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

Morbius, did you see it at Village East? That's the only 70mm celluloid copy I found showing in NYC.

JUst saw this and one thing that struck me was there are bits in this where Joaquin looks more like Johnny Cash than he did in I Walk The Line.
Also wondered if sudden nudity in one scene was a hallucination or not. Seemed to suddenly happen unexpectedly.

WAs it Amy Adams that I saw thought I recognised and then wondered if it was Fairuza Balk for the rest of the film.

Sudden nudity seemed to fit in with his dirty Rorschach interpretations and the sand lady--how he saw the world. Fully-clothed PSH gave him an alternative, a master other than sex and alcohol.

Stupid "The Master," seems like it played Chicago for a minute.

I saw it at the Century Evanston. Bet it will be back at River East 21 or the Siskel in Jan/Feb leading up to the Oscars.

Dragged my heels about seeing this a second time, but I finally did last night. I made sure I was wide awake--I now realize I probably drifted off for as much as 30 minutes the first time. Anyway, it didn't get any better, just longer. I'm not attacking anyone who loved it when I say it's dead weight for me. J. Hoberman thinks it's a great film; J. Hoberman's a great critic.

Hoffman's good, and a couple of shots stay in my mind--Phoenix being chased through the door onto the field (an echo of The Searchers?), the ship passing under the Golden Gate Bridge. Hoffman singing "Slow Boat to China" had some of the menace of Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet. I find Phoenix very affectatious, and repetitive--he's constantly responding to people with that same wry laugh. Some of the music works pretty well, but nothing even close to numerous inspired interludes in Boogie Nights. I'm not at all saying Anderson should have continued trying to redo Boogie Nights. But that's still my frame of reference, and the things I love about it--add a director's love for his characters, and great show-offy sequences--have been slowly drained from Anderson's work one film at a time. Even thematically it comes up short for me. The best I can do is that when all is said and done, we're still ruled by base animal passions.

I happened to watch Malcolm X earlier this week, and broadly speaking, there's interesting overlap between the two films.

Nah, it was beautiful to look at and the actors were great and I'm a big Anderson fan but this was easily my least favorite of his films. Maybe it'll require further viewings (P-DL was a grower, for sure), but it seemed to be missing some essential engaging element. Phoenix's jaw-dropping performance does not an amazing film make.

ppl debating whether the party nude scene was a fantasy or not make my brain explode and make me feel insane and like i don't get how to interpret fiction....like it was really obviously his fantasy? as obvious as the part in requiem for a dream where the wayans bro steals the cop's gun and plays keepaway with it...he's horny and bored...that scene is what his mental landscape is like. i'm not trying to be smugsworth here, it just seemed like according to film vocabulary 101 it was a fantasy and i don't get why it seems ambiguous. did there really need to be a cut to everyone clothed again while joaquin is roused by a partygoer-"hey, buddy, i thought we lost you for a second there"

It would've helped if they had words at the bottom that said IMAGINARY SCENE.

And if his eyes had been pinwheels.

well i agree it's is fantasy but the confusion only points to the sorta questionable relationship the movie has to some "reality"--like, do Amy Adam's eyes really turn black? is that freddie's imagination? surely it is, but the movie presents these fantasies seamlessly.

Yeah when her eyes turned black and she didn't say "my eyes aren't really black it's all in your mind" I got so confused my nose started bleeding and I couldn't feel my legs anymore.

Wait are you serious?!?!? Are you OK!??

Yeah, I started feeling better, thanks for asking. I just hope Walking Phoenix gets over his alcohol problems and that Philip Seymour Hoffman's next book is more well-received. I'm happy that he's married to that pretty Enchanted princess lady, though! Oh, whoops, more blood, hang on

- Was thinking of this film alongside A Dangerous Method or even Pat Barker's Regeneration. War, its effects on a mind and the psychology to mend it, even if the method is so utterly distorted and crazy in this cult-like group, but: here is a method, a patient to test that method, with its success or failure to be indicative of its viability. PSH I saw as someone who crossed his methods w/Freud (ok "talking cure", not ever sure about psychoanalysis anyway) (there were a couple of nuts in a ADM of course), who then started reading all those SF paperbacks and other pop science matter, like a young Sun Ra around the same time (he also formed a cult-like group/commune of followers who played Sun Ra music).

- Whether PSH was always a charlatan though was compliacted somewhat I thought...its easy to accept at first, and that he maybe couldn't believe in his luck on getting so many people to buy into it, and you could read his relationship w/Phoenix as hubris with a streak of unconcious sabotage: most people in the group didn't like him, were wondering why Hoffman stuck w/him but he did for as long as possible. This all culmintaed on those attempts to cure him, in that intense 25 minute sequence of different exercises for everyone else in the group to witness, a high-risk manoeuvre by PSH. That he's moved to London could be seen as success (massive desk and all) but he is out of America. Could be the cops on his trail or the evetual loss of faith that began at the book launch, which had the best close-up of Phoenix, where you can tell in PSHs speech the exact moment he lost faith (or when it began to be chipped away again, this time for good).

