The Master (2012), Paul Thomas Anderson
- IMDB.COM: Rating: 7.5 (22,000+ votes); Metascore: 86 (40+ critics)
- ROTTEN TOMATOES: Tomatometer: 86% (184-215)
- TOP7 NEWSPAPERS: 89 AVG, four 4-star reviews
(A.O.Scott, The New York Times; K. Turan, Los Angeles Times; L. Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly; P. Travers, Rolling Stone)
With There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson found himself in similar situation Michael Cimino found himself after his success with The Deer Hunter – by creating a timely masterpiece at the age of 37, he reached the summit of American ci- nematography too soon. That meant the critical next step, where the director either ceaselessly looks over his should at his greatest achievement and never again created anything of approximate importance. While Cimino never recovered from the blow that was deal to him after the US release of the Heaven’s Gate and the film’s unfair, politically ridden, but still de- finite critical/financial fiasco, Anderson yet again superbly reinvented himself with his latest film, The Master.
By taking upon the subject of cult in post-WWII America while extracting the product of his concept through the filter of Mihail Malaire Jr. and his 65 mm eye, Anderson takes a step back and returns to another important epoch in the history of the USA, the one which switched the pursuit of identity with the pursuit of existence. In the process, the director creates two characters monumental for both American past and American cinematic history. Their mutually compatible charisma has a vague remi- niscence of the Willard/Kurtz problematic in the Apocalypse Now. Like those Coppola’s characters, Anderson’s protagonist is the one who searches, while his pseudo-antagonist is the one waiting to be found.
In the role of his life – yes, bigger than those in the Gladiator and Walk the Line – Joaquin Phoenix plays the lead character (Freddie) with a magnifying glass and a deerstalker. Although P.T. dresses his hero in the skin and suit of a moron, Freddie isn’t limited that way. His handicap is of other sort. Crippled by the war as only a human being can be, he returns to America as merely one orphan of the many who is asked to pack and put away those years soaked in terror and death and fit in the world that doesn’t operate on stops and stations; the only way to join it is to jump into the torrent at maximum speed. Chang- ing jobs one after the other in a desperate search for past America he somehow isn’t able to find anymore, Freddie comes across Lancaster Dodd (portrayed by consistently brilliant Phillip Seymour Hoffman), a charismatic leader of spiri- tualistic organization called The Cause, the famous Master with the need for the right hand. The relationship between these two var- ies from slave-master to son-father, which doesn’t mean one necessarily excludes the other, on the contrary. (If we are ought to label it, I would put the title of the Taviani brothers' 1977 Cannes Film Festival Winner (Padre padrone) as the ulti- mate link.) Freddie more than often asserts blind faith in his master’s doings, putting young man’s loyalty ahead of grown man’s reasoning. Nevertheless, the teaching itself – originally absorbed – does not actually reach him until the moment when he irretrievably cuts his ties with The Cause and starts to preach sermon the way a son continues his fathers’ bloodline.
The American Academy’s decision to leave out The Master from this year’s ten films nominated for the Best Picture had left many critics dumbfounded. However, if we take a look at this situation from a non-cinematic, objective perspective, that stance should not come as a shock. With each frame, The Master evokes a different time of filmmaking. Its old-fashioned genius connects with the grand film of the 70’s that asked serious, controversial questions while expecting answers that cannot wriggle out from the truth. From that point of view, The Master is a piece of serious art you would expect to emerge as the 1976 Best Picture candidate alongside Lamet’s Network, Pakula’s All the President’s Men and Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. In the 21st century America of democratic framework with the republican viscera mainly preoccupied with unilateral political propaganda, there was simply no place for any sort of aberration.
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