"The Master": Lots of Things Are Good, But Not All

After watching Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, I didn’t know what to say. The subject matter was very interesting, analyzing the different personalities involved in a cult of personality. The acting performances by Joaquin Phoenix (playing Freddie Quell) and Phillip Seymour Hoffman (as Lancaster Dodd) will undoubtedly, and deservedly, garner plenty of attention when award season comes. The cinematography is stunning. Strong recurring visuals, such as the churning blue water behind a boat or Freddie lying beside his sand maiden, are sprinkled throughout.

And yet, I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure what the movie is about, and I don’t think I would be able to if I watched it again. While clearly based on/inspired by L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, it’s not a dramatic documentation of the leader or his movement. It reads more as a case study of the types of people in a movement of this nature: the master and the servant. Again, there is an abundance of substance in that approach and Andersen touches on some of it. But we never get a clear idea of where within that relationship he really wants explore. Because of that, the characters cycle through doubt, falling outs, and reconciliation without progressing much further.

Perhaps we are supposed to ponder who or what is “Master.” Is it the charismatic Dodd, is it sex or alcohol, maybe Freddie’s past relationships? Dodd alludes to the idea that no man is completely free of a master near the end of the film, but the issue of control was never presented as a problem for either character in the other 130 minutes of the film. On at least three occasions (that I can recall) Freddie leaves Dodd. Only once do we have any idea why he chooses to do so.

The key could lie in the motif of the sea and sailor. Freddie was in the Navy during WWII, he met Dodd while stowing away on a boat, he took a job sailing to China that kept him away from his sweetheart, he travelled across the Atlantic to Dodd’s new headquarters in England, Dodd sings to Freddie about sailing to China. It must mean something, and with the amount of repetitiveness one would assume that it’s associated with the main point of the film. It very well may, too, if only we knew what the point was.

The relationship between Freddie and Dodd stalls as a result of the lack of direction, and the viewer spends the last part of the movie simply waiting for the end. There is a resolution in theory, but it feels empty because we don't know what exactly it’s supposed to resolve.

The Master provides plenty of thought that will linger beyond the first viewing, but it fails to find a focal point within those thoughts that could have made it the cumulative masterpiece that the individual parts suggest it is.

Final grade: B-. Worth seeing in theaters, especially if you want to be hip about these things come awards season.