For my second Criterion Channel watch through on the last day of August, I went with another period drama set just after the second World War with Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master. I think I have become a bit more of a fan of Anderson’s work in the past couple years after largely avoiding his stuff for many years. I have no explanation for it, but this one has Joaquin Phoenix, a generally reliable performer; Amy Adams, my favorite working actress; and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, always a delight. Yeah, this one was allegedly the “Scientology movie,” but it turns out Anderson only used some things from there as he was telling an original story about loss and the need to belong.
Oh, and as I was watching it, I was pleased to also see Laura Dern, Jesse Plemmons and Rami Malek were also in it. Why had I missed out on this on for this long?
World War II vet Freddie Quell (Phoenix) is adrift and lost. Returning from the war, he didn’t go home to the girl he was pining for before he left, instead taking jobs as he could as a photographer and farm worker. He loves women and booze, and that just seems to be getting him into more trouble. After stowing away on a yacht, Freddie wakes up to learn that the boat is currently in the possession of a group calling themselves the Cause, led by the Master, AKA Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman). In fact, Freddie is just in time to witness a wedding, officiated by Dodd, between his daughter Elizabeth (Ambyr Childers) and true believer Clark (Malek). As it stands, everyone in the Cause seems inclined to make Freddie feel welcome, even as the Master seems to take a shine and bring Freddie under his wing, offering him a “processing” to help Freddie get over his problems if he’d just commit to the Cause.
As it is, Freddie’s efforts to join in are hampered a bit by a number of factors, not the least of which are Freddie’s own mental and emotional issues. But then there’s the other big question that the movie never quite answers: is Dodd on the level? His wife Peggy (Adams), as well as Elizabeth and Clark both seem to think so. Others, not so much, including Dodd’s son Val (Plemmons), a young man happy to get everything the family has but also convinced his father is making things up as he goes along. Can Freddie commit to the Cause and get something out of it, and is there even something there worth getting?
So, as I said, the movie never quite says how much Dodd believes his own lines or if his techniques really work, but the way the movie sets things up, the bigger idea is to show how someone like Dodd can get Freddie some legitimate help. It helps that Hoffman does have the sort of charm that makes it easy to imagine people might believe whatever it is he’s saying. Yes, the movie strongly implies that he’s a fraud, and some of his techniques are outright ridiculous at first glance, suggesting that no matter what, Freddie may just be conditioning himself to accept whatever is going on. And it’s not hard to see that some of what Dodd has to say isn’t terrible advice: he doesn’t like it that Freddie continues to drink or uses violence to defend Dodd from critics. It creates an atmosphere where it isn’t hard to see why people might want to follow Dodd, and the only one who may see the real Dodd is Peggy, and she’s there to make sure he stays out of trouble from the looks of things, the one who may be working to protect the purity of the Cause moreso than her prophet husband.
But what really makes this work is how the story and Phoenix’s performance show a man who is really lost and confused, grasping at straws, just trying to find a place where he will fit in and maybe have a father figure in his life. He flips back and forth between trust in Dodd and the Cause and a willingness to walk away. He has a desire to out-do Clark while wondering if Val is right about how Dodd makes everything up as he goes along. He never comes to a point where he hates Dodd or anything, but at the same time, he does seem to need something that Dodd might be able to provide. Maybe that’s all anyone wants, and when Dodd says there hasn’t been a person in the history of the world who has managed to get by without a master, it might just be that there’s comfort in letting someone else run your life, but there is indeed something to be said about the need to just find other people to bond with.
Grade: A-
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