The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)

[pzadvance]

so is this it are we breaking up

[Black Hat]

Why do we look at any piece of art? For me, it's to get an understanding of how the artist views the world.

That's interesting. Personally, I wouldn't agree as some of the best art I've ever had the pleasure of encountering I had no idea who the the director, musician, painter was but, it was thru their work I gained a better understanding of the world. Therefore I would certainly argue that art is a lot more about the audience than the artist. After all, how many times have we read about people taking a deeper meaning in something that was nowhere near the artist's intention?

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.... He doesn't seem traumatized by what happened to him. We needed him to be traumatized. As viewers, we wanted to be traumatized.

Where is the confusion in what makes Freddy or Lancaster tick? To me they're very much caricatures of archetypes that we are very familiar with and not per say characters at all. Further clarity would likely strike me as unnecessary, if not irritating. Furthermore, why was it necessary to show him be traumatized? It's not clear to me how a resolution on this, whether uplifting or bleak would change much about The Master.

As I said earlier, I saw the film being much broader in scope. To place it among the classics from the directors you mentioned is indeed far fetched. Not necessarily because we lacked information or evolution one way or the other among characters because, for example, there are certainly films by Tarkovsky like say Mirror or even Stalker can be argued where characters did not end up in a different place.

My reason why the film fell short of the mark, which has been amplified in my own mind upon a week from having seen it, is that it lacked focus. The characters lacking an arc I found plausible for the reasons I stated up top, what bothered me is that it seems to be caught in between going for that high art, intellectualism and the traditional Hollywood narrative. The whole Freddy and Doris story arc falls incredibly flat which can not be ignored. Given that PTA went there in my mind lends more credence to the excellent points made by yourself, grand illusion and others.

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.

To be clear having read thru your p15 post, one note because Freddy remains unchanged?

Also, in general I don't think agree that projection is necessarily a bad thing. Why do you feel that it is?

[CSM126]

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!

I was reminded of M. Hulot. I also couldn't decide if this posture was meant to be a sign of back problems from war injuries, or just some drunken buffoonishness on his part.

[hearthesilence]

If his lips were just a little poutier, that pose would look like a Mick Jagger impersonation.

[Grand Illusion]

That's interesting. Personally, I wouldn't agree as some of the best art I've ever had the pleasure of encountering I had no idea who the the director, musician, painter was but, it was thru their work I gained a better understanding of the world. Therefore I would certainly argue that art is a lot more about the audience than the artist. After all, how many times have we read about people taking a deeper meaning in something that was nowhere near the artist's intention?

I would say that we gain a better understanding of the world by witnessing an alternate perspective, which is the artists'. I'm not saying that that biography of the artist is important. But their viewpoint is important. At the very least, it's important insofar as it shapes what the final piece of art will be. Even if they abandon it to the audience's own interpretation.

That said, you are correct that their intention doesn't matter to the final form. "The author is dead," is a valid statement. But even then, I still find the film repetitive.

What I think is valid about saying that the film doesn't have a point of view is that a film, one that runs 2 hours and 20 minutes, better be pretty damn interesting to take up that amount of time. One way to interest me (and many other critics/posters who have cited the same problem) is to present an new way of looking at the world, a new viewpoint, a vision.

A film that presents a bunch of characters in conflict and a fascinating time period and then says no more about them than its own synopsis is not interesting. I'm not really asking for a "messsage". Just a point of view or a vision or some entree into this world. Every cut is a choice, yet I feel like the edit is arbitrary. The artists' job is to make me care. About something.

To be clear having read thru your p15 post, one note because Freddy remains unchanged?

Not just Freddie. Everything beyond the 20-30 minute mark remains unchanged. Freddie, Freddie's actions, The Cause, Dodd, Amy MacBeth, the environment, the dinner parties, the milieu. Those are a fine 20 minutes, but after that, the film stagnates. The same themes are repeated, played out in different situations (Processing with no blinking this time; Freddie sexualizes naked party guests instead of a sand woman; Freddie drinks Lysol instead of a jet fuel; Dodd preaches to a book store instead of a dinner party; etc.).

I feel like everything that the film had to say, it did so in the first twenty minutes. And then it plays the same note for the rest of the duration.

