The Mas­ter

A swirl of ocean water. The cold touch of Navy steel. A thou­sand-yard stare set beneath the bul­let-dim­pled con­tours of a Brodie hel­met. With­in the open­ing frames of The Mas­ter, the tick­er-tape eupho­ria of the Allied vic­to­ry is off­set by the painful truth that for some men World War Two nev­er real­ly end­ed. Of the count­less young sol­diers that were struck down by some form of psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma, only the most acute cas­es were suc­cess­ful­ly treat­ed by exper­i­men­tal ther­a­pies such as hyp­no­sis and nar­cosyn­the­sis. For oth­ers, the hor­rors of war remained indeli­bly fresh.

Wait­ing out the last days of the war on the cham­pagne sands of an uniden­ti­fied island in the South Pacif­ic, Fred­die Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) first appears more beast than man. Shirt­less and dishev­elled like some bat­tle-weary Robin­son Cru­soe, we watch him hack away at coconuts with a blunt machete and wres­tle his Navy bud­dies on the shore. He is a har­row­ing pic­ture of post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der; his sunken eyes (blood­shot from an addic­tion to crude liquor picked up dur­ing his tour) deep pools of anguish, his wiry frame twist­ed and stiff from years of front-line action. He is both lit­er­al­ly and metaphor­i­cal­ly at sea. A trag­ic addi­tion to writer/​director Paul Thomas Anderson’s crowd­ed ros­ter of lost souls.

Back on home soil, Fred­die is told by his supe­ri­ors that the respon­si­bil­i­ties of peace­time rest on his shoul­ders. He can become a chick­en farmer, gro­cery clerk or depart­ment store pho­tog­ra­ph­er, return to edu­ca­tion or start a fam­i­ly. It doesn’t real­ly mat­ter. The Gold­en Age of Amer­i­can Cap­i­tal­ism is dawn­ing and hap­pi­ness is assured to those who are will­ing to reach out and grab it. But Fred­die is pre­car­i­ous­ly out of step with the new­ly gal­vanised civil­ian pop­u­la­tion, his psy­choso­cial adjust­ment fraught with anti­so­cial out­bursts and irre­press­ible car­nal urges. He prowls the shad­ows of soci­ety look­ing for a quick fix (and a quick fuck) wher­ev­er he can get it. He is sav­age and insatiable.

One ine­bri­at­ed evening Fred­die boards a pri­vate yacht, the Alethia, lured by bright lights and the sounds of rev­el­ry spilling from the deck. The next morn­ing he is sum­moned to the captain’s cham­bers like a stow­away. It’s here that Fred­die is for­mal­ly intro­duced to Lan­cast­er Dodd (Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man), a robust, well-groomed man dressed in a regal night­shirt and bathed in a soft, exalt­ing light. Appar­ent­ly struck with an over­whelm­ing sense of déjà vu, Dodd embraces Fred­die with curi­ous affec­tion, allud­ing to a pri­or meet­ing between them – not from the night before (which we know to be their first meet­ing even though, cru­cial­ly, we nev­er see it) but some oth­er indis­tinct point in time. Per­haps a past life. Dodd asserts that he is a writer, doc­tor, nuclear physi­cist and the­o­ret­i­cal philoso­pher, and that he and Fred­die are both ​“hope­less­ly inquis­i­tive” men, an assess­ment that great­ly amus­es his guest.

In phi­los­o­phy, ​‘alethia’ refers to the under­stand­ing of truth, some­thing that is evi­dent or ful­ly dis­closed. In chris­ten­ing Dodd’s ves­sel accord­ing­ly, Ander­son sub­lim­i­nal­ly evokes the under­ly­ing prin­ci­ple of The Cause, a mys­te­ri­ous reli­gious sci­ence group found­ed by Dodd on his own abstract ide­ol­o­gy. Teas­ing­ly, there is no evi­dence per­tain­ing to Dodd’s self-pro­fessed list of accom­plish­ments, and yet Philip Sey­mour Hoffman’s per­for­mance is so com­mand­ing that we imme­di­ate­ly accept Dodd for who he is (that is, every­thing he claims to be). Although lat­er we will come to view him as a com­pelling pub­lic speak­er, a self-styled phil­an­thropist, a con­man and a char­la­tan, for now, deep in the bow­els of the Alethia, he appears unre­served­ly sin­cere, some­one to be trust­ed. Like Fred­die, we quick­ly fall under his spell.

