Film Review - The Master

The Master is a brilliant, sad and baffling examination of post-war America and the ideas of spirituality and belief.

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will be Blood, Magnolia) the film follows Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), an emotionally damaged US Navy veteran who falls under the spell of charismatic cult leader Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). 

Upon being demobilized after the war, Quell’s life is slowly beginning to unravel. He has post-war trauma, and his excessive drinking doesn’t help. He wanders from job to job with the only real aptitude being his ability to make illegal and often dangerous booze with everything from photographic chemicals to paint thinner. Drunk, one night, he stows away on a boat where he meets Dodd.

Dodd is a puce-faced public speaker who styles himself "The Master", and describes himself as a ‘doctor, writer, nuclear physicist and theoretical philosopher’.  The Master is amused by Quell, gets a taste for his hooch, and decides to make of him a special case for his treatment. Freddie is the Fool to his Lear, or Peter (or maybe Judas) to his Jesus.

Dodd tells Quell ‘You've wandered from the proper path’ and to get back on that path, Freddie must embrace "The Cause", a pseudo-religious system pioneered by Dodd. He believes in curing physical and psychological ills by rooting out previous selves and interplanetary interlopers from millions of years ago, through confrontational interrogations (called processing) and various therapies. (Hence why so many parallels have been drawn between this film and L Ron Hubbard’s Scientology).

Despite Freddie’s early antagonism towards processing, eventually he and Dodd bond through it. In one sense, Freddie needs a father figure, and Dodd needs a devout follower like Freddie. When sceptics dare to challenge Dodd’s belief system, Freddie physically assaults them. As a result, the price Freddie pays for his loyalty to Dodd grows steeper. Early in the film Dodd tells Freddie ‘you’ll be my guinea pig and my protégé’, which hints at the darker things yet to come.

When confronted with arguments he can’t deny, Dodd swings to new beliefs and ideas in order to retain control over his followers. Dodd’s son can see through the ruse, saying to Freddie: ‘He’s making all of this up as he goes along, you don’t see that?’ but Freddie embraces whatever Dodd says and proselytizes on his behalf, proclaiming to others that they don't have to change their faith or leave their congregation to join the Cause.

Despite Freddie’s outward loyalty, it’s clear he has misgivings about his new path; in a scene where he and Dodd are in jail after their arrest, he vents his anger towards Dodd by yelling at him ’where are your facts?’ and ‘just say something that is true’.

Dodd's only moment of truth-speaking comes when he tells Freddie, "If you figure a way to live without serving a master, let us know. You'd be the first person in the history of the world." Bob Dylan expresses the same thought, of course: ‘You’re gonna have to serve somebody…Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody’.  Jesus preached in a similar vein, saying, ‘No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money’ (Matthew 6:24).

The Master shows the inherent dangers of cults and the way they prey upon people’s weaknesses. Even today, while certain groups and cults are more obvious in how they can lead people astray, even those that claim to act in the name of God can cause great damage (as Matthew 7:15 and 2 Peter 2 warn us). As Christians it’s important not to allow charismatic personalities to overshadow our primary dependence and focus on God. 

At times, the Master is a very unsettling film to watch and is hard to love but easy to admire.  Also, it barely has a narrative and is pretty much a character/actor driven piece of film making, which may not suit everyone.

However, Mihai Malaimare’s brilliant cinematography really evokes 50s America and all the lead performances rightly gathered Oscar nominations. Seymour Hoffman is superbly believable as the charismatic Dodd while Amy Adams is terrifying as his steely trophy wife. The film belongs however to Phoenix, with a ferocious portrayal of the deeply lost Quell. 

Review by Martin Barratt

The Master
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Genre: Drama
Rating: R13 (offensive language, sexual content)
Duration: 2 hours 16 mins