Film Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master

[Gorf King]

I was mesmerised by it, but I'm unsure what to make of it. It felt as if Anderson had decided to deliberately eschew traditional dramatic structure. As others have said, there almost isn't a story - or, at least, there's just a story of the sort that we all have. It doesn't really do the three- or five-act thing. Its characters don't 'develop' at all, they just react to different situations.

I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it is admirable. It's also box office poison: I can't see how a film like this will take any money apart from out of the pockets of a few film buffs or huge admirers of the cast. Speaking of which, Phoenix gives a massive performance in the same general ilk as Day Lewis in Blood. Not that there's any direct correlation between the characters (although there is, arguably, some), but in the mannered, stagey scene-eclipsing displays of frustrated, incoherent emotion, pent-up aggression, and deeply hidden damage. There's a scene near the end between him and Hoffman that's just chokingly great emotionally. But the emotions, and the meaning of what each man is saying and doing, are almost inscrutable. Everything is occluded, hinted at, unexplained. It's ripe for interpretation but it provides no obvious payoffs.

That's what separates this from There Will Be Blood: that stripping out of traditional dramatic and character arcs. Greenwood's score and the cinematography, married together, are a mixture of the elegiac and the unsettling - so that's a bit like Anderson's last film. But here he's decoupled that from narrative considerations to such an extent that not only will this never be a commercial hit, I'm not sure it can do anything much in the awards circuit. Perhaps some will see the lack of obvious dramatic fulfilment as a sign of a troubled production, of a weakness, but I think this is a deliberate move. It's like an experimental film, all about tone, about vignettes skating along the surface of what seems an unremarkable story. It doesn't propel so much as smother; it's strangely static. But if you look below the surface, you find all sorts of weird reflections that trouble you.

Now you know why I - and maybe most people who've seen the film - haven't posted much about it yet. (I was reluctant to post even this, but a bottle of Chablis has liberated me from that particular doubt.) I've thought about the film a lot, but anything I write at this stage will sound pseudish, like the stuff I've just written. I'll continue to think about it at least until I get to see it again, which I'm really keen to do, though this'll probably have to wait for the home release. So while I'm not conflicted about it, I'm definitely uncertain. I think any film whose scenes haunt you as much as some of these do, that make you think over and over about them, is a success of sorts. I just don't know which sort yet, but unlike a few here I'm keen to find out. I can completely understand the comments about admiring the film but not being taken by it or wanting to see it again, but for me this is a mystery, with all the attractions of the mysterious, all wrapped up in gloriously controlled visuals and sounds, and as the days pass I'm increasingly wanting to put some of my ideas about what was going on to the test with another viewing.

I think this film demands an awful lot of work from its audience. In that sense (though in few others) it reminds me a little of Synecdoche. If it turns out as well as that did on repeated viewings, The Master will repay the effort of study.

[linkster]

I'll have what you drank.

[Gorf King]

I'm doing a Smitty here now - adding another post to my own - but bear with me. I just pulled up Rotten Tomatoes, and the selected lines from reviews are telling (I'm not going to dive in and read actual reviews, at least not until I've seen it again). I think, for anyone reading this thread who hasn't seen the film yet, these are a good guide as to whether it'll float your boat.

The splats include Ebert ('"The Master" is fabulously well-acted and crafted, but when I reach for it, my hand closes on air.'), USA Today ('Aiming for epic, it's undeniably thought-provoking, but too ambiguous to fully satisfy'), The Birmingham Mail ('This is ( ... ) for cinephiles. You are expected to love it, but it sometimes left me scratching my head'), and the Birmingham Post (who knew there were so many big film crit outlets in Brum?) ('Like its unspecified inspiration, L Ron Hubbard and Scientology, The Master is all a bit of a mystery as to what's the point').

