The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)

[James]

Spoiler

Perhaps, but then who is hers? Who/what is the original master?

Spoiler

Her mother? Her father? I don't think the film needs to bring in more characters just to further its point. I think it's pretty clear to me the film's thesis is basically that we all have masters. Dodd's wife is depicted as his master with sexual dominance as well as in how she clearly (along with the son-in-law) tries to oust Freddie. I think at the end Freddie moves on to become his own master, which may start with the girl he picks up at the bar.

[Grand Illusion]

Saw this last night and have let it simmer and now read through this thread trying to put words to my feelings after it all and I think this post really echoes my own frustrations with the film. The first hour was magnificent, and I really felt like I was in the midst of a masterpiece. But then it all just, i don't know, meandered. We never learn anything about anyone...and nothing ever feels fully formed in the 2nd half of the film to me. It just felt like a film that had been made with cloudy ideas and no real grasp on what PTA wanted to say about them, or even be able to define them.

The

Spoiler

processing scene with Joaquin and PSH was astounding - one of the most amazing ten minutes of acting i've ever seen.

But otherwise I have to agree with Aspect that everything is left so nebulous, and the characters so unformed, that I had a hard time caring by the end. I feel like there was so much fertile ground for exploring the motivations, causes, pasts, and futures of these amazing characters, this fascinating topic, and a period that has been woefully under-explored in film. Yet PTA chose to completely ignore these myriad scaffolds that could have brought a depth and meaning to the actions we witness in favor of a surprisingly two-dimensional series of anecdotes strung together by a loose thread of some nebulous "Cause." I should not walk away from a 2+ hour film feeling like I don't know a damned thing about the main characters, but from PSH, JP, Amy Adams, and on down, there is zero meat provided to flesh out the incredibly hardened bones of the characters. The acting is superb, but i left the theater feeling as though it was one extremely hollow exercise in craft, leaving me frustratingly ambivalent about it all. Especially so, given that There Will Be Blood was my favorite film of the year when it arrived, and I had such high hopes for this one. So it goes...

Well said. I don't think you need to spoiler the scene you did, but it sure was a crafty way for PTA to get all that backstory out of the way so he wouldn't have to deal with any of it for the next hour and a half.

[HistoryProf]

an even quirkier distraction for me that I must ask if anyone else noted was the persistent hunched posture Joaquin adopted with the hands of his hips stance sort of shown here:



It was really bugging me every time he stood like this as I felt like he was using something from a previous film...something he'd done elsewhere. about 2/3 of the way through it hit me: it wasn't something he'd done, it was Forrest Gump. that was difficult to ignore for the rest of the film!

[HistoryProf]

Saw this last night and have let it simmer and now read through this thread trying to put words to my feelings after it all and I think this post really echoes my own frustrations with the film. The first hour was magnificent, and I really felt like I was in the midst of a masterpiece. But then it all just, i don't know, meandered. We never learn anything about anyone...and nothing ever feels fully formed in the 2nd half of the film to me. It just felt like a film that had been made with cloudy ideas and no real grasp on what PTA wanted to say about them, or even be able to define them.

The

Spoiler

processing scene with Joaquin and PSH was astounding - one of the most amazing ten minutes of acting i've ever seen.

But otherwise I have to agree with Aspect that everything is left so nebulous, and the characters so unformed, that I had a hard time caring by the end. I feel like there was so much fertile ground for exploring the motivations, causes, pasts, and futures of these amazing characters, this fascinating topic, and a period that has been woefully under-explored in film. Yet PTA chose to completely ignore these myriad scaffolds that could have brought a depth and meaning to the actions we witness in favor of a surprisingly two-dimensional series of anecdotes strung together by a loose thread of some nebulous "Cause." I should not walk away from a 2+ hour film feeling like I don't know a damned thing about the main characters, but from PSH, JP, Amy Adams, and on down, there is zero meat provided to flesh out the incredibly hardened bones of the characters. The acting is superb, but i left the theater feeling as though it was one extremely hollow exercise in craft, leaving me frustratingly ambivalent about it all. Especially so, given that There Will Be Blood was my favorite film of the year when it arrived, and I had such high hopes for this one. So it goes...

