Freddie Quells (Joaquin Phoenix), the bleary-eyed, mumbling protagonist of The Master, is a man adrift. In the wake of World War II, he has returned from a naval deployment in the Pacific to settle in California, finding work as a department store photographer. Freddie is a profoundly broken soul, unsettled by post-traumatic phantoms. However, his troubles run deeper than what the Navy terms his “nervous condition”: There are hints of familial abuse, abandonment, and madness, as well as a True Love back East to whom he cannot (or will not) return. Consumed with manic sexual cravings and prone to outbursts of violent aggression, he finds oblivion in homemade, often poisonous alcoholic concoctions.
Such qualities mark Freddie as a perfect aspirant (or victim) for the likes of charismatic author Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), called simply “The Master,” even by his watchful young wife (Amy Adams). Dodd, a self-proclaimed “doctor, nuclear physicist, and theoretical philosopher,” is the founder of a crypto-religious self-help movement known as the Cause. When Freddie falls into Dodd’s circle almost by accident, the guru takes a shine to him, urging Freddie to submit to the Cause’s pseudo-scientific therapy known as “Processing.” Thus begins the saga of Freddie’s erratic relationship to Dodd and the Cause, where he alternately assumes the role of the smirking jester, starry-eyed convert, welcomed prodigal, fuming enforcer, and reviled black sheep.
Unquestionably, the Cause and Lancaster Dodd draw from the history of Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, but writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson is not aiming for anything as cheaply provocative as a cinematic swipe at the author-turned-prophet. The narrative focus of The Master makes this plain: It is not the story of Dodd, but of Freddie, and his stumbling passage from self-destruction to self-awareness, from aimlessness to engagement. This is followed in turn by his sluggish, dispiriting realization that he isn’t moving at all—the scenery’s just changing. The film’s assessment of human nature is grim, raw-boned stuff: The Master proffers not a condemnation of any particular creed, but a bleak portrayal of the papered-over failings of all belief systems, whether religious, philosophical, or political.
The usual formal pleasures of an Anderson film are abundant in The Master: the director’s dizzyingly rich command of the mise en scène; luscious lensing from cinematographer Mihai Malaimare, Jr.; and a wondrously slippery score by Jonny Greenwood. However, the film is undeniably a narrative curveball, lacking the operatic propulsion of the director's prior works. The Master crouches restlessly, as though a release were just around the corner—the cocaine-crazed shootout, the frogs from the sky, the bowling pin to the skull. No such luck here. The film wanders in circles, echoing Freddie’s relapses and his longing for a breakthrough that is always out of reach. The Master’s pacing will doubtlessly strike some filmgoers as too rambling and arrhythmic, and its depiction of psychological anguish as too pessimistic. However, viewers willing to submit to the film’s unconventional character will discover a dense, fascinating film, as handsome as any American feature released this year.
