THE MASTER (2012) P.T. Anderson's film on the origions of Scientology (sort of), Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, and Laura Dern

don't think the criticism is literally "i don't get what this is about" but rather "i don't think this is saying anything insightful about its chosen topics, and it's kind of scattershot in focus"

i liked the focus switching + tracking shot when he approaches the boat!

joaquim and psh were great, but i really didn't give 2 fucks about either of their characters

I'm sure the film was intending for you to do so

Was the scene where he gets the phone call in the movie theater supposed to be a dream?

a film that doesn't intend for the viewer to care for or at least be interested in the fates of its central characters is pretty flawed

I loved this movie and was interested in the fates of its characters.

xp re: phone call in theater - that seems to be what people are saying, that it's a dream - I mean, my read on Phoenix's character is that he's pretty gravely mentally ill (and drinking homemade rotgut presumably all through his navy stint & beyond would aggravate that some) so it could also be "he got an idea while he was watching a movie and told himself that the idea came from England via telephone"

I will say that PTA's willingness to go totally ambiguous on stuff like that is for me his best & most interesting quality

the part that annoyed me about the scene where he approaches the yacht was how long the film score blended with the Cuban music, so i probably missed whatever was going on w/ the focus.

receptionists near the entrance didn't know who he was even after he told them his name, amy adams asked "what are you doing here?" or something didn't she?, when he gave PSH the Kools he was didn't really react...

movie theater was definitely a dream. he tells psh "i dreamt you remembered where you met me"

Somebody weighs in.

thought that something was fishy once a phone was brought all the way out to movie seats in 1950

I don't think it was all a dream.

this movie had a lot of female nudity in it

it is very clearly a dream

But we don't even know what his totem is

o right, but dream or not it definitely isn't reality

i wish i was paying more attention to the dialogue from the Casper the friendly ghost cartoon playing in that scene.

Yeah I see it more like Taxi Driver, where the film is at least a little skewed from reality by the protagonist's perspective.

"The film takes you out of your comfort zone and drinks your milkshake as it were (to borrow a phrase from There Will Be Blood)."

oh god you dumb goober

i wish i was paying more attention to the dialogue from the Casper the friendly ghost cartoon playing in that scene.

Can't remember the exact dialogue but it was definitely relevant.

it was just casper saying "this is all a dream" over and over again

it is definitely a sign of failure when people start arguing about whether a scene was a dream sequence or not

no, c'mon. that scene was obviously a dream. if it wasn't clearly a dream during the scene, it became clear when they discussed it in the very next scene and call it a dream! if ppl missed that it was bc it was very late in the movie and they were probably exhausted and not paying good attention.

this movie had a lot of female nudity in it

It's America, only male nudity is discouraged.

this movie definitely needed a few shots of Joaquin Phoenix's cock

i went to a 12:00 noon sunday screening and the first walkout was an elderly couple about 4mins in, right after feddie joked about how to get rid of crabs

I just saw this. All I have to say at this time is aero otm re handjob

What were they expecting from the first 4 minutes? xp

freedom vs. servitude (anyone else think of Dylan's "Gotta Serve Somebody"? yeah, I did

Last scene really made sense to me with Amy Adams ripping Freddie apart while Dodd sat there smiling. As if Amy was simply speaking for Dodd, was indeed "the master".

Dunno why his book was buried in the ground. And Clark was such a hilarious suck-up in that scene where AA (honestly can't recall her character's name now, Peggy? Mrs. Dodd) put everyone up to bad mouthing Freddie.

Like the implication that Freddie rode the motorcycle out of the desert and left them all there.

motorcycle getaway was probably my favorite moment.

re: the book buried in the desert, did anyone else think PTA was deliberately setting up a bait & switch? shotgun, shovel, remote desert, etc.

it is definitely a sign of failure when people start arguing about whether a scene was a dream sequence or not

no way! lots of good Japanese & Thai horror have dream sequences whose whole point is "could be real, could be a dream, what's the diff"

In this case though it doesn't seem at all controversial. The implausibility of Freddie being tracked from across the Atlantic to a specific movie house, the cut to where he wakes up, Freddie explicitly referring to it as a dream, etc.

I like my interpretation better - he drove 2,300 miles on a motorbike back to his hometown

whole different movie right there, with him meeting wacky cut-ups along the way, probably including a monkey

http://exiledonline.com/the-master-are-you-serious/

Those articles are always such a weird form of jujitsu--this movie is pitched to "smart" audiences so the only way to be "really smart" is to designate it as a con to fool the middlebrow rubes.

It's just an exhausting and suspicious way to engage with art--as if some very serious sense of your self was at stake in whether you can "see through it."

It's like this need to interpret films for symbolic "meaning" leads to this kind of defensive maneuver whereby the "meaning" is already hollow, a big con. It's a bad theory of aesthetics and boring film criticism.

i agree

that all seemed p stupid

that we accept that pta seems humourless or unaware of his own silliness seems kind of a big ask

i thought her characterization of pta's filmmaking style was amusingly similar to amateurists

that we accept that pta seems humourless or unaware of his own silliness seems kind of a big ask

― paradiastole, or the currifauel, otherwise called (thomp), Tuesday, September 25, 2012 12:21 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah I mean if the last lines of The Master and TWBB weren't both intentionally funny I don't know what he would've been going for

He can crank up the ballyhoo machine, and that’s not nothing in these dull times.

wow

handjobs, orgies, masturbation... you guys are making this movie sound really dirty

Not really any orgies, except in perhaps the less-sexual Gatsbian sense.

it is really dirty!

it opens w/ a masturbation, sand fucking, and a hilarious inkblot test

Yeah it is tho