The still-ripe tomatoes I won't go into, as those negative ones basically sum the film's essence up: there aren't any obvious answers. But (without reading the full reviews) I think those quotes miss the point. There Will Be Blood wasn't 'obvious' either; it, too, was ambiguous. The difference here isn't that the film is extremely subtle (TWBB was) or too much for cinephiles (TWBB arguably was): it's that it doesn't stage an opera like TWBB did. Just look at they key scenes and plot turns of that film. Look at the bowling alley payoff, the inferno at the end. Those scenes have broad appeal, like opera (steady on, I'm serious). They're big theatre. This has the same aesthetic but rejects the narrative structure. It feels confusing as a result, but the confusion isn't as a result of incoherence or bad writing (see Prometheus); it's due to an artistic decision to make the world within which the drama operates appear true. It's like cinema verité but full of stage actors: the scenes are gloriously ripe, but the spine of the film moves too naturally, without obvious hooks, to accommodate them comfortably within a traditional dramatic form. They're like little dramatic poems in a realistic landscape and this makes the experience uncomfortable. Perhaps that's the point.

Meh. I'd love to go into some of the key scenes now and what I think of them - that's the Chablis talking again, though, so I'll bow out. But if you're not put off by the 'negative' quotes above - and especially if they pique your interest - I'd urge you to see this at the flicks if you get the chance, ignoring my own waffle. And then watch it again on home release, which I think is how long it'll take before a piece like this can be fully weighed up.

I'll have what you drank.

Sorry, all gone now.

[linkster]

Definitely people should see it. For a long film I never felt it dragged. I just go back to what I said earlier - Fred is an utter twat, no more consequential to me than someone from EastEnders. You cannot hang a film around someone like that.

[Gorf King]

Some of the best films I've ever seen have been about, or based around, utter twats. There Will Be Blood, for one. Not sure what the issue is there.

[linkster]

In my book DDL was more of a bastard than a twat, if we are getting all intellectual about it

[Gorf King]

I ain't gettin all intellectual about nowt.

Having said that, it was his adopted son who was the bastard (in a basket). In these parts we call these people cunts anyway. Rich folk, that is.

[Professor Puzzles]

I don't know what you're talking about. I'll wait untilt tomorrow when I'm not as drunk.

[Mr Hatfield]

TL;dr

[Rsdio]

I think you're spot on Gorf, I read the RT summaries after I'd seen the film and noticed that the highlighted 'weaknesses' were exactly what I thought the films strengths were.

And you're definitely right about why people seem reticent about it, at least in my case. It's sort of like I went in not knowing anything other than the barest outline and I came out more or less the same, just for different reasons. The film says and suggests an incredible amount, it just does it without an overall 'point'. Even the whole anti-Scientology angle is blurrier than you'd think because there's no real outright condemnation in there, though there is some gentle mocking. It's even possible, within the film's self-contained world, that it might seem more appealing than engaging with the society that sent Freddie off to war and left he and others either dead or fucked up in some way. It's really sensitively handled and it's plain that he sympathises fully with those who seek answers in these organisations (Laura Dern's character is a good example, seeming completely well meaning albeit in a very naive way). It's a very human film from top to bottom (everyone's lost to some extent) and, to me, gives the real Scientologists very little basis to accuse it of being propaganda, which suggests he's pitched it pretty perfectly.

And I don't get how Freddie can be hated at all. I felt sorry for him, envied him in some ways and was endlessly amused by him but I could never hate him. He's too damaged and too much of an innocent, even though his actions sometimes aren't that of one.

[rumblecat]

Everything is occluded, hinted at, unexplained. It's ripe for interpretation but it provides no obvious payoffs.

Yeah, I think this is a very good point... I loved the first hour, felt it maybe outstayed it's welcome and was disappointed by the ending, but a few drinks later and thinking about what I saw-

...the final shot of him lying next to the sand woman in a way shows you that he's skated through this 'religious experience' without it ever changing or affecting him- he's tried his hardest to be part of it, he's bought into it to a psychotic level without ever really understanding it or getting any true benefit, just to be part of something, but at the end he's exactly the same as he was at the start...