Well said. I don't think you need to spoiler the scene you did, but it sure was a crafty way for PTA to get all that backstory out of the way so he wouldn't have to deal with any of it for the next hour and a half.

And just for the record in response to Matrix's post earlier, i'm not trying to tell people who think this is a masterpiece that they are wrong, or that they didn't see what they saw. Rather, I'm simply saying that for me personally, on a Tuesday night in Kansas City, it didn't work. It felt unformed and shallow to me, which is exactly the opposite of what I expected to feel. And for all his bluster about suggesting he is wrong being insulting, I would argue the whole "you need to see it again to get it" retort is far more condescending. I feel like I got what could from it - and I certainly didn't hate it - I just didn't love it like I thought I would. I'm not sure why both opinions can't coexist...there's no reason one should render the other illegitimate.

There is a good film in there, with some absolutely brilliant moments (I thought the scene with the motorcycle was second only to the initial processing scene in that respect), but collectively it's just lacking a depth of feeling and characterization - which I think is the root of Warren Oates' and others' desire for more "story."

[onedimension]

I haven't seen this a second time yet, but after reading and hearing more criticisms of it, I'm closer to convinced that it's really, really good, maybe masterpiece good. I'm surprised, too, since we're all here under the banner of Criterion, which is moderately adventurous, at least relative to mainstream cinema, there's so much complaining about underdeveloped 'themes' and lack of narrative context. Yeah, it's not formally conventional, it's not a biopic, but what would those things get you? What if Anderson added a scene or two revealing that Dodd had an alcoholic mother and a Catholic father who tried to save her by prayer and religious ritual? That would be a plausible back story (hack story)- driven toward a different kind of religion, fixated on helping Freddie because he activates some deep psychological need, whatever, blahblah. What would that really DO? It's just reductive.

And we GET all kinds of back story about Freddie- it's just that the details aren't organized in a way that tells us to trust one explanation more than another. PTSD, alcoholism, heartbreak, victim of sexual abuse, etc. When you're faced with an actual person, with the formlessness of reality, how do you ultimately explain anything? Sometimes it's life that's nebulous and imprecise, and that's what the film captures. When I see Phoenix' performance, and Freddie in all his Freddie-ness, pinning a label or a Reader's Digest biographical narrative on him seems nuts. We don't get interiority from the film, we don't get traditional context clues, and the characters act in ways that prevent access to their interiority, because they're so caught up in their drives or rituals or social forms. If you're part of the 'Cause', do you ever have the opportunity to take Dodd aside and pick his brain, have a heart-to-heart, etc.? Those opportunities don't always arise, especially when there are so many things in the way. And if you're part of the 'Cause' and Dodd's son tells you 'he's just making it all up', that could mean Dodd is fraudulent, or that his son is overly skeptical, or testing Freddie's loyalty, or has trouble seeing his father as a charismatic leader (no man is a hero to his valet, that kind of thing)..

Short version: the movie is nebulous because life and truth are sometimes nebulous, can be seen that way, without overlaying any interpretations or biopic explanations or resolutions of ambiguity. And the film is a slice of very rich character and relationships and group dynamics, but it's not explicable in any kind of convenient way. I see that as a virtue (for this type of film), not a limitation. Reminds me of some Cassavetes, or Mike Leigh- ironically kind of indebted in recognizing this strain of cinema to stuff I read years ago from Criterionforum guru/anti-guru Ray Carney, himself sort of a Dodd-like figure..

[Grand Illusion]

I haven't seen this a second time yet, but after reading and hearing more criticisms of it, I'm closer to convinced that it's really, really good, maybe masterpiece good. I'm surprised, too, since we're all here under the banner of Criterion, which is moderately adventurous, at least relative to mainstream cinema, there's so much complaining about underdeveloped 'themes' and lack of narrative context.

You're really going to play that card? Do we really have to whip out our cinephile bona fides before criticizing a film that's unconventional?

[onedimension]

No, it's just that 'not enough story' seems like a complaint that, for this group, would be more likely to stem from anticipating a specific type of Hollywood film than from being uncomfortable with less plot-driven cinema. It's possible the reactions are that 'The Master' is BAD narratively unconventional cinema- but no one seems to be saying that.

