criterionforum.org

tarpilot wrote:I would gladly pay $20, but I actually live about 2 hours from Toronto (and don't drive), so I was banking on what I thought would be a certainty since they're the only 70MM-capable cinema in Ontario

Just a heads up if it hasn't been buried in someone else's post in here: the Varsity theatre at Bloor and Bay will be showing it in 70mm.

I think I'm seeing it in 4K this weekend in Minneapolis at the Uptown Theatre. I know it's not in 70mm.

It's already up for pre-orders on Amazon and the Blu-ray release is listed as a 2 disc set, if that means anything. Hopefully it's 2 Blu-rays not some shitty DVD/DC combo crap.

Yeah nothing worse than convenient combo packaging for no increased cost

Just had another thought I just kinda wanted to share...

Spoiler

I think a big part of the movie is for the two main characters feeling "trapped" in their personalities. Master is surrounded by a group of people that worship him, and there is no doubt he has this desire for a more "real" interaction, which even allows him to get into a cursing match in jail. Not that differently though, Phoenix's character has built up this image for himself of an outcast, a "weirdo," and whether or not he likes the attention, he thrives with it...being a vagabond and a loose canon. So for him, engaging in The Cause is his attempt to break loose and go beyond himself.
In the end though, neither Hoffman or Phoenix's character has it in them to break free from the personality chains that others and they themselves have...forced upon them (if you will).

So, I liked this movie tremendously- I think it's just behind Moonrise Kingdom for movie of the year thus far for me, though the two are incredibly difficult to compare. I'm just going to go ahead spoiler everything, though honestly I have no idea of how one could spoil this movie if one tried.

Spoiler

So not to be trite, but I think the key to this movie is control, and relationships based on control vs. relationships based on mutuality or affection or anything else. Hoffman is someone who seeks control, over himself and others, and in both cases he is not entirely effective- his anger slips out when he is confronted, and we never meet a True Believer personality in the movie except when their belief is breaking down. But absolutely every Scientology-esque test or ritual we see in the film is about either the subject gaining the kind of closeted self control that allows one to bottle one's anger until it is needed- as with the process of sitting face to face and abusing one another (a real thing in Scientology, by the way)- or of allowing the tester to gain control over the subject, as with the various pseudo-hypnotic recall experiments. They're never about coming to terms with oneself, they're always about forcing whatever it is one is feeling into a different shape, hammering it over and over until it is numb or hiding it or exposing it as a vulnerability to someone who will use it against you.

As such, one of the appeals of the Phoenix character to Hoffman is that he's a man totally out of control, either by himself or others. He's the dragon that Hoffman describes, a man of great intensity and willingness to ignore social convention, who absolutely would make an ideal True Believer type if his personality could be tamed and forced to roll over. And a great deal of what we see in the movie is Hoffman trying to achieve this, and Phoenix trying to force himself to let it happen- thus Phoenix's violence and anger at anything that questions the beliefs he himself cannot really adhere to.

The complicating factor, I think, is that Hoffman deeply wants to let himself out, as the form of control that he has over himself is so much about denial and repression- thus, the way he is still more attracted to Phoenix when he acts out, thus the way he takes readily to Phoenix's horrible concoctions, thus the way he can't resist the appeal of real freedom in the desert- but he, unlike Phoenix, is too much closeted to just ride off and never turn around, but he feels the pull of it, and teases himself with it.

The one person who does have real control, of course, is Amy Adams, whose character is gorgeously a departure from the chipper, cheery character she's been in virtually everything else in which I've seen her- and seems totally willing to look unglamorous, too, particularly in the naked scene. Her character doesn't seem to have any real feelings for her husband, though she's far from a simple femme fatale sort of nice-outside-brutal-behind-closed-doors type- one gets the feeling that perhaps she is simply the most successful at getting the kind of control that utter denial of the self can bring, the kind that allows one to make blue eyes black and to believe in things one knows are made up on the spot, and uses that self-control to reinforce the repression that brings others into line. She's a character out of 1984 in some ways, a True Believer who can never be disillusioned because she helped to make the lies up in the first place.