There might be a wider point about belief and faith in there, but on the other hand I quite like the idea that there isn't, and that the journey amounted to pretty much that, which is much more real and human.

[Gorf King]

I loved the first hour, felt it maybe outstayed it's welcome and was disappointed by the ending, but a few drinks later and thinking about what I saw-

...the final shot of him lying next to the sand woman in a way shows you that he's skated through this 'religious experience' without it ever changing or affecting him- he's tried his hardest to be part of it, he's bought into it to a psychotic level without ever really understanding it or getting any true benefit, just to be part of something, but at the end he's exactly the same as he was at the start...

There might be a wider point about belief and faith in there, but on the other hand I quite like the idea that there isn't, and that the journey amounted to pretty much that, which is much more real and human.

Yes, the more I've thought about that little sequence of scenes at the end, the more I find it tantalising, like the key that unlocks the whole film one way or another - in very different ways - depending on how you interpret it; and it's certainly wide open to interpretation. Obviously these are spoilers which I'd consider fatal if you haven't yet seen the film:

You could, as you say, see him as essentially unchanged at the end. In a way, he is. However, after still, sadly, only the one viewing, I've had a few different feelings about it, some of them at the same time. We go into the end, more or less, after the final scene of his with Hoffman where the love, power, friendship, belief system of one man is rejected by the other until 'the next life'. That itself is ripe with possible meaning - homoerotic love, platonic love, recognition of oneself in the other, desire to change the other and/or be changed oneself (it's possible that Hoffman by this time is playing something akin to Macbeth, his good/ruthless lady wife the one calling the shots, and in Phoenix he gets some relief from this - one spark of genuine human instinct in his fawning/controlling surroundings, like a noble savage or something. Maybe reminding him a little of what freedom is like).

Then we go to the scenes with the real girl at the end, and the flashback to the girl of sand. These are obviously juxtaposed, but to what end? With the sand girl he seeks something - the most obvious thing is simulated sexual congress - but when in flashback he lies next to her, gazing at her, there's something more there. I think key to this is the non-relationship he had with that lass who started out too young for him. That's haunted him, but when you look at what happens in that relationship, it seems to be almost nothing. Immature, undeveloped, almost like a schoolboy crush. Curiously innocent. But then, he sort of ran away from it anyway, this thing he can't bear to think about. Why? With the girl in the sand, again, is this sand girl her? He seems obsessed by sex, but is that just, again, in a schoolboy way - he often makes advances, but where does that end up? Clearly the guy has a problem with sustaining basic relationships. The question is why, but I won't get into that right now.

So with that real girl at the end. He seems different, more relaxed to me, more at ease with it all this time. One idea is that he's in fact just the same. This is another relationship maybe predicated on sex, hence the flashback to the sand girl by way of comparison. He uses the same lines as Hoffman used on him earlier - not to 'process' her in the exact same 'The Cause' way as he was processed, but in effect it's more or less the same: they're lines used to charm, to intrigue, to draw someone in, to disarm them. But they're just lines he's using; his character and desires and emotions remain the same as ever. So he hasn't really changed; he's just doing the same stuff but he's picked up a few new lines to help him do it. That's a cynical view.

Another thought is that The Cause has genuinely helped him overcome some issues. His dialogue with the other women in his life is far less natural, less flowing, less effective than it is here at the end. Here he seems not just more relaxed, but also there's a way the couple is filmed that suggests something more than another shag is on the cards. Perhaps going a few rounds with scientology The Cause has allowed him to free his mind somehow from what imprisoned his emotions before. The cult has actually worked for him, to the extent that he had the confidence to tell Hoffman, in effect, to piss off. And he didn't lose his rag doing so.