Also, in general I don't think agree that projection is necessarily a bad thing. Why do you feel that it is?

I was responding to a quote that said that the depth isn't on screen.

I think we need to think of a grey area. Interpretation is definitely a good thing. I want a film that will challenge me or make me think or engage me as an audience member. I'm bringing something to the table, but I'm interacting with what's on screen. But if there is no depth on screen and all I'm doing is projecting, I don't consider that a successful piece of art. I might as well be playing with a pet rock or watching Real Steel.

[Jack Phillips]

I'm not really asking for a "messsage". Just a point of view or a vision or some entree into this world. Every cut is a choice, yet I feel like the edit is arbitrary. The artists' job is to make me care. About something.

Do you often expect others to do something for you that you could better do yourself?
Think about the first piece of film you can remember viewing. Do you remember an image from before that?
Tell me your name.
Tell me again.
One more time, please.
You are the bravest cinemagoer I have ever met.
The Master can get you to clear.
Buy another ticket.

[onedimension]

I don't want to drag on a debate unnecessarily, but to clarify, I found the film to be ambiguous (on my first viewing) not by being confusing or vague, or in terms of conveying multiple meanings, like a pun, but in the way it left indeterminate (to my mind, on one viewing) some key questions- the nature or character of 'the Cause' (it doesn't seem to me depicted "unambiguously" as a cult or a benevolent movement, and I could see plausible interpretations in either direction, but felt the film wanted to suggest the difficulty of discerning the difference), the manipulativeness of Dodd, and the change undergone by Freddie. Take Quill's scene at the end where he starts 'processing' the girl he went to bed with- when he stops and laughs about it, how do you interpret it? Is he laughing because he has positive distance and has been 'released' from the grips of a cult, is he laughing because he's 'healed' and able to have healthy relationships, or is he laughing because he's an 'animal' and he never took any of Dodd's work seriously? I don't see an easy answer to that question, and that seemed to be part of the 'thematics' of the film, to me.

[Mr Sausage]

...or in terms of conveying multiple meanings, like a pun...

Just as clarification, what I said above doesn't need to be pun-like. A good example of expansive ambiguity is The Innocents, where each event could either be the act of ghosts or the product of a disturbed mind. And the movie achieves its full effect when these two meanings are held equally in the mind. That's how this kind of ambiguity works: by having all the separate meanings be present at each moment in the mind of the viewer.

Not that that kind of ambiguity is what's going on in The Master, necessarily, but it is worth asking whether the indeterminacy allows for several meanings or interpretive options to be present, enriching the moment, or whether the moment can be interpreted only arbitrarily and is therefore incoherent. Or there is the third option (what I like to think of as the David Lynch option), where things are simply beyond interpretation, existing as a fascinating mystery. Very few directors manage to make the latter satisfying, tho'.

[swo17]

Response to onedimension in spoiler tags:

Spoiler

Take Quill's scene at the end where he starts 'processing' the girl he went to bed with

I think that's another really key moment in the film, perhaps ambiguous in intention but thematically very resonant. Compare the emotion during that processing scene to the intensity of the first one Freddie had with Dodd (or indeed, the intensity of several of their meetings). The Cause may all be an elaborate ruse but there was something undeniably powerful about that first encounter, something in those probing personal questions that pierced Freddie to his core. It was, in one way or another, something of a spiritual experience for him. To see him recreate this moment so limply and so casually with someone he'll likely never see again is simultaneously sad and frightening. Sad because it's such a pale, pathetic imitation of the bond he had with Dodd, and frightening in how it hints at Freddie's potential (or at least longing) to perhaps one day become his mentor.

[Black Hat]

But even then, I still find the film repetitive.

What I think is valid about saying that the film doesn't have a point of view is that a film, one that runs 2 hours and 20 minutes, better be pretty damn interesting to take up that amount of time. One way to interest me (and many other critics/posters who have cited the same problem) is to present an new way of looking at the world, a new viewpoint, a vision.

