film thoughts: ‘the master’

The Master (2012) : written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

a film review by Luis Pascasio

Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” comes off as an exercise in hypnosis. Having the effect of both wonderment and hallucinatory gaze, the film has the visual magnetism of a Salvador Dali painting almost putting the viewer between the cusp of surreality and psychoanalysis. The overall hypnotizing feel of the film is made evident in the manner by which Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Freddie Quell, (Joaquin Phoenix) mesmerized each other to the extent that they become witting passengers into a journey of codependecy and male bonding. Anderson does not give a clear explanation as to why their need for each other is so strong. But such unexplainable phenomenon becomes a potent force that drives you to stick to your guns and sit tight on your seat and wait for things to unravel. The unraveling is fused with almost toxic indoctrination raising the narrative into some kind of philosophical ruminations about life and the meaning behind everything else.

A lost soul meets a learned man. Freddie, in the aftermath of the World War II, drifts into life outside of the Navy exploring jobs he detested as a photographer in a department store and a picker in a cabbage farm. He gets booted out of these jobs as soon as he settles into normalcy and off he goes to another adventure. This time while running away from a group of riotous migrant workers, he hops into a boat anchored on a bay and there he meets Lawrence Dodd, a very philosophical man, a physicist in search of his intellectual space in post-War America. A kind of male bonding is forged as Dodd attempts to help rebuild Freddie’s life through his new found knowledge about man instituted in an organization called “The Cause”.

In one brilliant scene, Freddie, clueless as to becoming a willing guinea pig, submits himself to an exercise called ‘processing’, a kind of looking back at the past in order to find yourself in the present and the future, with Dodd as the voice of the questioning Guru. Anderson executes this scene with such simplicity and intensity, that although the two men hardly knew each other from Adam, the immediacy and necessity of their first encounter is bewitching. A kind of sudden encounter that is foreboding of a strange bonding to come, thanks to the riveting chemistry between Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

So the relationship is forged. Dodd becomes Freddie’s life mentor while Freddie becomes Dodd’s protector or you may say ‘bouncer’ from anyone interfering with Dodd’s new kind of human science. The pompous stance with which Dodd asserts his new discovery about human behavior also comes with charm and humor and sincerity, qualities that further enamours Freddie to this bewildering man. The bonding that occurs between the two traverses a path of submission and rejection, all too often magnified by their difference of intellectual states. Lawrence Dodd takes Freddie as his protege, one that he needs to justify his scientific hypothesis. Freddie becomes the willing subject of Dodd’s experiment but his own weakness overcomes the desire to change, a pathological letdown that forms the crux of Dodd’s obsession, not only of Freddie’s behavior but of Freddie himself.

Freddie is a very sexual being at every chance he gets. Dodd’s sexuality is hidden behind his intellect. Though one might suggest that Dodd has some sexual attraction to Freddie, such attraction is not grounded on carnality. Such attraction is beholden to a human tension that craves for saving a lost body and a decaying soul, and a scientific project that is aimed to disrupt the cultural trauma that post-War America has found itself in. Freddie’s attraction to Dodd is never sexual but one that thrives on knowing that someone took great interest in saving him from himself. And as a gesture of appreciation for the new epiphany, he turns quickly to his brutish instinct by beating up anyone who braves the wrath of speaking against Dodd’s pontifications.

In one last attempt at conformity, Dodd takes Freddie, his daughter and his son-in-law to a wide open field. The goal is to identify a target point in the field as far away as the eyes can see, take the motorcyle and drive to a target spot and return back to the starting point. A kind of test on commitment and loyalty. When Freddie takes his turn, he speeds up with the motorcycle and disappears into the horizon. Freddie’s action maybe telling of his rebellion against the “cause” and Dodd’s resignation in saving Freddie but I assumed too soon.

Years passed. Contact between the two is severed. But Dodd’s ominipotence is never to be undermined. He finds Freddie and eggs him to come to London where Dodd now has a school. Freddie comes in the last hope of finding salvation but even salvation has lost its essence to which Dodd finally succumbs. Did Dodd give up on Freddie? Or did Freddie give up on himself? There is no clarity on these opposing arguments. But then is clarity the purpose of this ending? Or is it even the purpose of Anderson at all. But then at this point in the film, who cares about clarity?

The journey that Freddie and Dodd took in pursuing their goals of clarity brought them into a paradox of human behavior. Such journey allowed them to confront their hidden desires and push the limits of their own mental and emotional excesses, in order to feel pain and suffering as measure of true compassion. In one compelling scene, when the two men find themselves jailed for Dodd’s straw with the law and Freddie’s high-tempered physical attack against the police, the master and his protege lashed out at each other without regard for the harshness of their words. The display of bombast unsettles the power hierarchy established between them. The unleashing of anger and passion is cathartic.

Anderson’s camerawork (Mihai Malaimare Jr), rhythm and prose seem to have all harmonized into one organic whole leaving a kind of impact that puts one in a trance, even after one leaves the theater. Jonny Greenwood’s score is often jolting, one that seems to make a statement in itself as it watches the scenes make their own meanings, a somewhat contrapuntal but not obtrusive style that makes the film a delight to watch. Greenwood makes a good balance of scored and silent moments, a great device that adds another level of clarity between the real and the surreal. The cutting from one scene to another is seamless almost echoing the regular intervals of a swinging pendant in front of someone’s eyes. In addition, the repetitive display of the ocean waves enraptures the audience into both a visual and sound experience as if markers of the passage of time and memory.

The commanding presence of Dodd’s character as portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman is riveting in every scene. Hoffman’s physicality is a plus factor but physicality can only go so far. What makes Hoffman’s performance commanding is the great depth into which his characterization of a self-willed, intellectually-gifted and charmingly buoyant man came to the screen with great conviction and sincerity. His careful rendering of Dodd’s intellectual provocations and scientific knowledge comes not as lectures but as conversations about man and the science that he proposes to better understand and appréciate the complexity of human psyche. It is often tempting for any philosophical discussion in cinema to sound didactic. Any other actor might have sounded preachy even if Anderson’s dialogue seem less lecturish than most.

Joaquin Phoenix is simply brilliant. And his brilliance never overshadows Hoffman’s pristine performance. And it is in this steady orchestration of shared brilliance and pristineness that the film unwavers in delivering the emotional truth of the film. From his body posture to his manner of speaking to the twitching of his eyelids and cheek tissúes, you see Phoenix inhabiting a character and all of its vulnerabilities and deprecating tendencies. The chemistry between Hoffman and Phoenix is solid. The dynamics between the two characters are rich with a concept of truth that only actors of deeper instincts can breathe life to. The complexity of Anderson’s character inventions as shaped by a universe with its own moral dilemmas and philosophical positioning, are made flesh and human with disquieting emotional gravitas by two actors performing at the highest command of their craft. And gladly, Paul Thomas Anderson was there to capture its depth in film. (2/12/2013)