In the film’s stand­out scene, which brings to mind the open­ing din­er table exchange between Philip Bak­er Hall and John C Reil­ly in Anderson’s 1996 debut Hard Eight, Fred­die agrees to par­tic­i­pate in a one-on-one coun­selling-cum-con­di­tion­ing exer­cise that Dodd has coined ​‘pro­cess­ing’. With a tape recorder rolling, Dodd instructs Fred­die to respond with­out hes­i­tat­ing or blink­ing, and pro­ceeds to rat­tle off a sequence of prob­ing and repet­i­tive ques­tions: Are you thought­less in your remarks? Do your past fail­ures both­er you? Have you ever had sex­u­al con­tact with a mem­ber of your family?

What begins as an infor­mal pro­fil­ing ses­sion – filmed as a breath­less sin­gle-shot close-up – quick­ly esca­lates into some­thing more sin­is­ter. Dodd’s fas­ci­na­tion with Fred­die con­geals into raw obses­sion as he mer­ci­less­ly peels back the lay­ers of his subject’s psy­che. Amid rev­e­la­tions of a recur­ring dream about his moth­er and a deep-seed­ed resent­ment towards his estranged father, it becomes appar­ent that, while his malaise was com­pound­ed by his time at war, Freddie’s con­di­tion could well be root­ed in an ear­li­er trau­ma. In this moment a pre­scient ques­tion aris­es: is it pos­si­ble to break what is already broken?

Fred­die is told that he has wan­dered from the prop­er path and is asked to look ​“back beyond” to return to the pre-birth era. Dodd knows that before him sits not just a wor­thy bene­fac­tor of The Cause but a right­hand man in wait­ing, some­one who might sub­stan­ti­ate his bold the­o­ries. But Fred­die is more inter­est­ed in his own self-med­icat­ing hipflask than Dodd’s pecu­liar self-help ton­ics. The big idea of The Cause is that sal­va­tion comes from return­ing man to his inher­ent state of per­fec­tion, a hypoth­e­sis that pro­vokes adu­la­tion and scep­ti­cism in equal mea­sure. As one out­spo­ken cyn­ic elo­quent­ly observes dur­ing one of Dodd’s heal­ing ses­sions, sci­ence based on the will of one man is the basis of cult.

This is the only time you’ll hear the ​‘c’ word in The Mas­ter. Ander­son isn’t inter­est­ed in draw­ing par­al­lels between The Cause and any real-life qua­si-reli­gious group. Rather, he uses the con­cept of fanati­cism as a spring­board into a broad­er eval­u­a­tion of paci­fism ver­sus rad­i­cal­ism, good ver­sus evil, and truth ver­sus fic­tion. Onto this dense the­mat­ic frame­work he weaves numer­ous motifs from his pre­vi­ous five fea­tures: the dys­func­tion­al fam­i­ly, the sur­ro­gate father, the sex­u­al­ly dom­i­neer­ing male.

Freddie’s over-active libido, for instance, is exposed some­what sur­re­al­ly dur­ing a din­ner par­ty scene in which he men­tal­ly denudes every female guest, as well as dur­ing a Rorschach test at the Naval debrief­ing base and in flash­backs to that cham­pagne beach where Fred­die aggres­sive­ly dry humps (in the most lit­er­al sense) a volup­tuous fig­ure sculpt­ed out of sand. Ander­son has spo­ken of a fix­a­tion with pornog­ra­phy that devel­oped in his ear­ly teens, a vice that would man­i­fest itself in his 1988 debut short, The Dirk Dig­gler Sto­ry, and Boo­gie Nights, the 1997 fea­ture it inspired. Like Dodd, Ander­son nei­ther vic­timis­es nor con­demns Fred­die but instead views him as a kind of ani­mal, some­one who can only hope to van­quish his demons once his prim­i­tive impuls­es have been suppressed.