Yeah I see this criticism. For me I felt the repetition served its purpose as I saw the film's vision as misanthropic. The lack of evolution in characters showing how people are ultimately incapable of changing but, at the same time the lack of creativity within these scenes is indeed somewhat lazy.

in the way it left indeterminate (to my mind, on one viewing) some key questions- the nature or character of 'the Cause' (it doesn't seem to me depicted "unambiguously" as a cult or a benevolent movement... Take Quill's scene at the end where he starts 'processing' the girl he went to bed with- when he stops and laughs about it, how do you interpret it? Is he laughing because he has positive distance and has been 'released' from the grips of a cult, is he laughing because he's 'healed' and able to have healthy relationships, or is he laughing because he's an 'animal' and he never took any of Dodd's work seriously?

Well I think that's exactly it. 'Cults' or anything cult-like do possess a lot of grey area within them. I personally liked that it didn't fall on one side or the other showing, just like anything else, there's good and bad. Not sure why it would be necessary to depict it one way or the other.

Spoiler

I took the last scene as Quill getting a kick out of using an experience from his life in another, completely unrelated situation. Saw the scene as more a point of humor, about the randomness of life in general, than anything more specific or deep rooted about Quill or the film itself.

[Dansu Dansu Dansu]

I’m about to dump three thousand words on you, which is probably as much evidence as you need not to read it. Then again, I’ve been quiet for several pages, so I suppose I’m just getting my money’s worth. My first viewing was an anxious one, disliking Freddie yet feeling his discomfort, a viewing heavily influenced by my own religious upbringing. My recent second viewing was enthralling. I don’t know if my observations are “correct” but at the very least, I perceived the action as follows while watching the film and had a complete and satisfying experience.

Spoiler

On my second viewing, I was amazed at how blatant Freddie’s PTSD was implied. The entire first act concentrates on Freddie in the service and his shortcomings at readjusting to civilian life. Freddie’s face is tightly framed in all remembrances of the war (including the lengthy opening shot). This suggests his isolation from the world was caused by his experiences in action.

He creates another sand woman on the beach after he masturbates (the first one was holding beers). This time, her arm is outstretched, inviting him to lay by her breast. This could suggest neither drinking nor sex is his master, but instead his desire for unconditional acceptance, as the oedipal themes suggest.

After his Rorschach test, he is admitted to a V.A. hospital, where they reassure everyone that due to the youthful rejuvenation of their minds, they can return to society and function at gas stations and chicken coops. Again, this is a direct confirmation that Freddie’s condition was war-induced. They specifically state no one will understand what they’ve been through.

In the hospital, the doctor asks him about a letter he received. Freddie says he cried while reading Doris’ letter because of nostalgia. What he’s really saying is in that moment, he was nostalgic for who he used to be in a world no longer accessible.

When the doctor asks about his dream, Freddie recalls his family was around the table, laughing and drinking. It’s the image of the American nuclear family. Then, he laments, “Why couldn’t it have stopped there?” We move straight from that question to his job as a photographer, viewing a montage of happy middle class families and their children, albeit with something slightly off in their appearance. He seems to enjoy the association with the so-called normal, though it’s ironic that he is the one defining it.

We see Freddie boozing in the backroom as the soundtrack plays “Get Behind Me Satan”. “Satan” in this case is his war trauma, which threatens his stability at work. Freddie’s drinking of “secrets” is directly related with being incapable of dealing with his trauma, aided by his genetic predisposal to alcohol.

It is an overweight, upper class businessman who first provokes Freddie’s wrath, obviously outraged at having to take a photo which reinforces the man’s importance over him. “You’re taking this for your wife?” he asks insincerely. “Y-yes,” the man replies, off guard. He then tests the power of his position, seeing how long the man will stay while burning him with his lamp, just as Dodd tests his control during the window-wall conditioning. Of course, the upper class businessman wins, and the next time we see Freddie, he has dropped to the lower class, harvesting in fields. (The floor model acts upper class in her lower middle class job. She mocks her affluent posturing with Freddie, which appears to put him at ease. Dodd will do the same thing.)

The man with alcohol poisoning looks like Freddie’s father. Despite later blaming the man for getting into his concoction, Freddie is the one who poured his glass and told him to drink it. That his father was an alcoholic raises an interesting question: is his trouble with authority from an abusive, alcoholic father, and he actually tries to poison the man, or was his father simply a drunkard and Freddie mistakenly gave the old man as much booze as his father would have downed? He legitimately seems fond of the old man, not anxious in his presence. When the migrant workers are tending to him, he attempts to give the old man water and appears genuinely concerned, though this could be to appease his guilt.

