The Master - 2012 - Movie - Paul Thomas Anderson

The Master 

2012

Paul Thomas Anderson Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams

He is Jack Kerouac, he is the younger brother in Mice and Men.  He is at once Us in our most urgent and disconsolate moment, our worst in the drunken and disembodied moment, and our most ardently self sufficient and American free spirit.  Freddie Quell is the post war search for the self,  the sensate, lost, and irreducible man of the flesh.  And in this story, he is diametrically opposed to the Master, the genius, the hope and glory and promulgation of culture and Greco-Roman philosophical fulfillment, a pinnacle of humanity, and ultimately, a fraud.

The contrast and atomic co-dependence that these two characters represent make the essence of their stories so much more poignant for their differences.  The story could not have been written any more tightly woven and more intricately extruded than what has been represented here in film.  The Master, as a title, lives up to its name and delivers a master of cinema art.

Bring together a disenfranchised drifting hobo ex-seaman, a self-proclaimed prophetic Anthony, and mix in the veiled, yet powerful Cleopatra of a spouse whose truly domineering manipulations from the wings of the play are without equal, and you have the recipe for this drama.  From the very first shot, to the last, there is film orchestration here that fully realizes the medium, and could be a statement for the reason why the written work has bowed down to the screen.  This work in literature would be equal to, and in fact seems to draw some parallel from “All the King’s Men”  - Robert Penn Warren.  There is the influential demagoguery, the pandering public, followers, believers, and there is the antithesis of the Master’s persona in the person of Freddie, a brawler, an “animal”, as Lancaster describes him.  There is the real life hero Woody Guthrie to compare to, but in Freddie, there is no talent, nor an introspective need to develop one.  He’s just a hobo, a “scoundrel”, also aptly described by Lancaster.  The opening shot of the film tells his entire story, in fact.  At first we see the helmet, and what appears to be an alert soldier under it, looking around, but for what?  Where is he?  Entrenched in a bunker?  Is there an enemy near?  What is his condition?  He appears listless.  Then we realize….he is simply sleepy, and dozes off, nothing really, no substance at all.

A Kerouac kind of comparison comes from the drifting, the existential nature of Freddie, and hence our sympathies, our rooting for underdogs.  Our dislike for Lancaster Dodd may well be a sort of built-in cynical disdain for anyone who espouses curative fictions of mankind and wields them as powerful opiates to salivating acolytes.  Lancaster is our Pied Piper, his spouse Peggy Dodd, plays accompaniment, and Freddie is like some Tarzan, taken from the jungle of the world and taught how to play an instrument, like a drum, touted before them all as some kind of lab experiment.  We are privy to the conflict from the inside of the film maker’s vision, and witness to the psychological battle of the trio of players, and ultimately the truth of the nature of both men revealed, set apart, never the twain to meet.

The cinematography, the editing, the acting certainly, and the music (especially the music in this film) all create a perfect soup here of storytelling almost unparalleled.  There is a reason for the accolades from awards societies and “best of” lists.  

The music is its own character.  I have to get the soundtrack to this one.  There is really not a moment of the entire film that a music or sound-effects track is not playing along with the visuals.  That’s a 2-CD set I’m going to guess.  Musical “sounds” and atmospheres dominate the senses.  Sound is used as transition from one scene to another, in which case some scenes contain practical music, and others a background score that could be playing in the scene.  We’re not always allowed to know for sure.  The mix is fantastic.

One scene in particular stands out right away at the start of the film, and sets the precedent for most musical effects to come, while furthering our understanding of the characters, and carrying the plot forward to its next destination .  There is “jazz”, a small ensemble, playing considerably erratic-sounding and tense lower notes and sound effects with their instruments.   This begins as Freddie escapes from his last position, running from what appears to be the 2^nd disastrous situation in the story.   One is reminded right away of the Beats, the seeming cacophony of “free associated thoughts” and behaviors.  But this jazzy, disruptive ambiance slowly gives way to a celebratory brass band of syncopated and metered, loud party music, much in the spirit of Citizen Kane’s loud and pronounced trumpets, complete with bloated negro faces straining at the mouthpieces of those instruments.  The tracking shot behind Freddie as he walks along a pier, hunched, as a cold and dislocated wanderer would be, brings a boat of revelers in and out of focus, even as the music wafts and waves between the minor key jazz and this new music from the boat, which turns out to be a wedding cruise of Lancaster’s daughter, Elizabeth.  The  genius of the shot, and it is one long tracking shot, is that the musical score trades between these two diametrically opposed musics at the same time the camera is making those distinctions, literally changing when the focus changes.  Freddie is clear at first, in the foreground, with jazz mimicking him, and then as the boat music soars, the once fuzzy atmospheric lights come sharply into focus, and then back again, like a dance, and the jazz slowly gives way as he leaps aboard stealthily on his life-changing voyage, the brass 4/4 time music then completely overwhelming.  The shot carries us from lonely wanderer in the night, to stowaway, from ether, to concrete.  So very well done.

There are many nuances to this film that bear mentioning, and at least two other most brilliant scenes.  For one thing, Joaquin Phoenix’s stance as Freddie, hands on hips, elbows thrust out to the sides like wings, an expectant kind of look, slightly on edge, combined with a hunched shoulder profile.  This makes Freddie’s character stand out as awkward, and confirms his outsider status, and his estrangement from the world of “the sane”.  There is Amy Dodd’s propensity for always being a bit higher than everyone in the room, and sitting in chairs that are very throne-like.  Her queenly nature, along with her nose in the air, confirms who it is that is really running the show (not to mention her domination of Lancaster in a bathroom scene).

One most brilliant scene I mentioned is the arrest sequence, in particular the contrast between Lancaster and Freddie in adjoining cells as Freddie, out of control, smashes his environment while the cool and collected Lancaster looks on.  And the second genius scene, I’m quite sure was difficult but also a hoot to shoot, was the interior “sing-along” where one moment we’re a gala crowd clapping and dancing to music, genteel and sophisticated, and the next we’re the vision of the same from the interior of Freddie’s mind, with all of the women unselfconsciously unclothed.  Brilliant.

There is not a wasted frame in this one.  An artistically done piece of historical fiction, well deserved accolades, and “master”ful cinematography.  Music is huge.  See it.

5 stars out of 5