Just Kidding!
Review by Ken Burke
This
may be too enigmatic for some, but even if the story seems to lack a specific
purpose (as if it has to have one) the acting is too superb to miss; it’s a Masterpiece.
Thomas Paul Anderson is a
writer/director who doesn’t fool around with easy topics such as you might find
in Robert Lorenz‘s baseball/family/romance tale Trouble with the Curve (more on that later). Instead, Anderson starts out seriously, then
goes more deeply from there with such past work as There Will Be Blood (2007), Punch-Drunk
Love (2002), and Magnolia
(1999). In fact, the clashing dynamic in
The Master between self-proclaimed-human-betterment- guru Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and born-to-lose-but-further-damaged-by-WW
II-embodied-psychological-torment Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is
reminiscent of Anderson’s previous triumph focused on the clash between
“milkshake-drinking”-oil-tycoon Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) and a young
preacher, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), who challenges Plainview’s determined
charismatic command of all that he surveys.
This is not to say that Anderson is simply repeating himself—except in
producing an extremely powerful, probing film driven by Oscar-worthy acting
(Lewis did win for Best Actor in … Blood
and I think you can expect Phoenix to be a strong contender to do the same this
year)—but rather to acknowledge that trauma bedevils all of us in some manner,
driving some to take command of their compulsions and impose their will on
anyone who stands in their way, as with Dodd and Plainview, while others are
ruled by their passions, often finding themselves incapable of conquering their
own demons or those that impose themselves on the more troubled in our midst,
as with destiny-denied Freddie—who at least finally breaks away from his obsession
with being part of Dodd’s movement but to what level of stability we’ll never
know—and Eli, who should have disengaged himself sooner from Plainview but
instead falls victim to the sheer force of the vicious oil baron, who’s
“finished” only after he’s finished off everyone he can possibly conquer. Dobbs seeks a more peaceful empire—or
congregation, as he’d likely fancy himself more in savior terms, bringing about
physical healing and world peace—but one that he controls just as fully, either
because he sees himself as a prophet of unknown truths that will lead to human
liberation or because, like his son Val (Jesse Plemons) says, he’s “making it
all up as he goes along” and needs to maintain the illusion of “master”-ful
insight so that his disciples don’t revolt.
Actually, these two films of Anderson’s would make a remarkable
double-feature for those who could endure watching such titanic personalities
for that many hours, but it’s never clear to us whether Freddie and Dodd can
endure each other, even though there’s a strong battle of attraction and
rejection constantly at work in their complex relationship.
Truly, despite the film’s title
referring to Dodd and the hold he has over his increasingly-growing
psychobabble movement, more of what we see here concerns Freddie from first to
last scene, with his disturbing lack of development over the 137 min. running
time, which never seemed too long for me (and based on the official website as
noted below there are some further provocative scenes that sadly were cut)
because Freddie establishes himself as fully worth whatever time it takes for
us to explore him, just as he takes an enormous amount of time going through
the repetitious ritual of Dodd’s “Processing” in order to find the supposed
hidden perfect spirit that his mentor (if not fully his master) claims exists
in every one of us as we’ve lived through countless lives over trillions (not
merely billions, as “mistaken” scientists claim) of years, carrying the wounds
of mistakes or traumas from eons ago that continue to compromise our present
and hold us back from returning to that ideal state of creation. Some will see Hindu/Buddhist influences here
with allusions to the struggle with karma and the quest for Nirvana aided by
the inspiration from a spiritual leader; others will see similarities to L. Ron
Hubbard’s Scientology, with its “revelations” that we are all limited versions
of our true extraterrestrial selves, needing guidance through the methods of
those (who have somehow become) already liberated to regain our original
destinies. Anderson admits that The Master takes its initial cues from
Hubbard and his “religion” (pardon my sarcasm, but after spending a lifetime
unwinding from the metaphysics of Catholicism that ruled my childhood
consciousness it’s going to take more than past-life regression therapy to
convince me of the worthiness of this “suddenly-discovered insight” by just one
singular soul, whether presented more biographically about Hubbard or
fictionally as Dodd, intent on helping the rest of us unfulfilled mortals
become “de-hypnotized” from our ancient delusions), but he says he never
intended it as historical to the situation of Scientology, just as Orson Welles
claimed that Citizen Kane (1941; still the
ultimate five-star film for me, despite the recent Sight and Sound international poll that finally pushed Kane to #2 behind Hitchcock's Vertigo [1958]) was inspired by the life of William Randolph Hearst
but informed by other early 20th century power-brokers as well, even
including a statement to that effect in the early newsreel-screening-room scene
(although such denials from Anderson haven’t fully dissuaded angry
Scientologists—thank Allah that he didn’t take his inspiration from the life of
Muhammad—and it’s clear that a lot of details in Kane are very precise to Hearst, including the true meaning of
“Rosebud,” neither a sled in the film nor a screenwriter’s childhood bicycle, but let’s not probe into such delicate matters in a pubic forum).