My instinct, maybe presumptuous, is that the film is being faulted for what it isn't rather than seen for what it is, specifically because of audience expectations about a major Hollywood filmmaker making a kind of Scientology exposé and/or large explicit cultural statement about a historical era. Or: If a time traveler in 2001 had appeared on Ebert & Roeper to reveal that the director of 'Boogie Nights' would make a film about Scientology in 2012, I would never have remotely predicted this movie.

[Grand Illusion]

No, it's just that 'not enough story' seems like a complaint that, for this group, would be more likely to stem from anticipating a specific type of Hollywood film than from being uncomfortable with less plot-driven cinema. It's possible the reactions are that 'The Master' is BAD narratively unconventional cinema- but no one seems to be saying that.

My instinct, maybe presumptuous, is that the film is being faulted for what it isn't rather than seen for what it is, specifically because of audience expectations about a major Hollywood filmmaker making a kind of Scientology exposé and/or large explicit cultural statement about a historical era. Or: If a time traveler in 2001 had appeared on Ebert & Roeper to reveal that the director of 'Boogie Nights' would make a film about Scientology in 2012, I would never have remotely predicted this movie.

Why do we look at any piece of art? For me, it's to get an understanding of how the artist views the world. Then, I will hopefully empathize with the artist or be entertained or be moved by that expression. I don't care if it's a finger-painting of the artist's best friend or the most majestic symphony in the world. The Mona Lisa is less interesting for what it says about the woman than for what it says about da Vinci. It all boils down to being allowed into the artist's worldview.

So while you dismiss criticisms of, as you say, "underdeveloped 'themes'", theme is one way in which the artist imparts his vision. And that is what many of us are missing. Not a story, but a vision. We experience art, any art, to bear witness to the way an artist sees the world. It would invariably be a disappointment, then, if we believed the artist created something which exhibits no coherent, unique, or particularly interesting point of view.

If you want further dissection of why I don't even believe the film works in the rubrics of various art film types, you're welcome to read my post on Page 15, because I don't believe I could explain my feelings better than that.

[onedimension]

I might need to start a separate thread to make my objections to the phrase "rubrics of various art film types".

I could certainly discuss the film in terms of 'themes', but there's plenty of that in this thread and its links if you look for it..

[Aspect]

I think what most of us who found the film disappointing are trying to say is that The Master is not a very unconventional film. It is told in chronological order with a relatively easy to follow cause-and-effect approach. It's just missing a lot of character development. In a recent interview (here: http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/podcasts/qpod ... _21835.mp3" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;), PTA said it was not his intention to confuse anyone. I don't think intelligent viewers are confused by WHAT happens in the film. Though The Master FLIRTS with complex ideas and themes, it doesn't engage them in particularly dramatic, complex, or illuminating ways for many of us. In other words, we wanted a deeper film than we got.

There is a wonderful line at the end of the film where Dodd tells Quell,

Spoiler

"If you find a way to live without a master, without any master, let us know. You’d be the first person in the history of the world."

That's an amazing line to place at the end of the first act and then explore in meaningful ways throughout the rest of the story. Those of us who found the film lacking wanted an attempt to create a more dynamic, dramatic relationship between Quell and Dodd that grew over time and developed into dark, psychological, and emotionally confusing areas in which we question which one of them is in charge of this group and its future. It was fun to have Dodd's wife in such a position of power, but the real power struggle should have existed between Dodd and Quell. The film could have gone into some twisted and interesting places if it even bothered to explore what lies beneath the surface of these men and what makes them tick rather than just establishing their basic qualities and having them skate by each other, never really engaging (apart from the admittedly great processing scene, which should have led to deeper explorations). As it stands now, Quell's encounter with the group barely had any effect on its leadership or its future. It's even left vague whether it had any effect on Quell other than making him realize he needed a master and perhaps can become his own master, but you really have to write the movie in your own mind to come to that conclusion. In the end,

Spoiler

it seems as if Quell is just returning to his old master: lust. Maybe he thinks he can control the women he's with now too, which would make him an even more despicable character than he already is.