And of course, within all this network of relationships of ownership and control, there are some real people feelings hiding- it's clear enough that both Phoenix and Hoffman are absolutely desperate for affection, and find something closer to it with one another than with any of the other relationships they've experienced. Such that I kind of believe Hoffman when he tells Phoenix that when he leaves, he hopes he'll find true freedom and live well and so forth- it's both an expression of something Hoffman wants for himself and one he wants for what is maybe the closest thing he's got to a friend.

Here's Stephanie Zacharek's article on why people should sometimes ignore the call to "see it twice" and whether or not serious filmmakers deserve points for trying (all spurred on by critical disagreement over The Master):

http://www.avclub.com/articles/should-s ... -ot,85182/

I think she makes some great points regarding "seeing it twice," and how that call often results in a sort of cultish behavior wherein only true lovers of cinema will get a film, and if you don't, then you must see the film again!

Personally, I went to the theater with a friend, who really enjoyed The Master. When I asked him what he liked about the film, he didn't quite know. But it hit him, and he said he couldn't wait to see it again.

While his is a fine reaction to have, I tend to be able to immediately articulate why I did not like a film. Perhaps this is because when a film stops working for me, my overactive mind is already formulating my detailed response while I am still sitting in the theater.

As the dissenter, I was able to tell him pretty much why I disliked the film and why I, indeed, thought the Master was wearing no clothes. And my opinions looked very much the same when I returned to post them on this forum, a few pages back.

On the other hand, I do feel the inherent cinephile guilt that Zacharek speaks to. It's very difficult to get serious films made. Certainly for the $35 million budget range that Anderson is able to command by amassing talent that wants to work for him. I want to give him bonus points for trying, even as I feel that what lies beneath the crust of this film is simply more crust.

Anyway, it's an interesting article no matter which side you fall on. Check it out.

I'm not necessarily someone who can always say precisely why I liked or disliked a film right after seeing it for the first time. But I can usually tell whether I want to see it again. And, for the most part, I agree with Grand Illusion. This urging on of others to see something like The Master again if they aren't in awe of it after one viewing -- especially when it's thrown back and forth among serious cinephiles like the members here -- can feel a bit condescending, like religious folks who urge you to "just read the Bible" or some other text. As if the truth of their faith were so self-evident that anyone who followed the same simple steps they themselves took should immediately arrive at the same conclusions.

People sometimes do change their minds about films after a second viewing, but almost always after a gap of some time since they'd first seen the film in question.

Most films I've seen in my adult life remain on a continuum within a certain range of appreciation. I may rate them a bit higher or lower each time I see them, but there's not usually a radical 180 degree shift of opinion. I saw a documentary about Bergman once in which he claimed to have fallen completely out of love with M. Hulot's Holiday. He confessed to screening it upwards of 50 times over the years and loving it just as much each time until the very last, whereupon he found it suddenly boring and could not understand what he ever saw in it. I've changed my mind like this only a couple times, usually in the opposite direction. There was Fire Walk With Me, which I wanted to be like Twin Peaks the series and couldn't forgive for being different, until realized it was its own little masterpiece on subsequent viewing. And then two first encounters with filmmakers whose work was so different I really couldn't get into it the first time: Tarkovsky's Solaris in college, which I hated at first but now I love; and then Kiarostami's Through The Olive Trees. But that's about it for me.

I'd certainly be curious to hear about everyone else's significant 180 degree film taste changes (excluding stuff you loved/hated as a kid). If there's not already a thread for that somewhere else, maybe we should start one?

Matrixschmatrix already eloquently delivered my take before I could get around to it.

Spoiler

To me the film is about the need to control and be controlled. Freddie comes back from the war damaged, disillusioned, and aimless. He's unsure of whether he fits into society, or if he even wants to. He tries taking a "respectable" job as a department store photographer. He wears a suit and tie, he works with families and children, but he also makes hooch out of darkroom chemicals. He prefers the feeling of not being in control of his personality. When he's drunk on his concoctions, he has only vague memories of where he is and what he's doing. He can let his violent and debaucherous side take take over and not have to worry about things like decision-making and conforming to societal norms. He finds that he enjoys a similar sensation in the company of Lancaster Dodd. Dodd can provide him with that same feeling of being controlled, his "processing" seems to put him in the same sort of free-association reverie, and he gets a very fatherly structure where his own father was drunk, potentially abusive, and later absent.

