’s presence in the piece than it does about Phoenix’s.

Together the performances are, save for the odd mumble of Phoenix’s, as damn-near pitch perfect as is possible. The setting in which these two performances are to be found is a beautiful, studiously reconstructed image of post-war USA. It’s a USA in which the iron curtain of atomic-age paranoia has most definitely descended; and yet the vestiges of hopefulness, of dewy-eyed belief in the American dream, still remain.

If Paul Thomas Anderson is guilty of anything, it’s that his stories can have a tendency to find themselves coughing and spluttering towards a resolution. There Will Be Blood’s grind towards the finishing line was expertly aided by its visual and aural magnificence; there was little room for dissent as you were being so firmly and skilfully grasped by the balls. Boogie Nights took a descent into a drug-fuelled hell which contrasted with its upbeat and romping (albeit sleazy) opening salvos, but maintained some sense of urgency; in the case of The Master ,the culmination of nearly two-and-a-half hours of soul-searching appears to be less assured.

A final act which appears to tread much of the same water trod in the film’s middle third feels like Anderson is searching for an ending which never comes. Freddie’s vision, experienced towards the end of the film, is one which exists as a symptom of his general lack of growth both spiritually and practically. For all the processing and sermonising, he’s never really moved on. A sobering thought, but it’s one which belies the fact that, as an audience, neither have we. Despite the mesmeric performances of Hoffman and Phoenix, you are left with a nagging feeling of dissatisfaction at a film which very much feels like it has a beginning, and a middle.

Chris Banks(@Chris_in_2D)

★★★★☆

Rating:15
BD/DVD Release Date:11 March 2013 (UK)
Directed By: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix , Amy Adams,
Buy The Master on:Blu-ray / DVD

The Master Review

Come one come all and lend your ears to Paul Thomas Anderson for the master has arrived and he demands your attention. More than any of this years releases, the director’s follow-up to 2007’s There Will Be Blood has had critics and fans alike flocking to the alter of ‘The Cause’ and laying worship at the feet of it’s creator. Again it sees Anderson go right to the heart of Americana, holding aloft a post-war America that saw the birth of a great number of newly established religions sparked by a national spiritual yearning.

    Early whispers promised a brave and unflinching look at the mysterious world of Scientology amid reports of celebrity storm-outs at screenings and uneasy tensions with friend and Anderson collaborator Tom Cruise. Those rumours can largely be laid to rest, for while Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd is unquestionably a thinly veiled riff on L. Ron Hubbard, the ambiguity of cult…sorry religion, definitely not cult, on show can be traced to a number of ideals formed on the early basis of Dianetics. That established we are free to focus on what is on show in this markedly heavyweight, award-baiting film.

    Joaquin Phoenix - last seen drinking, sniffing and rapping his bearded way through the uncomfortable mock-doc I’m Still Here - turns up shaved, but no less addled as Freddie Quell – a sailor alone and adrift following the end of WWII. He drifts, via fleeting fumbles with females and an abundance of homemade moonshine, into the path of Lancaster Dodd entertaining a boat full of his congregation all following the mysterious path of ‘the cause’. The two instantly embark on a kinship, Quell taken by the charismatic and charming intellectual showing him time of day while Dodd sees in Freddie something that inspires him greatly, taking him under his wing and doting on him to a near romantic degree.

    The stormy relationship between the two carries much of the film, through Dodd’s attempted ‘curing’ of his violent protégé and the staunch defence by Freddie of all comers daring to challenge the legitimacy of ‘the master’s call to arms. It is this compelling tête-à-tête and not the religious overtones that propel The Master into greatness with two central performances that cast a shadow over all others vying for end of year accolades.

    Anderson has a noted quality for getting the very best out of his actors; it was he who gambled on Mark Whalberg’s ability to hold a lead while still suffering from his Marky Mark moniker, he who gave his returning star Seymour Hoffman his big break and he who so memorably oversaw the larger than life Daniel Day-Lewis shout something about milkshake to terrifying effect, not to mention produce wholly unrecognisable and likeable turns from Tom Cruise and Adam Sandler. However it is that he goads these performances from his leads he’s extremely successful at it and he’s repeated the trick here, toning down the near-panto levels of oil slicker Daniel Plainview to draw career-topping turns from both Phoenix and Hoffman. Their sparring characters couldn’t be further apart but the pair are an equally enthralling on screen presence, understandably sharing the best actor award at the Venice Film Festival. Phoenix excels as the tightly wound raging bull slipping from sexual deviant and alcoholic to believer and campaigner and back again all the while maintaining an air of a man lost and on the edge but offset by a very real tenderness. His hands-on-small-of-back stance alone somehow portrays his curiousness and childlike mindset. At the other end of the acting scale is the controlled Hoffman, channelling every powerful speaker and business leader possible to deliver us Dodd, a man adept at holding a crowd but alone suffers the nagging doubt and fears of us all. He possesses Dodd completely, every glance, voice change and public address is done with utter conviction and realism while his song and dance number I’ll Go No More A-roving is nothing short of show stopping.

    So the importance and greatness of spectacle of The Master are without question, apparent to all who gaze upon the opening shot and are taken in for the ensuing two hours. It does however leave you with a lost feeling of your own, quite different to that of its protagonist Freddie but a sense that at some point something loses its way, the master less masterful, the yearning without the spiritual element sets in. Hard to pinpoint or criticise specifically, just an acknowledgement that, much like ‘the cause’, The Master cannot alone answer all of our needs at once.

Matthew Walsh

★★★★☆

Rating: 15
Release Date: 16 November 2012 (UK)
Directed By: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix , Amy Adams