Once again,
though, I’m meandering towards Dodd, following the lead of the film’s title,
when the character we spend much more time in trying to know is forlorn
Freddie. Certainly Freddie is harder to
relate to than his more outgoing companion, with his constant drunkenness a
distancing factor in that it enhances his tendencies to take violent verbal or
physical action against anyone who offends him plus it shows his utter
disregard for his health as he’s eager to drink almost anything that gives him
a charge, whether it’s fuel from a torpedo, a concoction of photo processing
chemicals, some lethal mixture made while working in the cabbage fields that
poisons a co-worker, Lysol straight from a medicine cabinet, or one of his
homemade hooch combinations cut with paint thinner. Even Dodd’s wife, Peggy (Amy Adams, in a
fiercely protective mode of her husband’s work and legacy), insists that
Freddie get sober if he wants to stay with Dodd’s “Cause” troupe, but right
after he promises that he’ll clean up he’s out on the front porch emptying his
flask into his belly rather than into the bushes so he’s clearly too hooked to
dry out. He’s a frightful mess of a
human being, but watching his defiant determination to be what he is no matter
what the consequences is the main attraction of this very un-commercial probe
into the non-Darwinian underbelly of the human condition. Freddie could never survive as one of “the
fittest,” but knowing that so few of us can is what makes him so fascinating as
both an anti-role model and a warning as to what sad fate may await any of us
when life becomes too overwhelming.
Freddie’s
also too horny to hold back his sexual desires (so that in one afternoon party
scene in the Philadelphia home of well-healed Dodd devotee Helen Sullivan
[Laura Dern] suddenly all the women are naked, seemingly as a manifestation of
Freddie’s fantasies—although I’d argue this could easily be a visualization of
Dodd’s fantasies, especially given the following scene of Peggy laying down the
limits of her husband’s extracurricular activities even while she masturbates
him into a sink in a marvelous demonstration of her ultimate “power behind the
throne”), except he never seems to connect with a woman until the very end of
the film when he’s gone to England to meet up with Dodd again after breaking
away from his influence. But, after
being rejected by the angry Peggy yet again for his uncontrolled weaknesses and
warned by Dodd that if he doesn’t acquiesce now he’ll be Dodd’s enemy even into
their next lives, Freddie wanders off again and finally links up with a local
lady in a pub. His attempt to give her a
weak version of the “Processing” while they’re still physically entangled is
sad enough, but then the film ends with a repeat of what we saw back at the
beginning in the last days of WW II in the South Pacific as he dry humps a sand
sculpture of a woman on an island beach then jerks off into the ocean as we see
only his backside finishing off his needs, with the film’s final shot returning
to him lying contented with his “sand girl.”
At least in these two instances Freddie finishes what he desires unlike
in the rest of the film where he has a clumsy encounter with a co-worker during
her break at a San Francisco Capwells’ department store (he even takes her on a
date later and falls asleep in a restaurant) or is variously seducing or being
seduced by Dodd’s daughter Elizabeth (Ambyr Childers) even though her father
invited Freddie to her wedding right after they all first met (or is this just
a manifestation of Freddie’s desires shown on screen as if actual; that’s the
constant quandary with cinema, that because it’s all photographic the
implication is actuality even when an interpretation could be that what we see
is merely a subjective projection from a character’s mind, as is likely with
the naked women at the afternoon gathering—this cinematic conceptual conundrum
has vexed film theorists from the very beginning of the medium). Freddie’s romantic problems are traced back
to his unrequited love for Doris Solstad (Madisen Beaty), who’s only 16 but
friendly with Freddie before he goes off to war, is kind enough to write to him
while he’s in combat, welcomes him home in peacetime when she’s now just old
enough to be reasonable for him, but then he, for some reason apparently unknown
to him as well as to us, ships out again on a freighter to China thereby losing
his connection to Doris forever (although he tries to rekindle it after his
travels with Dodd but finds that he’s too late as she’s now married and long
gone from their original Massachusetts home).