Regardless, that's one interpretation of many. We can't be sure. Not that we need to be, but certain story ingredients are necessary. Many of us are here on the Criterion Forum because we love films that make us think. The classics in this area include L'Avventura, L'Eclisse, Blow Up, 8 1/2, Persona, anything by Bunuel or Tarkovsky, etc. The difference between those films and The Master is that they were attempting to be more unconventionally enigmatic, while at the same time being more intellectually cohesive, than The Master tries to be. In those films, we have character information and dramatic information at our disposals. What our minds must fill in are the thematic and intellectual elements. Every scene, line of dialogue, and action illuminates a clearly articulated theme and the films all end after having tremendous, traumatic effect on the main characters and, by proxy, the audience. We're not confused about what makes the characters tick. That information is supposed to be there, and it's not hard to provide it in a quick and efficient manner fusing action and dialogue. There's an arc to the proceedings; even if a character started out in an empty place, they were in an even bleaker, emptier philosophical place by the end.

I'm not sure the characters in The Master are in different places when the credits roll than they were at the beginning. It even ends

Spoiler

with a flashback to Quell back on the beach with the sand woman, worshiping at the altar of her sand breasts, just as he did when he cuddled with her at the beginning.

He doesn't seem traumatized by what happened to him. We needed him to be traumatized. As viewers, we wanted to be traumatized. Instead we were just along for one more episode in the merry life of Quell, whose animalism Dodd couldn't quell. Oh well, next episode please. Maybe something will happen in that one to really shake the foundations of his character. If not, then we're watching a loop of the first act over and over again.

Note: if anyone uses the excuse that I wanted a different film than I got, I'd like to make clear that I had no expectations going into the movie. I'm responding to what I was presented with and what I felt could have used further exploration or improvement. That's what we're doing here, and that's the nature of criticism. If a film doesn't go as deep as you think it's capable of going (and this one was capable of it), then I, and others here, are allowed to articulate why. That's how we learn and become better writers.

[onedimension]

In those films, we have character information and dramatic information at our disposals. What our minds must fill in are the thematic and intellectual elements. Every scene, line of dialogue, and action illuminates a clearly articulated theme and the films all end after having tremendous, traumatic effect on the main characters and, by proxy, the audience. We're not confused about what makes the characters tick. That information is supposed to be there, and it's not hard to provide it in a quick and efficient manner fusing action and dialogue. There's an arc to the proceedings; even if a character started out in an empty place, they were in an even bleaker, emptier philosophical place by the end.

I guess I just think the idea that "Every...line of dialogue...illuminates a clearly articulated theme" is overly schematic, that viewing 'The Master' that way looks past the surface, where there seemed to my eye a lot of interesting stuff going on, to try to squint and see some underlying and unambiguous message, or to force the character dynamics into an artificial narrative "in which we question which one of them is in charge of this group and its future." And I thought Quell and Dodd absolutely had a 'dynamic, dramatic relationship...that grew over time' - it just didn't "grow" in some 'first x, now y' way- it fluctuated over time, but it didn't have a simple payoff. Freddie went from hung over and confused to curious to overzealous to violent to resistant to furious, and seemed stuck in some grey zone between earnest disciple, opportunist, cynic, etc. - I didn't see two basic qualities in opposition, but two complex people trying to negotiate an unusual relationship. If I tried to answer why Dodd is drawn to Freddie, I wouldn't buy one Answer from a list of: 'He wants to help him' or 'He wants to prove the effectiveness of his method' or 'He thinks Freddie is an animal' or 'He likes moonshine' or 'He has a crush on him' -it might be all of those things, in some proportion, but there's no pat explanation.

[Aspect]

What you see as schematic (regarding every line or action pertaining to themes, albeit not transparently), I see as good storytelling with clear purposes in mind. Apples and oranges, I guess. Nobody's saying they wanted an artificial narrative, just one that organically followed the disparate motives of the characters and went somewhere more interesting than what we were first, and eventually, presented with. Also, nobody wants a pat explanation for why Dodd is drawn to Quell. You're bringing up possible motives drawn from personality traits that are communicated to the audience in the first half of the movie. After Dodd has been drawn to Quell, for reasons we SHOULD speculate about, what keeps them together and how does that change and grow over time? Are their motives the same anymore? I'm not sure they're different by the end of the film than they were at the beginning. We are yearning for more motivational clarity, which would in turn yield unforeseen depths of character through natural conflict. As I tried to communicate above, we didn't want a simpler narrative; rather, a more focused story (and this movie did attempt to tell a story) that would illuminate its characters and themes in increasingly deeper and interesting ways. Focus yields more complexity than vague and nebulous ideas without a strong dramatic anchor.