To Dodd, Fred­die is part pet project, part prodi­gal son – a ded­i­cat­ed under­study who is pre­pared to sac­ri­fice him­self for The Cause even though we sus­pect he doesn’t ful­ly under­stand why. He serves Dodd with unwa­ver­ing loy­al­ty, clash­ing with police at the home of a bene­fac­tor when Dodd is arrest­ed for embez­zle­ment, show­ing no regard for his per­son­al wel­fare. This reck­less­ness makes Dodd’s fam­i­ly – demure matri­arch Peg­gy (a spar­ing­ly used but sen­sa­tion­al Amy Adams) and bio­log­i­cal kids Val (Jesse Ple­mons) and Eliz­a­beth (Ambyr Childers) – increas­ing­ly wary of The Cause’s dis­rup­tive new recruit. Fred­die feeds and facil­i­tates Dodd’s mono­ma­nia, inspir­ing some­thing in him that no one, not even his wife, can explain. Under­stand­ably Peg­gy feels threat­ened by Fred­die, but she tol­er­ates his vol­canic per­son­al­i­ty because she loves her hus­band too much to jeop­ar­dise his new­found cre­ative momentum.

If all this iden­ti­fies The Mas­ter as an inti­mate char­ac­ter study, real­ly it is so much more than that. It’s a stark and at times unset­tling study of the human con­di­tion as seen through the eyes of two enig­mat­ic indi­vid­u­als both step­ping to their own beat at a time when social con­ser­vatism was becom­ing increas­ing­ly preva­lent. Amer­i­ca in the 1950s may have been a land of pros­per­i­ty and oppor­tu­ni­ty, but this was also a decade in which the fear of com­mu­nism and the per­sis­tent threat of nuclear con­flict weighed heavy on the pub­lic consciousness.

This polarised mood is reflect­ed in both Jon­ny Greenwood’s fret­ful jazz-infused score and Mihai Malaimare Jr’s dream­i­ly tex­tured 70mm palette. Fill­ing in for Anderson’s reg­u­lar DoP Robert Elswit (who was busy film­ing The Bourne Lega­cy at the time of pro­duc­tion), Malaimare Jr man­ages to accen­tu­ate every metic­u­lous peri­od detail with­out ever dis­tract­ing from the metaphor­i­cal nuances in Anderson’s script.

Like Daniel Plain­view before him, Dodd is pre­sent­ed as a prin­ci­pled fam­i­ly man. But above all he is a man of bul­let­proof con­vic­tion, some­one self-assured and arro­gant enough to stand behind his ideas how­ev­er unusu­al and implau­si­ble they might be. Amer­i­ca was built by men like Dodd, by the dream­ers and pio­neers whose feats cap­tured the public’s imag­i­na­tion and trans­formed a young nation rav­aged by civ­il war into an eco­nom­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal super­pow­er. Of course, The Cause is a means to Dodd’s own finan­cial and hubris­tic ends and not an altru­is­tic invest­ment in his coun­try­men or species at large. Yet what­ev­er his motives, it’s clear that Dodd is not about to let any­thing or any­one stand in the way of his pur­suit of greatness.

Flu­id long takes and elab­o­rate Steadicam track­ing shots are recog­nised hall­marks of Anderson’s work, yet in The Mas­ter it is the pro­tag­o­nists them­selves that are notice­ably rest­less. We know that both men rel­ish the sting of salt water in their lungs, but while Fred­die drifts along in search of stead­ier foot­ing, Dodd’s nomadic migra­to­ry pat­tern – he trav­els from San Fran­cis­co to New York City via the Pana­ma Canal before even­tu­al­ly upping sticks to Eng­land – is by turns the result of his dis­dain for the white pick­et fence ide­al­ism of this mid-cen­tu­ry boom and an occu­pa­tion­al haz­ard of his con­flict-rid­den cru­sade. While ini­tial­ly this shared dis­con­nect from the land strength­ens Fred­die and Dodd’s bond, it’s not long before their tac­it kin­ship comes unstuck.