Dodd, meanwhile, needs to be in control, and therefore seeks out souls like Freddie. He can tell he's found a receptive personality from the moment Freddie wanders on to his boat. Dodd has been collecting such people, and Freddie may be the ne plus ultra. This is especially appealing to Dodd because the one person in his entourage who seems impervious to his control is his son -- a role that he hopes Freddie can fulfill. This the only way in which the film is "about" Scientology or cults. Of course it's really about post-war disillusionment and abandonment and the need to be controlled and accepted. It's only about cults in a very superficial way, in that it shows their tendency to seek out the disillusioned and abandoned.

By the end of the film, the idea of who The Master truly is becomes unclear. Dodd has become desperate to have Freddie back in the fold, if he can have him back the way he wants him -- obedient, loyal, in control. He literally serenades him in an attempt to woo him back. At this point, Freddie is in control of the situation. Dodd is just short of begging. He needs Freddie. We see in the end that Freddie has apparently not acquiesced. He's back in the world he's become most comfortable with, but his attempt to "process" the woman he's having sex with indicates a desire to return to that controller/controllee relationship -- perhaps from the other side.

I don't think the film is a "masterpiece" by any means; there are probably a few too many elisions. These are a big part of where the film finds its power, but I think maybe in his desire to let the audience connect the dots, Anderson took out one dot too many. So I understand, to an extent, the complaints about a lack of coherence. I do, however, think the film is very successful in many ways (bravura performances, wonderful cinematography, genuine ideas and curiosity about human nature), will probably be one of the better films released this year, and is a worthy entry into Paul Thomas Anderson's increasingly eclectic ouvre.

I don't understand why the only possible assessments of this film seem to be "masterpiece" or "misfire." To me, there is a lot of middle ground in between, and that's where The Master falls. "I need to see it again," was the first thing I said when the friend I was with asked me what I thought.

I don't think that there is anything wrong with an intuition that a film may possibly improve on multiple viewings. As much as I appreciated it the first time, there is every reason to believe that I'll be more successful at connecting those dots with further viewings. When a director is as invested in semiotics as Anderson clearly is, I can't imagine not being at least curious about what further viewings might reveal. My opinions about many films have grown with time. This is especially true for much of late Kubrick, and happened dramatically with Glazer's Birth, to cite a more recent example. That may or may not happen here. The Tree of Life was another film that I liked a lot, but didn't quite love, on first viewing -- despite some amazingly powerful sequences. A later viewing only convinced me of my original assessment.

If someone told me they hated The Master, or found it artless, I certainly wouldn't recommend they see it again. If they find the style or narrative off-putting, those opinions probably won't change. If they were intrigued, however, and just wish there were more to it, I would certainly tell them that further viewings may prove that there is, and I don't think there's anything particularly condescending about that. I don't believe I have the capability to comprehend and fully assess a complex work of art (which I think this is) in a couple of hours, so I need more time with it. Of course that's only my personal reaction to this particular film. I'm certainly instantly dismissive of hundreds of films where I don't believe there really is any complexity, even otherwise lauded ones, so I can understand those who felt that way about this one.

First and foremost, I think this film has established Amy Adams as the person most deserving of an Oscar amongst contemporary actors. I can't think of any actress who has done such a fantastic job perfecting the supporting role. If you watch her performances in Junebug, Doubt, Fighter, and now The Master you'll see a woman who is gifted at emotion subtly and nuance. But what she's done in both this and the Fighter is really elevate the actors around her. The scenes that truly resonated with me where the ones with her and Hoffman in the bedroom and her one on one evaluation scene with Phoenix. I think that had she not done such a great job humanizing those two the film would have felt a little cheesy like Bertolucci's 1900.

I hear a lot of complaints the failure of an emotional connection or that the story wasn't solid enough. I don't believe the film is about giving the audience an emotional connection rather I believe the movie is about stimulating your mind. So much of the film is about duality, ambiguity, and I guess existentialism that I don't think you should focus on things like emotion. I was reminded a lot of Andrei Tarkovsky's work; the long nude tracking shot from Andrei Rublev, the eye changing scene from Stalker, and quite a bit from The Mirror.

