by Allan Fish
(USA 2012 144mm)
To the poison
p Megan Ellison, Daniel Lupi, Paul Thomas Anderson, JoAnne Sellar d/w Paul Thomas Anderson ph Mihai Malaimare Jnr ed Leslie Jones, Peter McNulty m Jonny Greenwood art David Crank, Jack Fisk, Amy Wells cos Mark Bridges
Joaquin Phoenix (Freddie Quell), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Lancaster Dodd), Amy Adams (Peggy Dodd (Jesse Clemons (Val Dodd), Laura Dern (Helen Sullivan), Lena Endre (Mrs Solstad), Madison Beaty (Doris Salstad), Ambys Childers (Elizabeth Dodd), Patty McCormack (Mildred Drummond), Amy Ferguson (Martha), W.Earl Brown,
When I first heard of The Master, long before it even went into pre-production, it had already become somewhat mythic. It was supposed to be the film that looked at the sinister heart of cult beliefs and religions, a thinly disguised attack on Scientologists that to many potential viewers may have seemed long overdue. But bear in mind the hotshots for whom L.Ron Hubbard’s dubious philosophy is part of their bloodstream, in particular the same Thomas Cruise Mapother IV who gave his greatest performance, and in money terms his seal of approval, in Magnolia by the self-same Paul Thomas Anderson. There was a danger that modern cinema’s greatest potential master was out to blow himself up, like the naïve genius of Citizen Kane all over again.
When the finished film finally arrived, however, it turned out to be anything but that we might have expected or, for him at least, feared. Indeed it’s hard at times to believe that it’s an original film at all. You look at this mixed-up, anti-social, psychotic, almost impenetrable protagonists Freddie Quell and he feels like the antihero to one of the great American novels; that’s the genius, PTA has made the first great cine-novel. It may be accentuated by the period (it’s set in the decade after World War II), but there are aspects of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Kerouac, even Ayn Rand. (more…)
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