Fred­die accom­pa­nies Dodd to the desert to retrieve a buried trunk con­tain­ing Dodd’s unpub­lished work, which is bound in print under the title ​‘The Split Saber’ and suf­fixed, ​‘A gift to Homo sapi­ens’. At the book’s launch, Lau­ra Dern’s hith­er­to devout believ­er picks up on a sub­tle ter­mi­no­log­i­cal incon­sis­ten­cy, prompt­ing Dodd to unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly lose his cool. We know he’s just mak­ing it all up as he goes along – his phi­los­o­phy deals in tril­lenia and advo­cates time trav­el as a ratio­nal pas­sage to spir­i­tu­al enlight­en­ment – but for the first time the mask slips and Fred­die begins to chal­lenge his master’s voice.

In an attempt to reaf­firm Freddie’s faith, Dodd takes him back into the desert. Dri­ving into the mid­dle of nowhere, Dodd picks a point on the hori­zon and races towards it on his motor­cy­cle before return­ing to his start­ing posi­tion. It’s a typ­i­cal­ly absurd stunt, the kind of pseu­do-the­o­ry Dodd is used to see­ing Fred­die lap up. Not this time. Fred­die floors it and doesn’t look back, leav­ing a crest­fall­en Dodd to traipse across the desert in embit­tered con­tem­pla­tion. After going their sep­a­rate ways, Fred­die and Dodd reunite in Eng­land at The Cause’s lav­ish new head­quar­ters. Fred­die had been expect­ing to be wel­comed with open arms, and is vis­i­bly upset when Dodd, with Peg­gy at his side, acts indif­fer­ent­ly towards him.

Just as Burt Reynolds’ Jack Horner reached the end of his teth­er with Dirk Dig­gler in Boo­gie Nights, so Dodd has come to accept the fact he will nev­er be able to muz­zle Fred­die, let alone mould him in his image. But Dodd’s aloof­ness car­ries anoth­er mean­ing. He has felt the pain of hav­ing his heart bro­ken by Fred­die before, and though he yearns for his adopt­ed son to reas­sume his place at the head of the flock, he knows he couldn’t bear to watch him ride off over the hori­zon again.

Fred­die may be emo­tion­al­ly stunt­ed, but does that auto­mat­i­cal­ly make him more sus­cep­ti­ble to being manip­u­lat­ed by a charis­mat­ic shaman like Dodd? If the gen­er­al­i­sa­tion that the world is divid­ed into those who lead and those who choose to be led is to be believed, is it also true that, as Dodd points out, ​“Every one of us is liv­ing for some mas­ter”? Are human beings sim­ply hard­wired to con­form? Or are we all search­ing for a high­er truth? These are the types of ques­tions that make The Mas­ter so com­pelling – not because there are no straight or easy answers but because Ander­son leaves so much open to interpretation.

This is a film that will affect dif­fer­ent peo­ple in dif­fer­ent ways. It is in many respects a sad por­tray­al of doomed com­pan­ion­ship, although there is a warm glow to Fred­die and Dodd’s brief hon­ey­moon peri­od, as well as a flash­back to a ten­der scene between Fred­die and his sweet­heart, to whom he promis­es his hand only to dis­cov­er upon return­ing home from war that she has already accept­ed anoth­er man’s pro­pos­al and skipped town. There are unex­pect­ed bursts of humour, too. There’s even a fart gag.

Make no mis­take though; this is seri­ous, high-emo­tion film­mak­ing. And yet for all that The Mas­ter is fra­granced with gra­cenotes of Her­man Melville’s ​‘Moby Dick’ – which it echoes in its use of stylised prose and sym­bol­ism to explore com­plex themes such as class, dual­i­ty and the exis­tence of a supreme being – and to a less­er extent Stan­ley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, styl­is­tic idio­syn­crasy and mag­i­cal real­ism remain vital com­po­nents of Anderson’s sto­ry­telling fabric.

The Master’s lack of oper­at­ic cathar­sis (there’s no Old Tes­ta­ment crescen­do or bloody third-act com­ing to blows) might sug­gest that Ander­son has sat­ed his appetite for com­pos­ing grandiose meta­phys­i­cal para­bles. In truth, how­ev­er, there is sim­ply no call for such dra­mat­ic excess here. Tow­er­ing per­for­mances aside, it’s the under­stat­ed ges­tures that stick with you – be it a gen­tle death knell in the form of a song and a sin­gle tear, or a cut away to a naked sand woman that empha­sis­es the impor­tance of hold­ing on to the things you love.