Freddie jumps back on a boat, as he has defined his limits in society, but also, from the land, the party on board promises familial warmth and elegance. The boat juxtaposes freedom and an image of community he wishes he could possess.

In their first meeting, Dodd states the ship is under his control. Clearly, Dodd knows what he’s doing from the get-go, addressing him in naval terms. When asked his profession, Dodd lists a string of jobs such as a doctor and nuclear physicist, but rejects all of them by saying ultimately, he is a man. Freddie is very pleased by this. Dodd is apparently the greatest man in all of society, upper class 100%, yet he wipes that away to be on Freddie’s level.

I honestly believe we learn what we need to know about Freddie’s background from his first processing. His father died an alcoholic, his mother went insane, and his aunt most likely raised him. (“Where is she?” Dodd asks. “I don’t know, probably at home,” Freddie replies.) If his Aunt raised him, then he had sex with his maternal figure. With his incestuous background, Freddie represents another unsightly undercurrent of the celebrated American image. Also, Freddie is more self-aware than I originally gave him credit for. He understands he’s a liar, he thinks about how insignificant he is, and he knows he doesn’t fit in to society. He admits he killed Japanese soldiers in the war. He says it doesn’t bother him, though seconds later he becomes unhinged, confessing about the old man he might have killed.

I found the Doris flashback moving on my second viewing. He gets a hug from her mom. It’s a traditional homecoming for a soldier without a home. Doris asks to kiss him and he gives her his cheek. He slowly warms to the idea of kissing her (Anderson cuts on their second kiss, but shows their third). He respects Doris in his way. She isn’t a sex object. He leaves her because he no longer knows how to function in society; by leaving, he sustains the fantasy of their possible happiness. He takes an oil drilling job in Shanghai, yet his passion expressed while ripping off Doris’ window screen shows a deep regret at not being able to enter her domesticated world, only kiss her goodbye from her window. Greenwood’s score is unusually sincere at this moment, and in my second viewing, I found myself emotionally in sync with the score, where as in the first viewing, the score felt like a distancing technique.

When Dodd tells Freddie he is the bravest man he has ever met, in a way, it’s appropriate for the moment. Dodd is giving him a benediction, forgiving him for his actions and accepting him into his family. His methods clearly give him power over Freddie, but at this point, this is an emotional cleansing, and Freddie finally receives his unconditional acceptance.

Immediately after this, we land in New York. We visit a patron’s upper class home, the true owner of the ship. This suggests most of his funding comes from upper class followers, not from the middle and working class. Like any ambitious American entrepreneur, his ultimate goal is to make his work agreeable with the dominant ideology. This is in part his fascination with Freddie; if he can convert him, he can convert anyone. If he can exploit the working class, where belief in faith-based healing is most deeply rooted, The Cause will find success. This is similar to how televangelists worked in the 80s.

We move to a middle class home in Pittsburgh, with its grand front porch and affirmation of the suburban Midwestern family. Their imminent arrest suggests he moved from the NY upper crust defensively, as it had started to turn on The Cause. This constant moving suggests Dodd does not have a home, and is as adrift and classless as Freddie. In this light, his position over Freddie is all the more tenuous and manipulative. This also kicks off his second phase, to win over the masses with a more accessible, Reader’s Digest-friendly second book about laughter, which Freddie inspired. (During processing, after Freddie farts, Dodd says, “It’s good to laugh; sometimes we forget that during processing.” Peggy had previous mentioned that Lancaster is working on his second book because Freddie inspired him.)

Val is one of the most sympathetic characters in the film, especially for Freddie. The way he tells Freddie his father makes it up is in a humored tone, as if he’s talking to a friend. Unlike the rest of the family, he doesn’t dislike Freddie, perhaps having already experienced Freddie’s arc with Dodd to completion. After Dodd reprimands Freddie for his violence in the townhouse and leaves the room, Val and Freddie are left visible through the door frame, and Freddie squeezes Val’s shoulder, as if two sons left behind. Hearing Dodd is a liar from Val has a stronger effect on him than if it came from anyone else; this is reflected in how his violence is largely limited to shoving Val’s chair before the police arrive (obviously an act of restraint from someone of his conditioned rage). While yelling at Dodd in prison, Freddie screams that even his own son doesn’t like him, suggesting Val’s revelation is the beginning of his distrust in his own father/son relationship with Dodd.

