The film is essentially about two bootleggers. Joaquin Phoenix plays Freddie. The man isn’t like you and me. He’s a mentally unstable veteran who wanders the Earth making booze out of paint thinner, photo developer and other handy stuff. It’s unclear whether or not his illness is something he was born with, shell shock or a result of ingesting paint thinner and photo chemicals, but he insists: “It’s not poison if you drink it right.”
This comment tickles the films other bootlegger, a man by the name of Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Dodd doesn’t make booze; he makes religion. He peddles a spiritual system known as The Cause. The goal of The Cause is to return the mind to a perfect state, or rather, to purge animalistic thought. At first it looks like psychotherapy, but then like torture. Inductees are put through “processing,” where the subject is repeatedly asked the same invasive questions without end until the processor is satisfied. They are forced to repeat tasks over and over and to not ask questions. Members can leave at anytime but are told those who leave are enemies of The Cause.
After a few rounds of processing, Dodd takes Freddie with him in his travels around the country as his special project. But Freddie is a hard project, extremely impulsive and given to sudden acts of violence. He’s loyal though, sometimes to a fault, others to a point. In one scene he kicks down a door to beat an enemy of The Cause, in another he’s openly calling Dodd a liar.
Dodd's family (its matriarch played by a wonderfully icy Amy Adams) feels that Freddie is beyond any help and they’re probably right, but Dodd keeps him on anyway. Does Dodd think he can help this man, or does he just want to make him into his pet? “Everyone serves a master,” Dodd informs us late in the film. If the pet analogy was intentional, then Anderson has chosen his title more cunningly than I had thought.
It should be noted how hard it is for an actor to play a part as unstable and borderline inhuman as Freddie. It’s a very difficult, physical role and Phoenix pulls it off effortlessly. It's one thing for an actor to disguise himself with mannerisms, it's another to become completely invisible in a part. After wasting years on ill-conceived performance art, Phoenix has doubled down and given an outrageously great performance that will completely reevaluate my expectations of him from here on out.
Much has been made about the film's relation to Scientology, and yes The Cause is outrageously analogous to the mysterious religion in much the same way that Citizen Kane was to William Randolf Hearst. However Hearst came off looking a lot better than Scientology does in this film. Whatever Dodd's intentions, he is a cruel man and Hoffman, at the top of his considerable game, plays him as a man who is more contradiction than anything else. A lesser actor might have played the false Messiah as stiffer or statelier. But instead Hoffman goes the other way and softens him to the point that he’s oddly likable and in doing so, opens a wondrous world of ambiguity. It's clear that he's a tyrant, but is he a fool as well? It's entirely possible that he actually believes what he’s selling; in past lives going back a trillion years, that he can cure cancer and nuclear war with hypnosis. Is Dodd insane or just a snake oil salesmen, building religion out of spare parts the way Freddie concocts his liquor?
Grade: A
The Master comes out in limited release on Friday. In the few theaters equipped to handle it, it will be shown in 70mm. It’s not the type of film one would expect to see in the format, but the clarity of 70mm improves any film. Watching The Master in the format is unlike watching a normal film, it's so sharp that it's more like looking through a window than anything. Color depth also improves astronomically. The film frequently returns to a shot of a boat wake that gives new meaning to the color blue. Mihai Malaimare Jr.’s cinematography is absolutely sparkling and the film will look great in any format, but if you have the chance to see in in 70mm, go—your eyes will thank you for the rest of your life.
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