The Master review

The Master (2012)

Cast:  Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams

Director/Writer : Paul Thomas Anderson

Freddie Quell  (Joaquin Phoenix) is a sex obsessed alcoholic World War II veteran suffering from post traumatic stress disorder , struggling to fit into the post war society.He becomes a drifter, the only certain talent he has is of brewing liquor with anything that comes handy.

One night in 1950, he stumbles drunk on a private yacht hosting a party. It belongs to Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) a self styled “Master” of a cult called “The Cause”. Dodd takes a liking to Freddie’s liquor and allows him to stay if he keeps making more. He subjects Freddie to a psychological exercise about his past (His  father died of alcoholism, his mother is institutionalized and  he has abandoned the love of his life, Doris, who he hasn’t seen in seven years) Freddie is enthralled by Dodd, who is very firm on his abject beliefs and revelations regarding reincarnation and the subconscious. Dodd too takes a liking to Freddie, calling him his protégé and his guinea pig. Freddie travels along the east coast  with Dodd and his family ,which also includes Dodd’s new pregnant wife Peggy (Amy Adams) , daughter Elizabeth and  son Val as well as his son in law. Dodd is invited to the houses of many affluent women who have been attracted to the Cause, where he gives talks aiming to win more followers. Freddie’s alcoholism and unpredictable behavior have not subsided( going as far as beating up people questioning  the Cause’s methods and authenticity)making other members of the Cause feel that he does not belong there. Freddie’s drinking continues inspite of him promising  that he will quit.

 Val confides to Freddie that he thinks that his father is a fraud who just makes things as he goes along, causing Freddie to berate him. Dodd is arrested for practicing medicine without license. Freddie attacks the policemen who have come to arrest Dodd and gets jailed as well. In jail, Freddie goes beserk calling Dodd a fraud and questioning everything he has stood for. Both men trade insults and stop only when Dodd reminds that he is the only one who cares about him.

After their release, Peggy and the rest of the followers become more vocal for expelling Freddie, branding him as a threat and a spy but Dodd declines stating that the purpose of the movement will be defeated if they expel him. It become subtly clear that Dodd  is merely using Freddie as a test subject , to prove that if his methods can cure a hopeless case like him, they can cure any one. He aims to break Freddie’s disturbed self down and rebuild him in the Cause’s image.

Freddie is subjected to repetitive and grueling tests for long periods which make him agitated due to their lack of results but Dodd declares him successful. Freddie has started becoming disillusioned of the Cause. Dodd’s fraud is revealed to the viewer as he loses his temper with a follower (Laura Dern)  when she states as per his latest book, he is actually causing his test subjects to “imagine” their past lives instead of “experiencing” them.

During one of the exercises of the Cause in a desert, Freddie abandons them , deciding to leave the Cause forever. He visits Doris’s house , hoping to get things going again but is told that she is married and  has a family of her own. Freddie is disappointed but happy for Doris.

One night , Freddie has a vision of Dodd calling him. Taking this dream literally, he travels to meet Dodd, where he discovers  Val, inspite of his disbelief in his father’s philosophy, is still with him but Elizabeth has been expelled. Peggy tells Freddie that he either has to improve or leave, as he might become the undoing of the Cause itself. Dodd sadly realizes that his wife is right and tells Freddie that he has to find his own path in the world. He gives Freddie an ultimatum that he can either stay and devote his life to the Cause or leave never to return. Freddie chooses to leave, once and for all. The closing scenes of the film show him with a woman he met in a pub, remembering his happy days in the Navy. His fate is left ambiguous.

Rootless , directionless, futureless are small words to describe the Freddie Quell , played beautifully by Joaquin Phoenix . This is a person beyond redemption, a sad shadow of his former self , or whom both his clothes and the skin that he lives in are ill fitting, whose speech is half incoherent and half irrelevant. This is a physically demanding role for which he had to lose weight considerably , to show an emaciated  person  blowing in the wind, whom alcohol is drinking up, rather than the other way round, who reluctantly accepts in the end that his savior is anything but his saviour. He is a sad character and remains so, albeit wiser in the end.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is that kind of actor who even in a cameo appearance can steal the show from the film’s lead characters. Here, he is no different , playing the titular role of the film and its He brilliantly portrays Lancaster Dodd who is a charmer and at the same time, a charlatan, who even when proven wrong, staunchly promotes the snake oil he sells as an elixir. This is certainly his most memorable role since Capote (2005) and Before the Devil knows you are dead(2007), and he leaves no stone unturned to show a cold and a cunning person who while appearing to be magnanimous to Freddie, is merely using him as a lab animal for his experiments.

Amy Adams is very effective as Peggy, Dodd’s dedicated wife and an equally driven follower of the Cause who goads her husband to keep answering bricks thrown at him with stones and who at times is coldly manipulative. Inspite of hardly getting a chance to shine equally with these two stalwarts, she is never pushed to the background.

Paul Thomas Anderson returns after nearly five years after his masterpiece There Will be Blood (2007) and this wait has been more than worth it. He is one of those directors who never makes films for entertainment but for cinematic experience, thus making him both the critics dream and a nightmare. The two characters Lancaster Dodd and Freddie  Quell appear as different as chalk and cheese, but deep down, both are in their own worlds, obsessed by their own products- Freddie by his liquor and Dodd by his abject and vague philosophy. In the end its Freddie who is proven wiser and braver than Dodd, because he chooses to leave something which has just made him a toy in someone else’s hands He abandons a comfortable existence for a person like him for a scary and uncertain future, ending up right where he was at the start of the story. Dodd remains a toy in the hands of his own convictions.

Most importantly the film asks the viewer- Who is the Master that you serve? Your Lord? Your convictions? Your conscience? And can you identify the right master to serve?

The film became controversial due to the Cause being very similar to Scientology, with the character Dodd resembling the appearance of its founder L .Ron Hubbard (He founded scientology in the year, you guessed it, 1950). Many scientologists objected this film, the most famous among them ,Tom Cruise. But Anderson released the film without a single cut. Just compare that with the pig circus which went with Vishwaroopam’s release and we understand that we have a long way to go before becoming a free society.

If you like good cinema and not just feel good cinema, you cannot give this a miss. Feel good cinema doesn’t stay with you. Films like these never leave you.