"The Master" 2012 J. Phoenix | P. Seymour Hoffman

[davidraphael]

I can't wait to see this.
PT Anderson's thinly-veiled take on L Ron Hubbard and Scientology

There have already been a few advance screenings in the US. Has anyone seen it yet?
The photography looks beautiful.

http://www.themasterfilm.com/

[video=youtube;fJ1O1vb9AUU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ1O1vb9AUU[/video]

 

[herringbonekid]

can't fault the cinematography or acting, but i was very disappointed with this film especially as i thought 'There Will be Blood' was brilliant.

Joaquin Phoenix's character is thoroughly unlikeable, and not in an interesting way, just dulled, messed up and shambolic.
Philip Seymour Hoffman's character is also unlikeable though at least he's more charismatic.
the movie feels very direction-less, and a bit acting-improv-workshop at times.

i think the loose style that Paul Thomas Anderson goes for can work brilliantly, but it's a fine line between loose and 'epic' and loose and just meandering, and this is the latter.

anyone disagree ?

 

[LizzieMaine]

We ran this for a week when it first came out and had big expectations for it -- but it tanked at the box office. I think our audience found it too disjointed to really follow.

I enjoyed it, personally, but couldn't get over the fact that in several scenes Hoffman looked exactly like Captain Kangaroo.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I had friends who hated it, but I was fascinated. A weird, unfinished-feeling film, with great performances by Hoffman and Phoenix. I wish it had shown us more about Amy Adams' power-behind-the-throne character.

I liked it much more than There Will Be Blood, which I found pretentious and overlong... though there's no denying DD-L's powerful performance as Daniel Plainview.

 

[herringbonekid]

A weird, unfinished-feeling film

that's the problem. if you're going to make a film that works within a two to three hour time span it requires more thought as to how to make the best use of that time span.
it shouldn't feel like a ten hour TV series that's been edited down to two hours twenty minutes, and has loads missing.... which this did.

i'm not against meandering, disjointed films, but most good meandering, disjointed films only feel like that while really they're steering you to some sort of dramatic climax.

 

[Worf]

Great film... Pheonix should've gotten the Oscar. I've known rummy's and lost drunks (in and out of uniform) most of my adult life.. including a few in my family. Never have I seen a more spot on portrayal of a lost soul... incredible performance!

Worf

 

[MikeKardec]

It's funny I liked both pictures initially for their parts, individual scenes and moments that I found fascinating. There Will Be Blood eventually constructed itself into a cohesive whole in my mind while The Master never really did.

The Master relied on our believing that something horrible and life changing having happened to Pheonix's character in the war yet we never saw or were told about it (testing my memory here, it's been awhile since I saw it), in fact all the moments I remember of his war time experience were somewhat bucolic. If a film is like a geometrical proof that needs to be fairly perfect in its construction, then I'd say it would have been better to leave out the war-flashbacks and just leave that era in his life to our imagination. As it stood I could only assume the guy was actually screwed up from something else.

It also seemed to me that Pheonix, the actor, was sort of playing a "little old man" that he might have remembered from Pheonix's youth, someone who might have lived at that time, still worn those clothes as he got older and behaved that way. It ended up being a young man playing an old man in "old man clothes" (1940s clothes). If the war somehow made the character that way I'd like it shown to me ... otherwise it's just odd.

He did what he did brilliantly, completely immersed in the reality of whatever world he was creating, but it sent me in two different directions: One was that there was some vastly more interesting psychological story that they weren't telling us, something much more interesting than the subject of his interaction with Hoffman and the others ... the thing that turned him into an old man. The other was similar to the questions I was lead to have about scripting of the war material ... that it was incomplete, anachronistic or just superficial to the story.

All very odd but those are the sort of things that I always find both mysterious and off putting about Anderson's films. Possibly these are just aspects of the tendency toward "extreme montage" that I see in his films. If montage is ... the content in shot "A" or concept "A," when compared or contrasted to the content of shot "B" or concept "B" leads us to a mental leap where we suddenly understand a third or additional concept "C" ... then he is sometimes working at the outer limits of what is possible. He's really not trying to use that method to do anything all that complex but the "A"s and "B"s are often fairly obscure making the leap to "C" more of a pole vault than a long jump.

I'm very interested in his films but the characters are often so extreme (in subtly written and performed ways) that I never really identify with them ... nothing wrong with that but it does tend to make me watch them from a certain distance. They have a rawness and unpredictability that is sort of like witnessing life, ie. you never really understand what others are doing or why. When it all eventually comes together like in There will be Blood, it's pretty cool. Here, with The Master, it's just interesting.

My thoughts and imperfect memory, not to suggest anyone should agree with me.

Someday, in a universe without the threat of litigation or protest, someone will have to do a film that is actually about L. Ron Hubbard. Cue the Twilight Zone theme ...

 

[Guttersnipe]

The Master relied on our believing that something horrible and life changing having happened to Pheonix's character in the war yet we never saw or were told about it (testing my memory here, it's been awhile since I saw it)

I'm reasonably sure this is the case, or at least it's what I sensed too. At one point, during a "processing" session, Freddie Quell says something along the lines of "I was on a ship that got five battle stars and won the damn war, what the hell were you doing?"

My takeaway was (1) either he's completely full of it, or (2) this guy was on a ship that saw more action (and survived) than we can possibly imagine, though I'm not sure which. It some ways this completely sums up my thoughts about The Master; I found it very powerful and compelling but had no idea what the point was . . .

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

I also saw it and wasn't quite impressed with the storytelling. The actors weren't bad at all but it just didn't "click"

 

[MikeKardec]

My takeaway was (1) either he's completely full of it, or (2) this guy was on a ship that saw more action (and survived) than we can possibly imagine, though I'm not sure which. It some ways this completely sums up my thoughts about The Master; I found it very powerful and compelling but had no idea what the point was . . .

There was a wonderful comment that I believe William Goldman made about "Casablanca" -- Richard Blane (Bogart's character) is asked why he came to Casablanca. He says something like, "I came for the waters." When reminded that there are no mineral springs in Casablanca he says, "I was misinformed." Goldman's takeaway (as with any intelligent viewer) is that Bogart is actually saying, "it was too painful, I will never tell you." As we know that's what the whole movie is about.

I like your take on the issue of military service in "The Master" ... one of the things that keeps me watching PTA's movies is that sort of mystery. It frustrates but it also intrigues.