In jail, we can see Freddie’s shoulder blade protruding from his back. His shoulders are always slanted forward, which is perhaps why he finds standing akimbo so comfortable. A friend of mine recently told me his yoga instructor mentioned slanted shoulders are a sign of “severe emotional trauma” in one’s life. I have no idea if that’s a widespread belief in yoga circles, but it certainly fits the PTSD theory.

When Freddie is released, Dodd welcomes him back like the prodigal son as his audience claps, creating a respectable narrative for god-fearing suburbia, except they roll on the ground like animals and rip Freddie’s pants. Nothing is allowed to be a perfect mirror of the paradigm. After his return, partly because of his family’s pressure to ostracize Freddie, processing begins in earnest. He has flashbacks to the war during his processing which indicates the processing is hitting an unmovable object. Peggy’s pornographic story appears to be about a father encouraging his son to have sex his mother, which makes Dodd very uncomfortable. “I don’t want to hear this from you,” he pleads. Yet, once Freddie is declared successful through his assertion he can go anywhere from the window (now in the opposite situation of being at Doris’ window, inside looking out), The Cause moves west again, this time to Phoenix for their rebirth as an American institution, not simply a fascination for wealthy widows.

The photo shoots communicate the growing chasm between the two men, as Dodd begins to show his hand in oppressive ways. First, Dodd is dressed like the postwar hero, a cowboy (just missing the lasso) and questions Freddie if he knows how to do his job. Freddie, though his back is to us, is identified as upset. Second, Dodd is at his desk, looking exactly like the overweight upper class businessman at the beginning of the film. There are even two lamps prominently in frame, referencing the ones he pushed against the businessman’s face. While Freddie takes the photo, his head is down and obscured in darkness, while Dodd is bathed in adoring light.

The book reveal is the final straw for Freddie. He hands out fliers in front of the theater, promising cures for trauma and the love everyone needs, which almost cruelly contrasts his experience with The Cause. During the book reveal, Freddie looks down his nose at Dodd. He is unsure. So is Dodd, who can barely muster the energy to get through his speech. Dodd’s imagery, the book cover and the wall banner, is similar to the images in the Rorschach test, suggesting a parallel between Freddie and Dodd’s mental state, though only the latter has the power to repackage his trauma in the likeness of American kitsch.

Freddie beats up the editor, then respectfully puts his hat on the bench, sits down, and cries. He’s no longer boisterously defending Dodd, laughing about people with their smart lip. Despite his connection with Dodd, he no longer admires him.

Dodd is ridiculously pompous during the desert scene. Dressed like Brando in The Wild Bunch, he waves them out of their car, straddling an example of conspicuous consumption, the desert apparently Dodd’s attempt to marry religious aggrandizement with class. While watching Freddie on the bike, Dodd commends, “He’s going fast. Good boy.” I take this to imply Dodd feels his conditioning has been successful, as he is obeying the rules without concern for injury, making Freddie a demonstration of Dodd’s power more than an individual with value. When he doesn’t return, he realizes his experiment has failed. Dodd emulates the showcase reality but cannot harness America’s dragon.

Freddie returns home to Doris’ mom. He wants to know if Doris was sincerely in pain when he never came back. She was. He let her down, but in a way, she didn’t. She actually loved him. This might have helped him more than anything. That her name is Doris Day suggests a perfect integration with American culture, the American dream left slightly ironic by her husband serving in the Navy.

During his nap in the Casper screening, indicating he has nowhere to go and nothing to do with this time, he receives his telephone call. “Dodd” says he’s working on a cure for insanity, “to cure you!" What a heartbreaking comment for Freddie to project. It shows he is not insane, as he is frightened by his own behavior and wishes to be cured. “A Captain never leaves his ship!” says the Friendly Ghost. Next shot we’re hovering over the waters in the wake of a boat, a repeated motif which reminds me of a lonely God hovering over the waters before the seven days of creation. It is always accompanied by a forlorn cue.