Another take is that he is different - these are not just lines he's spinning - but what he's really learnt is how to manipulate people. He has learned control. He's found a better way to relate to people than being his usual psycho self - he definitely learnt to not lose his rag under pressure thanks to their techniques - we saw that process happen - and here he's adapting that lesson to getting what he wants. (Remember Hoffman losing his rag a couple of times - just exploding into unexpected expletives? I think that's what the two men see in each other, that thing under the surface. Hoffman learned how to stop losing that unctuous cool, and now so has Phoenix, from him.) By manipulating this girl just as effectively as Hoffman manipulates his followers, he's taken those showman tricks and applied them to his own ambitions, again represented by that sand girl.

There are more variations on that same theme, but I'll spare them for now. I don't actually believe any one of them is true in itself, and that's what I like about the scenes at the end, and the film as a whole: I think a mixture of some of those thoughts, and more, apply. To state the obvious, in life things tend not to affect or influence you in one single, simple direction. You absorb influences and ideas without consciously deciding to and their effect on your behaviour is compound and sometimes profound, and in the last scene with Hoffman and the one with the girl at the end I think we see the result of that. Yes, he is kind of doing the same thing he's always done - sought the arms of a female: but here it somehow feels, in the way it's shot, like he's trying to start a relationship rather than just have sex. I think in the past he hasn't been able to relate to people as he's too raw, damaged, almost feral. But it's been like a feral sort of innocence. He's kind of like one of Dostoevsky's holy fools or The Idiot, in a small way. (They're not literally alike, of course, but there's a sort of savant quality to him in his crazy booze-making magic, for instance.)

I think what he's learned from the cult is veneer and, in a way, dishonesty. I mean adult dishonesty, not the childlike denial of truth we've seen him employ; I mean proper, convincing dissembling, and the irony is it makes him a better person in a way. We see him in the flashback with the sand girl, and he seems at peace there, because she's not real. He seemed happy lying next to an idealised woman, a figure, not a real person. He could lie beside that and seem content, but he never did with a real woman, a person with whom he would have to relate. Here though, at the end, he uses those lines of Hoffamn's and he seems like he's suddenly got an act, a charming one, that allows him to take pleasure in simple banter, in wooing, in the human part of an animal relationship. Like we all do, or most of us do naturally. There's a sense of him actually being 'good company' for a woman in that scene for a change. In a sense, he needed to acquire that sort of dishonesty in order to grow up, to be attractive and to take pleasure in small talk and all the rest of it; and he needed to grow up to form a relationship with anyone who wasn't made of sand. So he has changed, but it's barely perceptible on the surface of the lens.

Or maybe not. I dunno, I'm still casting about for it myself, and that's all really clumsily put. So that spoiler's a lot of waffle for little payoff, I'm afraid. One of the only things I really know for sure about the film is that I want to see it all again and I'm pretty sure it'll start falling into place a lot more after the second viewing, while still remaining ambiguous to an extent. I'm also fairly certain that it's going to be a film with legs, that it'll be great for multiple viewings.

[larrydavidsanger]

I was really disappointment by the last hour or so when I watched the film but Gorf's musings have me wanting to go back and see it now, some great ideas there!

[BitterToad]

Yeah I think it's a real grower once you've walked away from it for a bit. I spent a lot of the film thinking about things that weren't even really anything to do with it, I still think it was slightly too long but the central performances are incredible... and the more I think about it the more I sort of loved it in a way.

An interesting film and one that I'm glad exists. For anyone interested the West End Odeon are still showing 70mm screenings as well, which looked a bit bloody beautiful

[barkbat]

This has everything you'd want in a film, except a story. Every piece of the whole was accomplished, but joined together with nothing more dramatic than "and then". It seem an odd ommision, almost comic. Other than a vague attempt at 'being like in real life', I have no idea why you would assemble such an amazing cast, crew, setting and characters, and then neglect to offer them a story. There was certainly nothing about the film that screamed 'a story here would be overtly artifical and a pandering to the popcorn chuffing bourgeois'. To those saying a repeat viewing is necessary I say bollocks. This film is a wasted oppertunity, a muscular adonis stripped of a skeleton and flopping about quite randomly. Do something else with those hours.

