Freddie Quell (an amazing Joaquin Phoenix) gets out of the navy after WWII and he’s all twisted. We meet him humping a doll made out of sand on the beach at Iwa Jima, looking like he’s ready to snap. Discharged, he answers a shrink’s Rorschach blot questions with a string of all-genitalia answers, and makes moonshine-like punches out of liquor plus fun things like dark room chemicals and paint thinner. He not only acts demented but he looks it: stooped over, squinted eyes, a demeanor lifeless and agitated at the same time.
After a job as a department store photographer ends when Freddie attacks a customer (in a scene that captures the moment as only director Paul Thomas Anderson can), he almost kills a co-worker at a farm job with one of his liquid punches and seems doomed. He sneaks onto a docked ship that looks interesting since well-off people are visibly partying. Instead of getting thrown out, he gets introduced to the ship’s “Commander,” one Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman, never better). If the adage that opposites attract were true, you’d look no further than these two guys. Dodd, a Scientology-like cult leader, is just as much a slick salesman as an insightful theoretician. What does he see in Freddie–a tough as nails target for his “processing,” a technique replete with confrontational, face-to-face grilling meant to cleanse the subject of harmful past memories? Or is there a man-to-man bond illuminated by the catalyst of Freddie’s potion, which Dodd devours as enthusiastically as he does devotees of his “The Cause.” One of his enthusiastic followers, played by Laura Dern, gets quickly disenchanted when Dodd changes the target of his therapeutic purging from “memories” to “dreams” (so much for reality-based). He briefly loses his temper with her but nowhere near as seriously as Freddie repeatedly loses his in attempting to “Quell” any naysayers with hotheaded fisticuffs. Sceptics abound since The Cause entails past life regression, grueling techniques that mine psychotherapy and improvisational theater, and little scientific reason.
Hoffman, confident and omniscient in his processing exercises, pulls a fast one now and then as he belts out corny songs in the middle of scenes when you least expect it. It’s like Bjork in Dancer In The Dark, but unlike that film, this one makes perfect sense. In fact, the first half of The Master is as good as any film you will see this year. What we have in the second half is part increasingly subtle dual character study, and part a slowed down, not fully realized hollowness that doesn’t always seem to take hold. Suffice it to say The Master finally provokes a response to take a closer look beneath its surface, to check again, hone out a new angle that might have been missed. The film comes to end in a proverbial whimper after having banged us out of our senses for a stretch. No complaints here. Anderson does Atmosphere like he invented it. Long after the ironic period songs of Jo Stafford, Helen Forrest and Ella Fitzgerald subside, his Freddie and Lancaster are two characters who will long stay etched in the memory– two powder kegs refusing to defuse, ultimately impervious to change.
4 Delusions of Grandeur and Debauchery (out of 5)
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