I think what I enjoyed the most about the film is it's use of duality in it's central characters. Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays a man who brings people in, who is welcome where ever he goes who is always surrounded by family. Joaquin Phoenix is on the other end of the spectrum, he's a man who people run away from, he's a loner because he's so hard to relate to. Hoffman speaks you hear every word, it's economical but impact-full and as I was watching I wished he was on screen more than Phoenix. Phoenix on the other hand is so broken down, unintelligible and perhaps insane that's it's difficult to watch. Theirs a great scene early on when Phoenix is on the beach during the war and the scene goes from funny to awkward to depressing almost horrifying.

Jeff wrote:

Spoiler

...This the only way in which the film is "about" Scientology or cults. Of course it's really about post-war disillusionment and abandonment and the need to be controlled and accepted. It's only about cults in a very superficial way, in that it shows their tendency to seek out the disillusioned and abandoned.

Jeff, since you seem to have gotten more out of the film than I did, but are pretty much the only other halfway positive poster who's raised this issue, I wonder if you think the "not really about what it's about" aspects of the script's take on Scientology seem to you to be a bug or a feature? Does the film gain more from the glancing superficial exploration of its Scientology-like cult than it is hampered by creating false expectations and larding the whole with multiple unnecessary accoutrements that distract/detract from the central dramatic relationship?

Or to say it another way: I feel like I learned more about the porn industry from Boogie Nights than I did about self-help cults from The Master. Why set a given film in a highly specific world if it's not actually about the world in which you set it?

Siddon, I think that the Tarkovsky comparison is misplaced. Anderson became very good at atmosphere in There Will Be Blood, better than it ever seemed he could be, but he's currently nowhere near the level of mastery of someone like Tarkovsky. Likewise, it still seems to me that the script, the setting, and the scenery chewing dramatics of The Master are completely at cross purposes with immersion in a truly dreamlike world such as the ones in Stalker or Mirror. Or the Lynchian moments that mfunk suggests the film might be lurching toward.

warren oates wrote:I wonder if you think the "not really about what it's about" aspects of the script's take on Scientology seem to you to be a bug or a feature? Does the film gain more from the glancing superficial exploration of its Scientology-like cult than it is hampered by creating false expectations and larding the whole with multiple unnecessary accoutrements that distract/detract from the central dramatic relationship?

Or to say it another way: I feel like I learned more about the porn industry from Boogie Nights than I did about self-help cults from The Master. Why set a given film in a highly specific world if it's not actually about the world in which you set it?

I guess I don't think of it as a bug or a feature, just a highly appropriate milieu. It certainly wasn't a distraction to me. I mean, if you're going to make a film about society's outcasts finding a need for control, structure, acceptance, and paternal love (one could argue this is a theme in all of Anderson's pictures), why not set it in the world of a Scientology-like cult? It seems to be, like the adult film industry, precisely the kind of world such people would be drawn to and potentially destroyed by.

I imagine that like you, Anderson had some interest in Scientology, its history, and what draws people to it, so he had that in mind as a backdrop for a film. I don't know that Boogie Nights really explored or deconstructed porn any more meaningfully than The Master deconstructed Scientology. I suspect perhaps you learned more about the porn industry than you did about Scientology because you already knew quite a bit about the latter. In either case, I don't think Anderson's aim was to instruct about the ins and outs (no pun intended, Boogie Nights) of either world.

I can’t get this movie out of my head. In a way, The Master resembles a Kubrick film in that it's made to resist an easy interpretation, as the film is meant to be read as well as experienced. Then again, at least Kubrick created an accessible character in each film for the audience to identify with (Mandrake, Hal, the narrator in Barry Lyndon, etc.). The Master is simply insanity creating friction with insanity and letting the two forces continually collide. It's a compulsory first viewing, but not necessarily a pleasant one, though arguably a great film. I've greatly enjoyed reading everyone's comments, and agree with most of them, which is odd, considering how varied they are. Feel free to rip this apart at will.

