Picture the following scene: In early 2008 I walked into a small theater in my hometown Rostock, going to see the new movie by Paul Thomas Anderson, director of such great films as "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia". When I walked out about three hours later I was a changed person. "There Will Be Blood", the film I saw on that fateful night pretty much blew me away in a way no other movie has done it to me before or ever since. In my humble opinion "There Will Be Blood" might just be the best movie of the last decade. Just watch the following video and see how devoted fans of this masterpiece can be:
But I digress. It's 2012 now and Paul Thomas Anderson's follow-up film is finally here, called "The Master". Early trailers suggested intense performances by lead Joaquin Phoenix as well as Philip Seymour Hoffman as the titular Master and it wasn't a hoax, they are both unbelievably good in their roles. But can performances alone carry this film?
Unfortunately not. While "There Will Be Blood" had at its heart a breathtaking performance by Daniel Day-Lewis it also worked perfectly on a story level. "The Master" on the other hand has the sublime Phoenix and Hoffman at its core and just doesn't really know what to do with them. Phoenix is Freddie Quell and he plays him as an alcoholic nut with the intensity of a caged animal. There is an unsettling menace about him that keeps the rest of the cast and the audience on edge whenever Phoenix is on screen. He practically stumbles upon Seymour Hoffman's Master who is the leader of an emerging cult during the late 1940's, early 1950's. They form a bond and Phoenix gets entangled in the family of Hoffman and the shenanigans of this cult.
There has been controversies before the movie was even released so I might as well just name it. This cult is more or less a portrayal of Scientology in its inception with Hoffman being the L. Ron Hubbard stand-in. The film has a good amount of criticism for the cult and it is to my great pleasure that it takes these brave steps other filmmakers would have shied away from.
Problem is that this criticism doesn't really go hand in hand with the story arc of Phoenix. "The Master" tries to succeed doing both (just like "There Will Be Blood" was a character study of Daniel Day-Lewis' character AND also an aggressive statement against the bond between religion and industry) but it doesn't succeed entirely. For a character study Phoenix' Freddie Quell is just not complex or interesting enough, he is pretty much just a human being with pure animal instincts that Hoffman tries to cure him off using some questionable brainwashing methods. And for a full-blown anti-cult statement the film is too focused on Phoenix without ever losing itself in the depth of its message.
It doesn't help that the narrative cohesion is not always a given, there undeniably are parts that would have needed some editing. Nonetheless, what "The Master" succeeds at is the performances and a great deal of outstanding scenes which, to my dismay, just never add up to anything more than the sum of its parts. That doesn't make it a bad film, in fact it is quite the contrary, "The Master" will find an audience of smart people and it deserves one. But compared to the major achievement that is "There Will Be Blood" one can't help but be a little bit disappointed.
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