Moving to England allows The Cause to escape their troubles temporarily, but also changes their goal. Dodd is again pursuing the upper class, this time youth instead of aged for his institution of indoctrination. Val greets him. I don’t believe Val is brainwashed. Again, when he meets Freddie, he seems emotionally sincere. That Val is back into the fold reinforces the overpowering need to find love and acceptance, a contrast to being a sailor alone on the seas. It’s his turn to be the prodigal son. When Dodd gives his “if you find out how not to serve a master, come back and let the rest of us know, please” speech, I believe this is Dodd speaking without any pretense. He can do so because he has no real need for him anymore. Freddie mentions Dodd told him in his dream that he remembered how they met. Dodd goes back into master role and makes up shit about balloons, though it’s interesting that they shared war responsibilities in this alleged past; when he repeatedly suggests they’ve met somewhere before, he means they both separately fought in the same war, and yet, they understand each other perfectly.

Freddie cries with Dodd during the "Slow Boat to China" serenade because they both understand life as a voyage of loneliness without a meaningful destination. The song links back to Freddie abandoning Doris for the oil rig on multiple levels, as he sings he wishes they could leave their loves on the shore to be together. Through the song, he expresses his wish to create a world where neither of them are the captain, one which will leave them alone, which is Peggy’s constant mantra against the encroachment of reality on her dream world. Because they cannot recreate the world and its damaging history, they either accept the fantasy or part ways.

While having sex with the girl from the bar, he repeats processing scripting in an affectionate way. Her physical “earthiness” recalls the nude party scene, and she directly recalls the bar maid in the "I’ll Go No More A-Roving" sea shanty, except his treatment towards her isn’t misogynistic. He isn’t aggressively fucking her like the sand woman; in fact, she’s on top. He’s relating to her as sincerely as he knows how, attempting to recreate the most intimate moment of his life, drawing on his own experience on how to make a connection, flawed as it is. He laughs with her at himself. That he falls out suggests sex is of equal importance as their companionship. Since Freddie has so many sexual misadventures in this film, it surprised me when I realized this is the first time Freddie has sex in the story, implied or shown. This might be the first adult, mature sexual connection he’s made in his life. The next and final shot creates a contrast from the real to the ideal, with his own image of unconditional love, the sand woman, motionless next to him, offering her breast, though the focus is on Freddie. The soundtrack is playing "Changing Partners", in which the singer changes partners throughout life, waiting until she can dance with her true love. Freddie has taken steps into the external world, where flexibility and integration are necessities, yet at his core, his desire for unconditional acceptance keeps him waiting, which renders him ultimately alone. The internalized world on which The Cause preys seems the point; the master everyone serves is themselves, their own history, their own sense of importance to the world and their narrative, and in this is our inherent isolation.

[Michael]

Saw The Master again today. I was struck once again by how much I loved the department store scene. My favorite scene of the entire film. I could watch three hours of that scene stretched out. So beautiful and perfect.

[Black Hat]

'The Bater'

http://youtu.be/B_ipIHgBk2I" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

pretty funny parody of the film

[Dylan]

Saw The Master again today. I was struck once again by how much I loved the department store scene. My favorite scene of the entire film. I could watch three hours of that scene stretched out. So beautiful and perfect.

Yes! I'm blown away that it took so long for somebody to bring this up. I wasn't particularly moved by The Master, but I found this scene breathtaking. Among other things, it spoke to my great longing to see a modern film about 1950's fashion and film photography, two great passions of mine. The Ella Fitzgerald song itself is gorgeous & it's seemingly choreographed to the visuals with an almost balletic effect. The girl in this scene, Amy Ferguson, is a former model and that really comes through in her movement as she circles the store saying "Forty-nine ninety-five." Also, the lighting set-ups (and styling) of the couples and children and teenagers as Phoenix was photographing them was just spot-on to the kind of portrait photography being done in the era.