[warren oates]

Ambiguity does not mean lack of clarity. Ambiguity may be intriguing when it consists of alternative meanings, each of them clear.

That's writer/director/teacher Alexander Mackendrick, not exactly the hackiest hack in the Criterion Collection or anywhere else for that matter.

As I follow the latest posts in this thread, I keep coming back to Jim Emerson's declaration that The Master is above all ambiguous. Or the many supporters' claims that the film's inherent lack of clarity is the very locus of its authenticity, revelatory qualities and highest artistic achievements. Supporters see The Master as a masterpiece of ambiguity if not outright big-M Mystery. Clarity of filmic, narrative, thematic, and other aesthetic intentions is then pitted against this as the domain of lesser films and denser filmmakers. But I feel like many of us non-fans have managed to demonstrate -- with ideas about what The Master might have done differently and with specific examples from many other films, some of them made by Anderson himself -- what we're missing in The Master. So the final and ultimate appeal is to the multifaceted "ambiguity" of the film itself. At which point we're either told we need to see it again or that we're simply not comfortable with the true-life messiness of reality that the film encapsulates. So I suppose one of the foundational contentions of the unconvinced Master detractors is that the film is not in Mackendrick's sense of the term ambiguous, but instead merely vague.

[swo17]

A) There are many different ways to make a movie, not just Mackendrick's. Picasso was an incredibly talented painter in traditional forms but chose to express himself a different way. I'm sure you could quote texts or other artists to argue that he was painting wrong.

B) I don't even really find The Master to be ambiguous at all. I was never confused about what was happening. I don't feel like there were any scenes missing from the story that PTA wanted to tell. The film certainly didn't go in the direction I would have expected, but in the end, the film is what it is, and I enjoyed both the experience of watching it, and my reflection back on what it was trying to say. Would I have liked it more if it had tried to say something else? Perhaps. Would it have been a better film if it had all been set on the moon? Alas, we will never know.

[warren oates]

Sure, swo. As Sausage might say, I'm not intending the Mackendrick definition of ambiguity to be proscriptive. But it certainly does articulate a distinction I find useful in understanding my response to a wide variety of art forms, not just more conventional narrative films. It's another way of explaining my interaction with a much more ineffable quality, the feeling, when confronted with a work that's deliberately elliptical, obscure or mysterious, of being "in good hands." If I can feel the deeper presence of those multiple alternate and clear meanings beneath the surface, even if I can't quite define them for myself on the first go around, then I'm much more prepared to give a work the benefit of the doubt. Like I suspect Aspect and HistoryProf are saying above: we're having trouble feeling that "in good hands" feeling in The Master that assures us of a deeper there there worth mining.

[mfunk9786]

I don't even really find The Master to be ambiguous at all. I was never confused about what was happening. I don't feel like there were any scenes missing from the story that PTA wanted to tell.

I'm with you, swo, and that's why I find this conversation so baffling. The film's story isn't about the A to B to C of what occurs within it, but about the subtext of it - it's about what we don't see more than what we see, and one must willingly engage their own imagination with what's onscreen instead of raging at the fact that not enough was explained or not enough occurred. It is a rather simple story that has far-reaching implications, but you have to try to engage with it instead of rejecting it for not packing itself in a neat box and slapping on a bow. The 'deeper there there' is supposed to be in your mind, not up on the screen. Anderson didn't make the film in order to confuse anyone, but he certainly meant for it to challenge everyone more than There Will Be Blood did, and I don't see the harm in that type of evolution.

I think it's telling that the last several pages of this thread are made up of the same few people discussing ad nauseum that they disliked the film. There is a lot of there there - or you guys would have stopped yammering on about it the day after you saw the film. When I see a bad film, or a film I dislike, I'm not debating its merits on a consistent basis for weeks afterwards. "Yeah, I hear what you're saying about the special effects, but the issue with Real Steel lies in its... *eight more paragraphs*"

[Mr Sausage]

And here I am popping in to explain technical terms. What a shock, right?

