This
review contains a kind of plot spoiler
There’s
one way in which The
Master outshines
everything else made by Paul Thomas Anderson. It’s the best-looking
film he’s ever done. The cinematography by Mihai Mălaimare, Jr. is
absolutely amazing, and there’s no doubt it deserves the Oscar.
It’s often difficult to describe great cinematography. We can say
it’s ‘beautiful’, ‘atmospheric’, ‘visually arresting’,
and so on, but it’s probably best just to see for yourself (click here for 56 screenshots).
And
there are some very good scenes in the film. For example, there’s
the first processing session on the boat between Freddie Quell
(Joaquin Phoenix) and ‘the Master’, Lancaster Dodd (Philip
Seymour Hoffman). Some of Dodd’s questions are wonderfully
intrusive and he’s very insistent that his subject not blink as he
answers; it’s intriguing to see if Freddie can do that, as he’s
finally led into admitting he slept with his aunt. Another scene has
a man at a party challenging the logic of Dodd’s beliefs, which
results in a tense confrontation and a memorable concluding insult.
And near the end when Freddie goes back to the house of the girl he
once loved and finds that she’s long since married and moved away,
it was poignant.
I
really didn’t like There
Will Be Blood
(see review) mainly
because I found the two central performances off-putting and that’s
not the case here. Phoenix is particularly affecting in the scene
just mentioned, but he’s excellent throughout the movie. His weird
facial and bodily contortions engage the audience; you can’t help
wondering what’s going on inside him. And Hoffman, and Amy Adams as
the master’s wife, are also very good. (All the other characters in
the movie are pretty minor, including the one played by Laura Dern).
But I have to say that again I’m a bit mystified that a PTA film
has gotten so much praise. In the Sight & Sound year-end poll for
example, it was deemed best film of 2012. As I was watching it and
really enjoying the look
of it, I couldn’t
help also thinking of the many ways the story could have been better.
Here are a few of them:
The
early scenes of the film are set in the Pacific during World War Two
(you get the impression Anderson had been watching Malick’s The
Thin Red Line) and
though they’re nice to look at, we don’t learn much about Quell.
Then he’s back in the US and before long we see him senselessly
attacking one of his photographic subjects in his department-store
job. It might have been better to first delve into his past and learn
why he’s such a conflicted, confused character before we get such
an outburst. It’s mentioned in the film that his father died drunk
and his mother’s in a ‘looney bin’, but just mentioned, nothing
more.
I
also wanted more evidence of why people follow Dodd i.e. scenes of
him saying wise or interesting things that could draw people in, or
making speeches to his followers that were charismatic in some way.
This aspect of The
Master reminded me -
in a bad way - of the role played by Eli (Paul Dano) in There
Will Be Blood. Again
Anderson is giving us a religious leader who doesn’t seem to have
many leadership qualities. There are many, many scenes of
‘processing’ - usually strange ritualistic interviews - that I
found it hard to care about because they seemed unconnected to any
normal human interaction. Once again Anderson seems to be fascinated
by a religious world that does nothing for me, and I suspect for many
other viewers. And it seems strange that he should focus on this. Is
it some form of penance for the outré sexuality of Boogie
Nights?
On
top of that, there are odd things in the film which seem
underdeveloped. At a party, all the women- and only the women - are
suddenly stark naked. Why? I’d be interested to find out what the
director thought about this scene, since he doesn’t let on in the
actual movie. At one point I thought the story was going to develop
into an interesting conflict with the mainstream authorities because
Dodd and Quill get arrested. But that turn of the plot is soon
forgotten. And near the end the film moves to England. Is there
enough justification for this shift? It seemed to me that not much
happened there.
Most
of all, I just felt that the film needed more conflict. Quill falls
under the spell of the master, defends him, beats up people who go
against him, but never fully fits into the ‘family’. And the
master’s wife disapproves of his drinking, his free spirit. That’s
about it. (That’s the plot spoiler: that unfortunately there are no
plot twists to spoil in this movie). Near the end there’s an
interesting conversation between the two men in which Dodd talks of
their ‘future lives’ and is openly hostile to Freddie. But that
tension between them comes too late. Before then they have many
arguments but always in a father-son way, never with any real threat
of a rift. I wish a real rift had
developed between
them earlier in the movie. As the old cliché goes, conflict forces
characters to reveal their true selves, and that’s particularly
needed here because Quell is not good at verbalizing and, despite
Phoenix’ fine performance, we don’t get to know Freddie well
enough.
The
Observer review of The
Master said “once
we've established that Lancaster is a phoney and Freddie a fuck-up,
the film seems not to know where to go next.” I have to say I
agree. Despite that Sight & Sound poll, and far more than with
There Will Be Blood,
there seem to be quite a few critics this time breaking rank and daring
to suggest PTA has gone astray.
I don’t bring this
up because I’m hoping for his ‘comeuppance’ or anything like
that. I do it because he proved early on in his career that he had
huge talent and I want him to rediscover that. In his last three
films he’s forgotten the wonderful in-your-face brio of those
earlier works and has attempted to be more stately and grandiose. To
me he’s ‘matured’ in all the wrong directions. It’s like he
wants to be David Lean now instead of Martin Scorsese, but he’s
copying the David Lean of Ryan’s
Daughter rather than
the David Lean of Lawrence
of Arabia. His films
now are more refined, more respectable, but also more dull.
For
what’s it’s worth, this is how I would rate all of his movies so
far, with 4 stars the maximum and anything less than 3 stars not
really worth watching.
Hard
Eight ***½
Boogie
Nights ****
Magnolia
****
Punch
Drunk Love **½
There
Will Be Blood **
The
Master ***
