Paul Thomas Anderson
The Master

Loving this film requires an act of faith that's a bit foolish, a bit desperate. Just like that of the scruffy Joaquin Phoenix (Freddie Quell) towards the hypnotic and inscrutable Philip Seymour Hoffman (Lancaster Dodd).

Movie night, protests from friends arise: “One of the slowest films I’ve ever seen.” “I didn’t like it.” “What did it mean?” Meanwhile, I am re-evaluating my way of watching films: less head, more gut and heart. Films are not books, they are not philosophical treatises, even the most contemplative and metaphorical ones, like those of P.T. Anderson. For a couple of years now, I’ve been trying to watch through emotions, but the tendency to rationalize is always reassuring (and for this reason, it must be kept in check).

But with The Master you can't rationalize. It's as if it wants to represent in its forms (and not only through content) the irrational power of faith, reckless and blind faith, that anguish and horror vacui that lead to believing in something, no matter what. And so the film itself must be made of voids, must be filled with absences and paradoxical paths, to emotionally explain the daily madness that leads to believing in a charlatan.

A far-fetched thesis? In 2012, perhaps. But not after Inherent Vice and Phantom Thread. Anderson constructs his films through distorting lenses, imposing different formal rules each time. The protagonist of Inherent Vice is unreliable and drugged? The narrator must be so too. Phantom Thread carries within itself the hidden thread of childish fragility of a seemingly strong man: so we construct the film like a cold weave that hides a warm heart, a heart that seeks affection like a sick child with its mother. It’s a fun game that should be tried with the others too: how do the forms influence the contents of Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood? With Magnolia it's easy.

I won’t talk about the performances of the two actors, it’s superfluous (Isn't Freddie perhaps a phoenixian Joker ante litteram?). Instead, I’m interested in discussing actual or imposed credibility. Is Lancaster’s voice reliable or not? We return to the discussion of Inherent Vice: the narration bends to its story, becoming in form what it is in content. And so Dodd's version almost always appears credible, even in its most absurd drifts, because that's how poor Freddie sees it. In this sense, even here the narration is fallacious, unreliable. There are just a couple of revealing epiphanies, but then, like a good adept faithful to the cult, the director goes back to hypnotically following the moves of the guru.

The dry, unexplained narrative breaks equally bear the influence. Faith knows no reason, either when approaching or distancing from it. There's no point in asking why about Freddie's emotional (and physical) motions. They are “acts of faith,” in the worst sense of the term.

The complained boredom and slowness are direct consequences of this free weave, the lack of logical stakes bothers the viewer. But how beautiful is the portrait of a man like Freddie? How much meaning in his furrowed expressions, in his tears and laughter? How much despair in his responses, sincere or false as they may be. How much pity in the director's gaze for this man who seems crazy and troubled, but actually represents each of us. Each of us when we stop deluding ourselves that we can live without something to believe in. When we return to the fold, when we bow our heads and swallow another bitter bite.

But in the end, there’s hope even for him (and us), there’s a future without the chains of faith. There’s the lapping of the sea and us nestled against a female sand statue. Alone but free.

Ps. The film says something else, which I was forgetting. It tells of the dependency of the disciple on the master, but at the same time tells of the master's dependence on the disciple. In the middle of the crowd, him. The most desperate, the fiercest. Dodd is interested in him specifically, like a prodigal son who, returning to the father's house, makes him happier than the thousand children who never thought of leaving.