Ambiguity doesn't just mean not knowing what's going on.

There are two broad effects of ambiguity: A. where the meaning is unclear, B. where two or more possible meanings are present and equally valid (and perhaps fighting with each other). The former reduces, the second expands possible meaning. The second is a good thing, the first is kind of frustrating.

Any movie that uses a certain amount of ellipses and forgoes a certain amount of exposition or explanation, especially with regards to character, can be said to be ambiguous. That's just a neutral observation. The only question, really, is whether those ambiguities build to something coherent or whether they make interpretation arbitrary and therefore render the movie incoherent.

[warren oates]

Thanks, Sausage! That's exactly what I'm getting at better than I could say it. Those seem to be the two camps here: Is the film partaking of a good, expansive, deep ambiguity that ultimately coheres or just a frustrating lack of clarity? Do both modes of ambiguity exist side and side in The Master? Is one of them more predominant?

Well, mfunk, that seems to be walking back your position on the film a bit. To me you're still the most articulate advocate of The Master as a film with truly mysterious multilayered subtext. Which is different from any confusion about what's happening, but certainly not unrelated to intentional ambiguity. If there's a fascination in the film for you it seems pretty hard to separate that from sussing out the ambiguous motives of the characters.

Those of us who were disappointed in the film don't feel as if we haven't engaged with the work, whether or not we believe the work itself ought to have engaged us more.

One of my favorite novelists talks about leaving "space for the reader" in his books. And that's a beautiful thing that I find in many of my favorite films too -- "space for the viewer." I guess for me there's a fine line that The Master crosses between leaving "space for the viewer" (a kind of Mackendrickian ambiguity thick with multiple possibilities and the promise of subtle coherence) and simply not deciding things. This is a delicate quality we're talking around and that's part of what still makes it interesting to talk about. Whether that means the work is successful or not, whether we "like" it or not. (Liking or not liking any given film is the least interesting thing you could say about it.) Obviously The Master is more ambitious and interesting than a popcorn actioner like Real Steel but that's just another silly straw man argument. As with all of the other comments on here suggesting that we non-fans ought to go watch something more digestible, unlike, say, all the other films we love that brought us to this board in the first place and to whose standard, perhaps unfairly, we're holding The Master.

[HistoryProf]

I don't even really find The Master to be ambiguous at all. I was never confused about what was happening. I don't feel like there were any scenes missing from the story that PTA wanted to tell.

I'm with you, swo, and that's why I find this conversation so baffling. The film's story isn't about the A to B to C of what occurs within it, but about the subtext of it - it's about what we don't see more than what we see, and one must willingly engage their own imagination with what's onscreen instead of raging at the fact that not enough was explained or not enough occurred. It is a rather simple story that has far-reaching implications, but you have to try to engage with it instead of rejecting it for not packing itself in a neat box and slapping on a bow. The 'deeper there there' is supposed to be in your mind, not up on the screen. Anderson didn't make the film in order to confuse anyone, but he certainly meant for it to challenge everyone more than There Will Be Blood did, and I don't see the harm in that type of evolution.

I think it's telling that the last several pages of this thread are made up of the same few people discussing ad nauseum that they disliked the film. There is a lot of there there - or you guys would have stopped yammering on about it the day after you saw the film. When I see a bad film, or a film I dislike, I'm not debating its merits on a consistent basis for weeks afterwards. "Yeah, I hear what you're saying about the special effects, but the issue with Real Steel lies in its... *eight more paragraphs*"

Warren Oates is the only poster that fits your description. most of us who found the film less than fulfilling have posted a couple of times to sort out why. It's called a discussion. I didn't realize you could only discuss movies you liked here.

And once again, bravo to Aspect's thoughtful deconstruction of the film. s/he managed once again to dip inside my brain and elaborate my own feelings far more eloquently than I could have. And he's done so respectfully and with plenty of erudition on what exactly didn't click. The condescending dismissals of people who don't find it a masterpiece because they just didn't try hard enough or some such bollocks contribute far less to this discussion than any others.

[Grand Illusion]

The 'deeper there there' is supposed to be in your mind, not up on the screen.

There is a lot of there there

Those are two disparate things. Either the depth isn't on screen or the depth is there. Is the film deep? Or are we deep people wading into a shallow pool?