(Edit: I can see my theory doesn’t hold water, so I am removing it so other readers won’t waste their time. It’s clear that I’ll have to see this film a second time to make any sense of it. My humble apologies!)

Just got back from seeing this. I liked the performances but my Dad and I both had the same problem with the film in that you kind of wait for it to "get going" and it never really does. It's an amazing character study and falls in line with the theme running throughout Anderson's ouvre about pseudo-families. Unfortunately, as gripping as Phoenix and Hoffman were, the lack of any movement in the film leads be to firmly place The Master as my least favorite PT Anderson film.

Dansu Dansu Dansu- my recollection with the scene with Phoenix and the shop girl in the closet is that

Spoiler

she disengaged, saying 'that's far enough for now' or something like it, and put her clothes back on, after which Phoenix asked her out that evening. It seems implausible they'd have enough time for a tryst during a break, which wouldn't last longer than ten or fifteen minutes.

I enjoyed The Master for its aesthetic qualities - the music, the evocative period photography, and the capital "A" acting, which I didn't mind because that's what Paul Thomas Anderson has always been about. He directed the hell out of the movie, no doubt. I'm not so sure he wrote the hell out of it though. He has some incredibly interesting characters and a captivating setting/time period, but does he do anything really substantial with them? Aside from some minor role switching in the final scenes (i.e. who's the real master?), he flirts with some interesting scenes without really engaging with them and crafting compelling dramatic situations. I think this is why many people find the movie aimless. After the first half or so, it spins its wheels. In interview after interview, Anderson says he's still trying to figure out what the movie's about. Now, that's a pretty bizarre thing for the writer of the movie to say. Which leads me to the main point of this post - Paul Thomas Anderson has never been an intellectual filmmaker, so why are we expecting him to be one now?

Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood - after these five emotionally engaging films with rich textures and acting, why are people suddenly expecting his films to be particularly deep or intellectual? Is it because no one in American film right now really is? For example, The Master is certainly not an intellectual exercise in the way Certified Copy is. I've been an Anderson fan for a long time and read or watched countless interviews with him. His writing process primarily consists of coming up with some interesting characters and "getting them to talk to each other." Yes, some interesting themes can develop from these kinds of exercises, but that doesn't always mean they coalesce into something intellectually cohesive. Up to this point, for Anderson they haven't. He doesn't intellectualize his films from the outset and is unsure where the writing process will take him. And there's nothing wrong with that! I'll just come out and say it: The Master is not an intellectually challenging film. I don't think it's trying to be. Anderson is not Antonioni, Fellini, Tarkovsky, or even Bergman. The Master is a straight-forward story about two main characters who find they need each other for a period of time coinciding with the birth of a pseudo-religious movement and then part ways. People keep saying they need to see it again to suss out what it all means. It's pretty simple. I think most people who see the movie will get the jist of it. This is not Virginia Woolf or William Faulkner, sorry to say it.

Now, I know some people might want to attack this viewpoint, but I just think many people are trying to make Anderson into the kind of writer/director they really want at this point in American cinematic history when he's not trying to be that. He's an actor's writer/director and has an uncanny filmmaking ability. That doesn't mean his movies have to suddenly become these deep exercises that necessitate multiple viewings to "grasp." I got the themes and enjoyed the textures. This movie is about the experience of watching it. All of Anderson's movies are as far as I'm concerned. Why can't people be happy with this? Why make it out to be something it's inherently not? It's an interesting movie, but it doesn't say anything clearly because its filmmaker doesn't know how to say things that clearly. Was Magnolia clear? Hell no. He even embraced that in that film's marketing. Anderson loves the process, and as such the process of watching his films is exciting. He doesn't have the full view in mind all the time, and that's ok - that's always the kind of filmmaker he's been. He hasn't grown that much in ten years. The Master is another Paul Thomas Anderson film, with all the pros and cons that encompasses.

matrixschmatrix wrote:Dansu Dansu Dansu- my recollection with the scene with Phoenix and the shop girl in the closet is that

Spoiler

she disengaged, saying 'that's far enough for now' or something like it, and put her clothes back on, after which Phoenix asked her out that evening. It seems implausible they'd have enough time for a tryst during a break, which wouldn't last longer than ten or fifteen minutes.

