Paul Thomas Anderson has a knack
for theatricality. His 1999 tour de force
Magnolia might as well have been a play filmed on camera, and the
critically beloved Best Picture nominee There
Will Be Blood has, at least on the surface, all the makings of a classic
Shakespearean tragedy. How effective that theatricality is probably depends on the
whims of the individual viewer. Personally, I thought it worked splendidly in Magnolia, but There Will Be Blood was overwrought to the point of pretentiousness.
The thing is, when your movie is full of hysterical characters, exaggerated
emotions and intense music, the actual content has to be worthy of all that
drama; I suppose my main complaint about There
Will Be Blood is that beneath the breathtaking cinematography and
deliciously spine-tingling score, the story itself is rather ordinary, and I’m
still not quite sure what people find so fascinating about the character of
Daniel Plainview. After that chilling, wordless opening scene, it looked
promising, but by the time the credits rolled, my main thought was: So what?
I was
sincerely hoping that The Master
would alleviate the sour taste left in my mouth by There Will Be Blood, and while I watched the movie unfold, I did
find it thoroughly compelling. Still, as I walked out of the theater, I couldn’t
get rid of the feeling gnawing at the back of my mind that something was
missing, a feeling that only intensified the longer I thought about it. It isn’t
that The Master is a bad film; in
fact, it’s a near-flawless film, at least from a technical standpoint. But it
could have been more. It could have
been a masterpiece, a genuine revelation. Instead, it’s merely another
well-made, well-acted prestige picture, more intriguing than brilliant or
powerful.
If the
movie deserves awards attention for anything, it’s (predictably) the acting. In
his first real role since he “retired” to start a rap career, Joaquin Phoenix
gives us a reason to breathe a sigh of relief that his brief, tabloid-worthy
foray into insanity was nothing more than an elaborate, albeit perhaps
pointless, hoax. Within the first few minutes of the movie, before there is
even a single line of dialogue, you forget all about his off-screen antics, and
he morphs once again into the dedicated, enigmatic actor who rose to fame with
his intense performances in such films as Gladiator
and Walk the Line. Here, Phoenix
plays the volatile, sex-obsessed drifter Freddy Quell who stumbles upon a mysterious
cult led by Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd. He’s a brooding jumble of
mannerisms and tics – like his habit of mumbling through the corner of his
mouth rather than talking – that should come off as gallingly affected, yet he
burrows into the character’s mind and skin with such fearless diligence that the
performance never feels less than authentic. You can sense Freddy’s inner
turmoil, his repressed anguish, simply by watching the actor’s hunched
shoulders, stubbornly crossed arms and dark, sunken eyes.
Nonetheless, the undeniable star of
the show is Hoffman, who has turned into something of a muse for Anderson,
appearing in Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love prior to The
Master. When he’s onscreen, it’s impossible not to watch him, so magnetic
is his presence and so commanding is his voice – that booming bass has a remarkable
ability to sound stern and affable at the same time, the tone of both a teacher
and a father. He exudes charisma so that even when you know he’s saying
nonsense, you want to believe him, to
follow him. As Dodd’s wife Peggy, Amy Adams is perfectly cast. At first, this
seems to be yet another reiteration of the cheery, innocent role that made her adored
by critics and the general public (see: Junebug,
Enchanted, Doubt), but as the movie progresses, it becomes clear that beneath
her rosy-cheeked, red-haired beauty, she’s much more complex – and perhaps much
more sinister. There’s something vaguely unsettling about the Dodds’s
relationship, and the dynamic between Hoffman and Adams is one of the most riveting
and unexpected parts of the movie.
Visually,
The Master is exquisite. There’s one
especially stunning shot near the beginning, when Freddy is running away from a
group of cabbage farmers who suspect him of poisoning an elderly coworker: all
you see is a figure sprinting across a vast, silent, empty field, shrouded by
mist, a haunting metaphor for Freddy’s mental state. In many cases, the images,
captured with loving meticulousness by cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. (who
surprisingly did not work on There Will
Be Blood), seem to convey more meaning than the actual dialogue or plot. As
easy as it is to admire the gorgeousness of the period detail and the
atmospheric lushness of the soundtrack assembled by Jonny Greenwood (one
sequence set to Ella Fitzgerald’s “Get Thee Behind Me Satan” is among the movie’s
best scenes despite the fact that nothing actually happens in it), the
narrative itself feels strangely hollow. What is Anderson trying to say about
religious cults, post-war trauma, family dynamics? I’m still not quite sure.
Perhaps
the most glaring problem is the character of Freddy, who is simply not
captivating or sympathetic enough as a protagonist. As mentioned before,
Phoenix does a terrific job, but even he can only do so much to distract us
from the fact that we don’t actually get to know Freddy at all; at the end of
the movie, he’s not much different from the deranged, licentious alcoholic that
we met at the beginning. Anderson keeps the camera curiously distant, so we
never get a concrete idea of Freddy as a three-dimensional human being or, for
that matter, of his relationship with Lancaster, around which the film supposedly
revolves. The two men interact quite frequently, discussing philosophy and arguing,
yet I couldn’t quite understand why they cared about each other in the first
place. Why did Lancaster take a special interest in Freddy? Why is Freddy so
eager to defend Lancaster from his detractors? However intentional the
ambiguity may be, it’s not effective. The
Master promises viewers a provocative glimpse at the inner workings of a cult
and the psychology of disillusionment, but it delivers a cold, meandering odyssey
to nowhere, as aimless as its hero.
Links:
No comments:
Post a Comment