I would say that, by definition, something being "there" means that it's not originating from within ourselves. Otherwise that would be "here" not "there."

And no, I don't think the film is deep. I think it's trite and one-note, but proceeds to replay that one note over and over again. Because of that, I'm not going to give the filmmaker credit. If I'm doing all the heavy lifting, then that's just projection.

We could project all sorts of human/machine dichotomies and "How humanity responds/reacts to technology in the shadow of the Real" onto Real Steel. At the end of the day, though, much like The Master, it's a film without a coherent vision.

I think it's telling that the last several pages of this thread are made up of the same few people discussing ad nauseum that they disliked the film. - or you guys would have stopped yammering on about it the day after you saw the film. When I see a bad film, or a film I dislike, I'm not debating its merits on a consistent basis for weeks afterwards. "Yeah, I hear what you're saying about the special effects, but the issue with Real Steel lies in its... *eight more paragraphs*"

Nobody is going to defend Real Steel since few here will go see it, and fewer here will vouch for it as an important film. That's not the case with this film. It was labelled as "important" before it came out. And the film is/was on the cover of prestigious film journals. Debate (or "yammering" as you put it) isn't a sign of depth. It's a sign of disagreement.

[matrixschmatrix]

To me, at least, there's a distinction to be made between debating what a movie is about and what it means and what's in it and so forth, and endlessly trying to prove that there really isn't anything there, which gets a bit repetitious. I mean, honestly, what victory do you claim if you win, proving that other people didn't really see what they thought they did? If the movie requires that the viewer do all the heavy lifting, why is it worth endlessly demanding that people for whom that lifting wasn't so heavy are wrong?

No matter how it's put, whether breaking down into all the different kinds of things The Master isn't or breaking down all the things it ought to be, I just don't see how it gets anybody anywhere to keep going on about it. If it didn't work for you, that's fine, and you ought not to be baited about it and have people insist that it not working for you reflects on your qualities as a viewer or a connoisseur of film. But surely that's something that comes from a place of love for the movie, of wanting people to get on board- what's the motive for insisting that it doesn't work, and that thinking it does likewise reflects negatively on the viewer?

[Mr Sausage]

Ok, bickering is one thing, but bickering about bickering is a bad sign. So:

If you don't like warrenoates' posts here, don't read them. And I am being serious. If you're going to complain about him droning on, imagine what it's like to read you drone on about him droning on, and then do something else. He's well within his rights on the forum to disagree as much as he likes and post about it respectfully. You can either disagree with him or not, but there is no reason to compel him to stop.

If I were you guys, I would either try to seriously refute him in strong terms or stop reading and responding to his posts. In fact, that is just what I've done in several situations with him (I opted for the former). If you don't want him to keep posting, stop giving him reasons to. Otherwise you just become complicit in his responses and part of the problem. The one thing that always prolongs a situation is participating.


warrenoates: You ought to consider what you're really going to get out of this moving forward. Not everything said about your arguments needs a reply. Step back, really think on it, and decide if there's anything more that needs to be said here, and whether saying it is worthwhile.

If it didn't work for you, that's fine, and you ought not to be baited about it and have people insist that it not working for you reflects on your qualities as a viewer or a connoisseur of film. But surely that's something that comes from a place of love for the movie, of wanting people to get on board- what's the motive for insisting that it doesn't work, and that thinking it does likewise reflects negatively on the viewer?

I can name a number of ugly emotions and actions that come from 'a place of love'. And frankly I find both sides obnoxious in the same way: an intolerance to differences in taste. There isn't a highground between the two as far as I can see.

[Grand Illusion]

endlessly trying to prove that there really isn't anything there, which gets a bit repetitious.

As does an endless parade of adulation. I think we've discussed the nature of ambiguity in filmmaking in the past couple pages, and that's as worthy a topic of any.

what's the motive for insisting that it doesn't work, and that thinking it does likewise reflects negatively on the viewer?

Emphasis mine. I've seen you infer that others have said this, but has anyone actually done so? Can you link me?

[matrixschmatrix]

Yeah, fair enough, this isn't a discussion that's doing anything for me and I should stop following it.

[mfunk9786]

Same here. Hope you guys find what you're looking for (?)