Freddie
needs love at a level that aches for connection and consummation; however, he
never seems to find it except in his better moments with Dodd, whether they are
bonding over the “master’s” yearning for Freddie’s toxic homebrew or turning an
embrace over Freddie’s release from jail (after defending Dodd during his
arrest by attacking the cops, followed by a profane dispute from adjoining
cells—Freddie’s explosive temper is a constant in this story, evoking allusions
to a tabloid spread of Sean Penn breaking up with Madonna) into a wrestling
roll on the lawn at Helen’s home/retreat for Dodd’s cult followers. Dodd even sends Freddie off for good with a
sadly sung version of “I’d like to get you on a slow boat to China, all to
myself alone,” implying not so much a homoerotic union but a sort of soulmate
connection that Dodd has yet to find even in his most devoted followers (he
explodes at worshipful Helen when she questions his change of “Processing” procedure in
his follow-up book to his original “scripture,” The Cause, even after telling her and the rest of his congregation
that “The source of all is you” and
“Laughter is the secret” to unlocking our limitations). The initial “Processing” encounter between
the two men is marvelously shot as mostly a ¾ closeup on Freddie as Dodd
interrogates him with provocative questions, producing a sense of such intimacy
as to push the limits of Platonic vs. physical engagement (although one could
argue that the whole concept of Platonic love actively incorporates the
physical along with the respectful emotional if one looks at the male
activities of Classic Greek society as well as its philosophical idealism—not
that there’s anything wrong with that).
Nothing beyond the level of admirational attraction between the two male
principals of The Master is ever
implied, but they have a struggle toward connective closure that clearly
disturbs Dodd’s wife.
As the film makes abundantly clear, Peggy
is Dodd’s most devoted follower as she’s the one who protects her husband’s legacy
from seeming distractions like Freddie (Or maybe he’s a spy—but spying for what
purpose? On this matter she just slips
into paranoia.), even as she seems to psychically will Freddie to do her dirty
work of physically assaulting anyone who speaks the blasphemy of disagreeing
with her husband’s “enlightened” proclamations.
Amy Adams commands this role in a most effective manner, presenting a
steely resolve that sets up a sense of an enclosed vortex around her husband
which allows him to alternate between being the robust life of the party and
the spiritual leader who has assumed a fatherly persona over his flock as they
seek to follow his process of analytical past-life regression that will
seemingly purge them of the weakness that they acquired in one or more of their
previous incarnations. When I see
Peggy’s fierce power in this film I can’t help but be reminded of another stern
redheaded wife (although older), Ruth Fowler (Sissy Spacek), in Todd Field’s
2001 In the Bedroom where a couple’s
son is killed by the jealous ex-husband of the son’s older lover; in this
gripping presentation of how the parents’ grief is transformed into homicidal
revenge as the father (played by Tom Wilkinson) is steered by his quiet but
vengeful spouse, I can’t help but think of the connections to Peggy Dodd, a
woman who constructs a wall of unbreachable sanctuary around her controversial
husband when he’s attacked by outside critics but clearly understands his
unholy passions and shortcomings as well (including his determination to keep
Freddie within the fold and bring him into the state of “bliss” that Dodd and
his family apparently enjoy). There are
clear implications here that Peggy may be the true “Master” in this operation,
especially toward the end when Dodd takes Freddie to the desert outside of
Phoenix, Arizona (after Dodd’s first national conference in that city to
promote his visions) and has no control over his protégé simply riding off on
Dodd’s motorcycle beyond the grip of the “prophet” as Freddie then unsuccessfully
tries to rebuild his life with the now-unavailable Doris, who's not back in New England as he wrongfully assumes.
When all of
the plot elements have been laid to rest, nothing has been resolved in that
Dodd is still expanding his dubious operation into another country where
children will be indoctrinated into his worldview (even son Val seems on board with
the operation by this point), Doris is completely gone as a possible salvation
for Freddie’s neurosis (despite his finally being accepted by Dodd as cleansed
after innumerable trips between a window and a wood-paneled wall in Helen’s
home, but that doesn’t lead to the psychic liberation that Freddie had been
seeking), and Peggy is more in control of the furthering of The Cause than even
her husband (and I may be in a distinct minority in responding to Helen’s
praise of the propriety of Dodd's methodology as the successful “Cause way”—superior
to other forms of knowing ourselves through our past lives—as a pun, because it
reminded me of my childhood home in Galveston, TX where the only bridge off
that island was called The Causeway, a necessary path to salvation when
hurricanes threatened the stability of our homes, just as the hurricanes of
past experiences threaten the stability of Dodd’s followers unless they travel
his “Cause way” to past-life understanding/liberation and re-achieve their
original state of perfection [getting us to another religious allusion here,
the primevally-perfect state of Adam and Eve in Judeo-Christian theology’s
Garden of Eden prior to their “original sin” against the dictates of their
Creator and their ensuing expulsion from the Garden]). However, you don’t have to share any of the
spiritual-tradition implications of past-life purging or regained perfection in the human sphere to appreciate what Anderson has done in The Master with his juxtaposition of the
ego-stroked needs of Dodd to build an embraced recognition for his vision/
concoction (be that as it may) to the crushed humanity of Freddie with his
desperate attempts to find something beyond his unfulfilled desires for a mate
and his need to quench his stability search with something beyond
rotgut booze. The Master is certainly not an easy film to watch if you want a clear narrative conflict-resolution result such as you’d find in Trouble with the Curve (comments soon, I promise), but as exposure of what we flawed humans
(whether we originate in another galaxy or have lost our awareness of our own
links to the great Oversoul or just have no clue as to how to tame the
compulsions that lead us back to our animalistic origins) must wrestle with on
a regular basis this is a work of great explorational poetry, one of the rare,
challenging journeys into the soul of humankind to grace the public screen and
one that deserves to be seen in a communal setting and discussed at length
afterward.
