mfunk9786 wrote:I question the validity of criticizing a film about a drifter because he just seems to drift a lot in it
Knight of the Jungle has already spoken quite well for himself. But I'd say it seems to me he's not criticizing the validity of the film but its success as drama and narrative.
It's hard to explain what
The Master's missing to someone who likes it so much without going on an extended riff about the nature of dramatic storytelling, especially as it applies to extreme, troubled fringe characters like Freddie Quell. So I'll just go ahead and riff. (A lot of also this speaks to some of the comments I made in the thread on Steve McQueen's
Shame).
So let's start by agreeing that whatever else Anderson is up to in
The Master, whatever other layers of nuance, brilliance, tone, whatever -- he's still aiming to make a relatively mainstream dramatic narrative feature film (not a tone poem like Sokurov's
Whispering Pages, an essay/fiction-hybrid like many of Godard's late films, an idea-driven blast of pure cinema like Alan Clarke's
Elephant, etc.).
Almost every mainstream narrative feature film is about a protagonist (in some instances two or a whole group) actively trying to solve a particular problem. In these films, the story starts when something happens that invites the potential of improving or worsening the protagonist's situation and the protagonist makes a choice to act thereby getting closer to or further from his/her goal.
So the protagonist has to have a clear goal -- something he wants or needs. And the audience has to understand this, so that we can track his journey through the story, so that we understand what the stakes are when he takes action.
But I'd argue that it doesn't work like this in
The Master for a couple of reasons. First, while we see the outward manifestations of Freddie's troubled inner life, Freddie's actual problem(s) -- objectively or subjectively isn't really ever offered up to audience. Second, Freddie's degree of self-awareness doesn't seem to allow him to experience something like that self-loathing that matrix claims is driving him to drink that hooch and puruse those women. The film has lead to some pretty interesting and powerful speculation about what all these motives might be or mean. And a lot of the film's biggest fans on this thread present some interesting answers to those questions. But a key question that remains is whether these answers are the ones intended by the film itself and either skillfully and ultra-subtly conveyed by the film (I'd argue not); or dramatized poorly or not at all; or withheld for other reasons conscious or unconscious by the filmmaker? And what effect does their absence have: Does it make this film a masterful act of non-handholding art cinema subtlety worth of the very greatest of the greats like, say, Bergman? Or does it turn the film into something less than it might have been with a stronger script?
It's not impossible to make an artistic exploration of a troubled or self-destructive character on the brink that still contains a compelling narrative. Some films that do this quite well:
Taxi Driver,
Raging Bull,
The Devil Probably,
The Piano Teacher,
Leaving Las Vegas,
Young Adult. I'm not the biggest fan of all these films. I like the first four much more than the last two. But what they all have in common is a pretty excellent command of dramatic storytelling to hold the audience in a constant desire to know what's going to happen next by engaging our expectations about what the characters want/need, what problem they see themselves as trying to solve, what their current relative distance is from what they imagine to be their goal. And that's even if they are trying to "solve" their problems in exactly the wrong way, the way that will lead to further shame, alienation, bloodshed, loss of life and tragedy for all. The audience cares because we see that they care and we see what they're doing and are constantly striving to anticipate how it will all turn out. (Btw, Anderson's previous two features definitely take advantage of these ancient core storytelling tools.)
Somebody earlier compared Freddie Quell to Michael Corleone. In more ways than one this is apt. Freddie's not just the anti-Michael Corleone because he's drifting, unmoored and unheroic as a returning vet. But also because it's never clear what Freddie wants at the beginning of the film, so it's never clear what's happened to him when it's over. Nor do we ever learn much more about Freddie than we know within the first 10 minutes of meeting him. Contrast that with Michael Corleone, whose journey from heroic vet and good son on the straight and narrow to ruthless mafia don is crystal clear (but yet not simplistic!) and utterly tragic.
Or, once again to invoke Cassavetes, think of how much we learn about Nick and Mabel Longhetti from watching them throughout
A Woman Under The Influence. Most of the story takes place in their home yet they've gone on an a epic journey vis-a-vis each other compared to the central duo in
The Master, a film with many more locations and a much longer timespan.
Ten years ago, I might have agreed with mfunk's instinctive reaction above (Duh, the film is about drifters! Drifting's what they do!), but now I think, with good storytelling, it's actually possible to make something like
The Master in such a way that it would please the fans it already has but make fans of the rest of us who look to narrative cinema for compelling stories about characters who change for better or for worse in ways that matter to them and therefore to us.
Anyone who wants to understand more about this concept ought to look on Google Books for page 192 of Jerome Stern's
Making Shapely Fiction, for the entry on an idea he calls Position -- the way an audience tracks a character's arc through any given story. This was what lead to my epiphany about why certain art films about extreme characters work for me while others don't. Stern's example is simple and clear and you should all read the whole thing. But in a nutshell it's this: Say there's a character name Derwig who we establish is a depressed, anxious, troubled young man, lonely and on the brink, and a heavy drinker. If you choose to write about a day in which Derwig careens from bar to bar drinking heavily and remaining lonely and alienated -- no matter how amazing a writer you are -- all you're going to do is reiterate what we already know about him as a character. The real story about Derwig starts the moment something snaps him out of his current holding pattern. Otherwise you've got what's not even yet a character study, but at most a character sketch.
Which is actually a not inadequate approach for a literary short story. But in a feature length film -- especially a big feature film with big scenes between big actors in an epic format with a length over 2 hours, well, that's not nearly enough for me.
