The Master (2012) Review

“Free winds and no tyranny for you?”

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

When you feel lost, we have to find ourselves in order to get through life. And if we need help, we might call for The Master.


PLOT


The 2012 film takes place in 1950 and follows WWII Navy veteran Freddie Quell struggle to adjust to post war society. Due to being prone to violent behavior, he gets quickly fired from being a department store photographer when getting into a fight with a customer. When working on a California farm, he flees for accusations of poisoning a colleague with moonshine he made. When stowing away on a yacht, he meets a man named Lancaster Dodd who alongside his wife Peggy runs a philosophical movement, The Cause, meant to spiritually heal people from past trauma. The Dodds convince Freddie to stay when Lancaster loves his moonshine and claims to remember him from a past he remember where. After being part of the wedding of his eldest daughter Elizabeth (Ambyr Childers) marrying Clark Massey (Rami Malek), Freddie participates in an exercise called ‘Processing’ where Lancaster asks him psychological questions. This causes him to remember a girl he left behind named Doris (Madisen Beaty), who he vowed to return to. He continues traveling with the Dodds to the East Coast to spread the Cause. It doesn’t go well when one person accuses their teachings to be a cult. Lancaster berates him and to his dismay, Freddie pursues & assaults him. In order to ease the tension, Peggy makes him and her husband promise to stop boozing. The following morning, Freddie then argues with their eldest son Val (Jesse Plemons) who claims his father is making up the Cause as he goes. As Lancaster gets arrested for practicing medicine without qualification, Freddie attacks officers and is a cell apart from him. Between cells, he starts questioning what he’s been learning and Lancaster’s only rebuttal is that he’s the only one that actually likes him. They both reconcile upon reconcile, but the rest of the Dodds are fearful of Freddie as a whole, worried he’s beyond saving. Lancaster bears his family’s opinion, but still wants to try correcting his behavior despite his struggle to internalize. When going to a book tour in Phoenix, Freddie assaults a publisher criticizing Lancaster’s new book and the patriarch Dodd argues with acolyte Helen Sullivan (Laura Dern) over inconsistencies the new book has from his past ones. Lancaster then takes Mary, Clark & Freddie with him to a salt flat to play to play with a motorcycle and pick a point in the distance to ride towards. Shortly after he demonstrates, Freddie uses it to disappear and return home to Lynn, Massachusetts, hoping to return to Doris as he promised. Sadly, he finds out from her mother that she has moved on, started a family with another man. As time passes since, he gets a call from the Dodds to visit in England where they now reside. With the Cause grown larger, Lancaster shares in a past life they worked in Paris together sending balloons across a Prussian blockade. He then gives Quell an ultimatum to devote himself for life or never come back should he leave and will be enemies in the next life. As the latter ultimately chooses to leave, the former says goodbye through the song, ‘On a Slow Boat to China’. After leaving, he picks up another girl at a bar and repeats the same Processing questions while having sex with her. The film ends with Quell remembering a crude sand sculpture his navy comrades sculpted during the war.


THOUGHTS


Ironically, I did not care much for credits in my youth and I soon came to regret that because the whole point of that is to know who did what and who to thank for doing great at it. I made this mistake with this movie and I instantly regret it because little did I think this was my first Paul Thomas Anderson movie to watch before I came around Punch-Drunk Love. Having said that, this one really surprised me in terms of experimental storytelling. The way it is written and the way it's captured thanks to beautiful cinematography by Mihai Malamaire Jr., you're sunken into an abyss that becomes a tale of self discovery. With every second that passes, Anderson is telling us how important it is break away from the urges that mentally cripple us such as addiction and codependency. This was the first time I would call Joaquin Phoenix the greatest actor of all time because as Freddie, he is a calm before the storm who doesn't really know what he wants until he sees whatever is in front of him. He's so addicted to sex that he'll imagine naked women in front of them when they're fully clothed in reality and he's addicted to alcohol he'll use moonshine to keep people close. He keeps telling himself Doris means everything to him but doesn't get that motivation to move forward nor accept she wasn't worth it had he not been taken a chance on by unorthodox people. Philip Seymour Hoffman & Amy Adams succeed in making Lancaster & Peggy Dodd a dynamic couple in this case because apart from being devoted to the message they spread, their feelings toward Freddie differ. Hoffman makes the ideal cult leader you expect from the former because he's contradictory in between all the charisma he sways towards followers, as his inconsistencies between books implies that could be making it up as he goes. He takes a liking to Quell because he thinks he sees enough of himself to try to control and the latter sticks with him as long as he could because he's moved to have someone be a mentor to him for the first time in his life. Then again, Adams makes Peggy her own force to be reckoned with because while she genuinely believes in what her husband is selling, she has her limits who she's gonna sell it too. She is the first in the family to see right through Quell and predicts they can't save him the way they want to, thus believing cutting ties is the best case scenario. In my opinion, it seems to have worked because despite the heartache he must have felt saying goodbye to those who tried, him passing their teachings to a stranger in the middle of intercourse proves he still wants to be a better person, to be cured from his trauma. It was an unconventional moment for him to do so, yet it proves his true desire. If he keeps it up however he could, then it's likely he could reach said recovery. In short, The Master is one of the multiple great films of 2012 due to its bold spark in saying change can take many shape and form. If you seek the motivation for your own changes to come about, see this now.