[mfunk9786]

Hour-long PTA interview from SiriusXM, transcribed into text on Cigarettes & Red Vines

[mfunk9786]

Joaquin Phoenix doesn't want to be nominated for an Oscar, calls awards season for Walk the Line one of the most uncomfortable times in his life

[domino harvey]

The Academy loves nominating/awarding actors who either really want it or really don't. This only helps his chances, as odd as that may sound

[mfunk9786]

I think his statement was awesome - I genuinely believe him, and genuinely believe that he doesn't think he's above it, it just makes him uncomfortable. But here's the thing - he's going to be nominated. He just is. This is one of those performances that gets nominated. So I guess his next step will just have to be not showing up for the ceremony, which is a pretty cool throwback. The only thing I like more than the Oscars is apathy towards the Oscars from nominees/winners. It's captivating.

[aberfoyle]

I found a posted script online that appears to match up with the early version described earlier in this thread.

http://yardsofgrapevine.files.wordpress ... -draft.pdf

I'm about 2/3 through reading it but so far it makes a whole lot more sense as a narrative than what ended up in the film, which I've seen twice.

[TheDudeAbides]

Watched The Master a week ago and I still don't quite know what to make of it. It has a lot to behold and a lot to take in, the film is still festering in my brain as I'm trying to make out exactly what I watched.

The cinematography for one is absolutely breathtaking, colors never looked as sharp or vibrant as they have on this beautiful 65mm print. Digital filmmaking can't even hold a torch to this, sure the Alexa looks alright, maybe even close to 35mm (especially Roger Deakins cine), but it can't compare one bit to what PT Anderson and Mihai Malaimare Jr did on this project. The depth of field they used was nuts, kudos to the focus puller who must have had an insanely difficult job ensuring he got everything in focus, especially considering how many moving shots were in this picture. There was such a low DOF that in some scenes, the actors eyes were in focus but not their noses, it was nuts.

Phoenix and Seymour Hoffman were absolutely incredible. The only reason I can't see them capturing Oscar gold is because of Joaquin's comments about the academy. Phoenix may have been somewhat blacklisted after his stunt with I'm Still Here but after this film he will most definitely be back as he proved himself to be one of the most elite and talented actors in modern cinema. If anything you should see this film just to watch his performance as the animalistic and unhinged Freddie Quell, it was absolutely phenomenal. Seymour Hoffman was equally incredible, in every scene he was in you could feel his power and stature, he reminded me so much of Orson Welles, specifically as Charles Foster Kane.

I need to see this film once or twice more to fully appreciate it and understand its symbolism and meaning, but one thing I know for sure is that it is a beautifully composed film with masterful performances; it is definitely something all cinema fans should experience.

Rating upon first viewing 8.5/10

[GaryC]

Now passed by the BBFC with a 15 certificate. The running time is 143m 39s, which is longer than the running times previously noted.

[wigwam]

I found a posted script online that appears to match up with the early version described earlier in this thread.

http://yardsofgrapevine.files.wordpress ... -draft.pdf

I'm about 2/3 through reading it but so far it makes a whole lot more sense as a narrative than what ended up in the film, which I've seen twice.

I think that's the one they started with when Jeremey Renner was cast as Quell and the financing fell apart and rehearsals w/ Renner, PTA and PSH left the last two disheartened and PSH told PTA that the interesting part of the story was Queel not Dodd. My understanding is that was all late 2010.

Anyone hear the Fresh Air interview where PTA states he wrote the Questionaire scene 7 years ago? Also some great stuff about Phoenix's process and Robards's mix recipe for coconut milk and torpedo ethanol

[Dansu Dansu Dansu]

For members in the L.A. area, LACMA is hosting "An Evening with Paul Thomas Anderson" on November 2nd. While they haven't announced a date for general admission tickets, LACMA members may buy their tickets this evening.

[domino harvey]

PTA screens 20-minute reel of deleted scenes, will appear on Blu/DVD

[pzadvance]

PTA screens 20-minute reel of deleted scenes, will appear on Blu/DVD

I saw this and it was damned delightful. Slashfilm basically breaks it all down but it featured a lot of the missing bits from the script I detailed in an earlier post. I love that Anderson puts some effort into the presentation of this extra material--much like he did on the Punch-Drunk Love DVD, this functions more as a 20-minute companion piece, a short film in its own right, rather than just a series of excised scenes.