- read many of the real scenes as bordering on the unreal, as in when Phoenix rides off into the desert for good there is a moment of 'did that just happen?' (the desert as a place for many dreams after all), so similarly there is a mostly dream with a touch of reality to the sequence in the cinema and the dance too.

l ron was based out of england for a while so i read the move to england as part of that parallel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k2mj3Zryds&list=AL94UKMTqg-9CN_GUB5CnWexVYAEKdmqzm

I'm reading the last third of Going Clear and I saw this movie last night in lush 70mm -- it was a little overwhelming, but I enjoyed the complexity of the relationship between L Ron Hoffman and Freddy. I haven't read through this thread because I don't really want to know if ILX hated this movie or not.

I think something happened to my brain though because every time I read/hear about budget cuts/"sequestration" my brain instantly reverts to cults, RPF, and kidnapping.

You're safe to go back--most people wrote positively about it. I think I was one a few dissenters. Like the Tree of Life thread, people wrote about it in a way that made me wish I were seeing the same things.

still can't believe this isn't nominated for best pic, considering the shit that is

otm

wonder how much that has to do with the subject matter

yeah i've wondered that too but really all in all it's just way too weird of a movie for the oscars.

needed more cgi tigers

Finally saw this for the first time last night and just happened to be watching the documentary The Century of Self afterwards. I was surprised to find that several clips at the beginning of episode 2 of Century of Self that dealt with PTSD were copied very closely by PTA in the early parts of The Master. This includes the shot of all the vets being lectured about PTSD and also the scene where Joaquin was being asked about his crying spell. The dialogue in that scene was taken directly from the PTSD doc. My assumption is that Adam Curtis pulled his clips from the same PTSD documentary that PTA includes in the blu-ray for The Master (not included in the DVD I watched last night).

Oh hey, the home video release was this week, now I finally get to see this thing.

My quick take on The Master: I liked it a lot except that it fizzled a bit toward the end. The details about "The Cause" were a lot more prominent and a lot closer to actual Scientology than I was expecting. I think PTA is being a bit coy in the way he's downplayed how much the film is based on the history of the early days of Scientology. I suspect that much of what happens in the film was modeled very closely off of real events.

oh totally

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMnGawMATN4

This was so great. So much wonderful filmmaking for film students to take in. Long takes, cool camera angles, theming, etc. BRIllIANT soundtrack. Lots of moments stick out, probably the best being when P.S. Hoffman is singing that sea shanty dancing like a maniac cult leader with an all-nude female backing band in his mansion. What a baller.

All the actors do some great work here. Phoenix is pretty great. He tends to look like a ghoul but he's a pretty interesting ghoul. His motivations usually aren't very clear. Funny that most of this seemed to be performance art pieces (shades of "I'm Still Here"?) where he would just half to walk from one wall to the next over and over forever.

I was a little disappointed that Laure Dern didn't have that strong a character -- a scene would start and I would go "Look! It's Laura Dern!" but that's about it. Still, always a treasure to see her in anything.

Laura, even

there is a deleted scene where phoenix dons the raccoon suit from Mario 3

― let's keep this board about feet, please. (latebloomer), Tuesday, October 2, 2012 1:12 AM (5 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

LOL

Reading back over this thread, all the 'was this a dream sequence?', 'did this happen in JP's mind?' etc. is interesting, but the first 2 or 3 times i saw this, I didn't really think any parts of the movie were imaginary. Maybe that phone call at the end?

But yeah there is alot of -- as George Lucas saying -- 'rhyming, like poetry' going on here. You could probably isolate every scene where someone is drinking something and deduce the evolution of some theme. Colors of the rooms. People looking through glass. Framing. All that stuff. I don't really see this as a boring film, it's really well made, and if the plot is dull you can just sit and drink in the visual craft at work here.

Need to do a threeway poll: This film, Martha Marcy May Bob Marley and Sound of My Voice (which I saw last night and thought was pretty meh by comparison to this one).

I loved all three of those movies. I am ripe for the culty picking.

Last year's Electrick Children made a good culty companion piece for Martha Marcy May Marlene and The Master. 2012 was a good year for cult films about cults.

I liked their relationship, just two guys who want to have adventures surrounded by a band of joyless pedants.

― lag∞n, Monday, October 1, 2012 2:23 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha i love this

friend explaining the film to me (spoilers?): the beginning of the movie is phoenix as a PTSD sufferer after WWII making a sandcastle of a nude woman with a gaping vagina

which is classic "this is an art movie because it uses sexuality in stupid ways" worthlessness

Not just making the sandcastle.

sorta thought the broad Freudian symbolism was appropriate to the milieu.

was really happy to see some bigass sand titties on the big screen

finally

borrowed this for the weekend

excited but a little trepidatious.

smoke weed first

ysi

It's good!

mordy otm

you won't be disappointed, alfred otm

smoke weed first

i thought that was just for politics posts?

you forgot the pope thread. What are you – high?