Really? I don't remember that, but I'll certainly take your word for it. Thanks for the heads up.

Went and saw it this morning in glorious 70MM at the AFI in Silver Springs. There were only like twenty people in attendance, so I guess fears of it being sold out were unwarranted! It looked, naturally, gorgeous, and the theatre's sound system also highlighted the dynamic sound design of the film-- it certainly made the violent outbursts Anderson juxtaposes within his heavily formalistic set-ups all the more jarring!

Spoiler

The film is obsessed with negative masculine traits and the key to understanding the film seems to be in recognizing that it presents two competing tracks of masculine identity: There's the animalistic, overtly sexual, bodily-function fueled Base Male, the kind of gung-ho type who won the war on the battlefield and now finds his world remade to force him into obsolescence. The second track is the Arrogant Male, so sure of his rightness and his intelligence, needing to be correct and so in control that he even manufactures an entire line of "new" thought to always be one step above, ahead, and most importantly, in charge. Keep in mind the time period the film is set. This is a battle of masculine identities in the 1950s and Hoffman's Master "wins" in a society that encourages compliance and conformity by offering "the Lonely Crowd" a ticket into the new, next thing. Note how all of the Master's "healing" sessions are either public or recorded for later study by other members, self-help made external rather than internal. It's telling that the only scene we see of the Master's works being written appears to be nothing more than him taking dictation from Amy Adams' Peggy, the Lady MacBeth undertones hilariously made clear in the visual metaphor of her throne-like seat off to the side of Hoffman's desk within the obscene Hudsucker Proxy office. The masculine identity of the '50s was less concerned with where the ideas come from and more with everyone agreeing on their correctness. The era's preferred maleness wins by the film's end, as the Master's reluctant son has now replaced Freddy, reducing Pheonix to picking up sexual conquests and spouting the Master's spiel in imitations hovering between mockery and mimicry, imitations that prove the importance of Hoffman's presence and masculine identity on the psyche of the animalistic, base male-- The Master's religion is a cult alright, but it's a cult of personality and Hoffman is more than willing to play the part, just as Phoenix's Freddie, for all his attempts at an identity other than one consisting of ill-provoked outbursts and pathetic sexual posturing, is willing to play his.

Sorry I didn't see your call for a meet-up til I went through the thread tonite. Ah well, anonymity 4ever

Spoiler

If we want to look at the film from a character motivation stance, it seems like the relationship between Dodd and Freddie is one of Father and Son. The film pointedly gives Dodd three men who have varying interest in being his son / having Dodd as their father. You have Val, Dodd's actual son, who shows the least interest and subsequently appears set up a the film's end to be the most successful at the task (note his well-dressed appearance and the way the frame suggests a relationship with the comely secretary(?)-- perhaps due reward for compliance?). You have Freddie, who benefits from the fatherly attentions of Dodd without seeming to ever be aware that he's functioning in the role. He has it without asking, much to the chagrin of the third Son figure, the Son-In-Law, who at all times is made out to be the third (fourth/fifth) wheel in the family mechanics and appropriately, if I am remembering correctly, disappears from the film's narrative after the mythic motorcycle scene. Note how poorly he tries to plant doubts in Dodd's head about Freddie's desire to usurp the Master's unpublished tome, a claim likely false due to Freddie having no known economic presence whatsoever-- it's interesting further commentary on the period that Freddie operates almost wholly outside of the consumerist culture of the decade, even making his own hooch!

One question struck me today: What in the world became of the announced casting of every B-list Scientologist in Hollywood? None of them were in the film.

I guess they got Thin Red Lined*

*(Please spread this phrase around, as I am trying to make it popular. "I got cut out of the deal!" "Man, you got Thin Red Lined!")

I thought that too. But something tells me there's a more interesting story there.

mfunk9786 wrote:One question struck me today: What in the world became of the announced casting of every B-list Scientologist in Hollywood? None of them were in the film.

I wonder if Beck might have been thought of. He's a Scientologist, but apparently not too hardcore about it.