Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film “The Master” begins on a calm but ominous note. In the opening scenes, we meet Naval officer Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix). He’s currently at sea in the Pacific, during World War II.
The first five or so minutes of the film consists of Freddie and his fellow sailors passing time on their battleship, or on some kind of island beach, joking and mucking around. We don’t see any kind of fighting — not even between the lads. There appears to be no visible danger.
And, yet, something’s not quite right. Anderson and cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. frame each shot in a way that gives you a claustrophobic sensation. The piece of music that plays over the sequence (by Jonny Greenwood, who scored the rest of the movie) is a fairly simple instrumental piece — consisting of drums, various strings and a few woodwind instruments — and yet there’s something disturbingly offbeat about it, something sinister.
Beneath this seemingly tranquil scene of military life lies a feeling of unease and danger. The opening scene has a wonderfully rhythmic quality to it, as well as a hypnotic one. It’s so basic, but effective and alive, and it sets the tone for the rest of the movie.
“The Master” is similar to Anderson’s last film, 2007’s “There Will Be Blood,” in that they’re both period pieces, and they contain so many themes, symbols and other ambiguities that you need to be fully attentive while viewing it. And even then, you won’t understand everything on the initial go-around. It has multiple gears working on multiple levels.
The film is definitely a little bewildering; in fact, the movie is so dense that it sort of feels like even Anderson doesn’t quite know what he’s getting at. But the film is still immensely intelligent, and in terms of filmmaking alone, it’s a masterpiece.
The mirage
The movie resumes, post-WWII in the 1950s. Freddie has now been put back in the rat race, and he’s suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder. He has wild, erratic behaviors and violent mood swings.
Among the movie’s many ideas: a surface-level feeling of normality, with an underlying eeriness — order and disorder.
Everything about “The Master” is so clean and put-together. The period décor — the production design by David Crank and Jack Fisk and the costume design by Mark Bridges — is so very neat, and as it should be. The movie has picture-perfect appearance that feels almost too-good-to-be-true, like a dream state.
Whatever it is, Freddie doesn’t fit in. One day, while working at his new job as a photographer in a department store, he picks a random fight with a well-dressed, wealthy-looking man.
Phoenix — whose last movie was the awful 2010 mockumentary “I’m Still Here,” where he played a super-exaggerated version of himself — sinks right into this role, and it’s a role that plays to those crazy, animalistic sensibilities seen in “I’m Still Here.” He plays Freddie with a drunken eccentricity.
After being run out of a few other odd jobs, Freddie ends up back on the water on a mysterious passenger boat full of seemingly normal people. It’s here where he meets Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the leader of a questionable cult called The Cause (shown to be similar to Scientology).
Freddie hangs out with the various members, one of which is Lancaster’s wife, Peggy (a creepy Amy Adams), and he has a few drinking sessions with Lancaster.
For the most part, Freddie remains as an outside observer, looking in at this strange, seemingly blissful world — and that applies to the rest of the movie.
Even after Lancaster breaks him down in a lightning-round-style interview session on board — where we learn about his tortured past — and even when they return to land, Freddie always retains that outsider status.
“The Master” isn’t really about Lancaster or The Cause. It doesn’t explore the politics of cults very often; Anderson doesn’t really take us into the mind of Lancaster.
In the end, “The Master” is about Freddie: He’s the major puzzle the audience must solve. He comes off crazy and weak, but is he really? Is he more aware and strong-willed than he seems? That brings Freddie’s outsider status back into mind.
Good performances, direction
One thing missing from “The Master” is Anderson’s usual sense of camera movement. Every scene in “The Master” is so staged, calculated and thought-out. Everything down to the very last hair atop Lancaster’s slicked-back, perfect hairdo is accounted for. Anderson achieves a beautiful, eloquent fluidity that gave movies like “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia” a real pop.
But “The Master” doesn’t exactly pop, and it is a little rigid and oppressive.
Even so, you walk away impressed with ‘The Master” in terms of craftsmanship and the amount of substance Anderson packs into his screenplay. Besides the performances and Anderson’s direction, it’s that idea and feeling of order, as well as disorder, that propels “The Master” forward.
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