But, as
much as I try to promise myself that I’ll balance my work commitments and sleep
needs (not to mention spending priceless time with Nina Kindblad, the world’s most wonderful
wife; Happy Birthday on Oct. 3!) by not writing too much in these weekly reviews, the Universe (however
old it may be, Dr. Dodd) keeps alerting my consciousness to resonances in other
media encounters that just need to be mentioned in context of my formal review
of the week. This time the connection
comes with the chance rental of a DVD of German New Wave auteur Wim Wenders'
marvelous 1984 Paris, Texas in which
Harry Dean Stanton as a personal and social trainwreck, Travis Henderson, and
Nastassja Kinski as his estranged wife, Jane, gave passionate performances
against the backdrop of the wide world of Texas
from the desert emptiness near Terlingua to the urban anonymity of Houston
(more on this at http://www.wimwenders.com/movies/movies_spec/paristexas/paris_texas.htm if you like). Similar to Freddie in The Master, Travis just doesn’t fit in society nor can he find a
successful connection to a kindred soul, although he does finally forge a link
with his initially-reluctant son, Hunter (Hunter Carson), only to sacrifice
that bond by leaving him with his newly-found mother after four years of
separation when Travis once again disappears from their lives, but truly for
their benefit this time. I realize that
Wenders had tremendous help in bringing to life this aching story of a troubled
man just not destined to ever cleanse himself of his demons (again, like
Freddie, who will never be whole no matter how much he tries to patch up his
cracks with suicidal booze) by working from a superlative Sam Shepard story,
but the German director (as well as his cast) deserves full 5-star praise here
(literally; I’m being extremely generous this week) for capturing the sense of
an American cultural and spiritual wilderness, transforming the opening empty
landscape along with Travis’ maddeningly silent presence into a slowly-unfolding
exploration of a pair of devastated psyches that concludes with a dual soliloquy
that rivals the best in Hamlet (and
speaking of plays and Shepard, if you ever get a chance to see a production of
his Buried Child—as I once did on
Broadway—rev up all the gumption you’ve got and force yourself to watch a
family deteriorate into the worst of Tennessee Williams territory with a
conclusion not easily forgotten).
And not to
trivialize anything noted so far but I guess I should admit one other recent
connection to The Master as well,
that of Amy Adams in Trouble with the
Curve, co-starring Justin Timberlake and Clint Eastwood, produced under
Eastwood’s Malpaso auspices but directed by Robert Lorenz . Adams constantly proves her screen charisma
and versatility, here starting as a young lawyer hardened by the sexism in her
old-white-guy (I speak from long experience)-dominated firm and the early
abandonment by her widower father, but she finally warms up to Dad’s need for
her in what’s essentially a seeing-eye-dog role to save his last career years
as a baseball scout with fading vision as well as to younger scout Timberlake’s need
for a companion he respects and is strongly attracted to. The end result praises the downtrodden and gives
comeuppance to the bullies but in a melodramatic manner more akin to Eastwood’s
infamous recent “dialogue” with the “Obama” chair than to what we’ve grown to
respect him for as a director, so unless you just can’t get enough baseball as
we inch toward the playoffs or just need a reassuring tale rather than one that
offers emotional confrontation at the deepest human level I’d recommend
challenging yourself with anything noted above, leaving Trouble with the Curve to its own troubles trying to find a result
worthy of its possibilities (but if you insist then you can easily learn more
about it, starting with http://troublewiththecurve.warnerbros.com/). You’ll certainly find Adams to be ultimately
a more commanding presence in The Master,
but she does get the last word in Trouble
with the Curve, topping her father with an “I’ll think about it!” retort of
her own, echoing his feisty independence.
You think about it as well and choose what works best for you, even if
you need a little “Processing” to help clear your mind.
If you’d
like to explore more about The Master
here are some suggested links:
http://www.themasterfilm.com/
(supposedly the official site but all I find there are 5 film clips which,
interestingly, have short scenes and shots not to be found in the final cut of
the film and notices of screenings in different cities that are long past; you
can also go to http://weinsteinco.com/
but you won’t find much there either, just a standard trailer such as the first
one below—although you’re given opportunities to Like the Weinstein Company on
Facebook so maybe we’re just not supposed to get inside this film too far through these sources)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dWdkUIZ59E
(interview with director/writer Thomas Paul Anderson)
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