[Mr Cochese]

That means you're the popcorn chuffing bourgeoisie.

[barkbat]

And proud.

[Liamness]

It's a film that doesn't really grip you, it's like I was sitting there and occasionally was like 'hmm, that's interesting', but it mostly just drifted over me. I'm hard pressed to form an opinion about it, really. I mean the performances were uniformly excellent, it was wonderfully shot, but I don't really know what it adds up to. I have no idea why PTA made this film, or what he hoped the audiences would get out of it.

[Mr Cochese]

I got a lot out of it.

[sinky72]

Guardian's Number 1 film of 2012

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2012/dec/13/best-films-the-master-paul-thomas-anderson

[linkster]

Guardian's Number 1 film of 2012

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2012/dec/13/best-films-the-master-paul-thomas-anderson

Says it all, really.

[Gorf King]

Says it all, really.

Not quite, but I think he's got the gist of it.

It is a difficult, challenging and, at times, opaque movie, which does not have the story arc of a conventional Hollywood biopic. Unconvinced audiences have praised the performances but complained about the lack of "story". It's an understandable reservation, but I think Anderson is offering something closer to a colossally ambitious portrait, or dual portrait, perhaps comparable to Don DeLillo's depiction of Lee Harvey Oswald in his novel Libra, or the woman with polio lying in the tawny grass in Andrew Wyeth's painting Christina's World. And Phoenix's agonisingly intense and blazingly committed performance makes this our film of the year.

[Liamness]

I got a lot out of it.

As did I, but I have no idea if what I got out of it was what the director intended. It's an odd feeling to have coming out of a film, usually it is so obvious what the creators were trying to do! I suppose what I wanted was something at the end to tell me what it all meant, and it's surprising that the film works as well as it does without that. Without anything to tie it all together, you're have to contextualise the events of the film on your own, and I guess I wasn't really up to that.

[Treble]

Ted? At 2? Wow. Doesn't even hit my top twenty for the year.

[Uncle Mike]

I really wanted to like it, and obviously everyone's ACTING all over the place. But sadly, I can't past the aimless meandering structure and lack of anything approaching plot or development or whatever. One for the more film-buffy, perhaps, but emperor's new clothes to me.

I really appreciated reading the long posts to the contrary, though. Thanks guys.

[Beitel]

After seeing the film I now understand all the posts here, they're a good reflection of my own thoughts about it. I'm pretty in the middle though: I don't think it's a film that asks the effort of a Synecdoche, but it's also far from empty.

The scenes in England really change the film: at first it could lead to a big confrontation of sorts, or a culmination of Freddie's involvement with The Cause. But it just stops there, it was a short and superficial involvement. From one moment it turns from an epic to "Freddie's short adventure". It is a bit disappointing, it doesn't really reward the audience's effort. But it does show that the belief in a system like The Cause is more important than the system itself. The processing doesn't change Freddie at all, it's nothing more than an interesting experience. It's far more the need to believe in it that drives Freddie's actions in the film, like the overly aggressive defending against criticism. But the defects are just too obvious (and the character of Freddie too restless) to let it lead to a big crisis.

For me such a natural and inconsequential ending is preferable to There Will Be Blood's symbolism, which I always found forced. I'm certainly going to rewatch it: not for 'the Big Picture' but to experience the moment-to-moment pleasures again. Both Freddie Quell and Lancaster Dodd are intriguing character (the acting by Phoenix and Hoffman is really phenomenal) and there are some wonderful shots. It doesn't stir overwhelming emotions but it's not bad, not bad at all.

[Professor Puzzles]

This would make a great triple bill with Pinnochio and The Jerk.