The Master

The Master, by Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012

Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the most talented and interesting writer/directors working today.  His choices of subject matter for his films are always fascinating and provocative, be it the rise and fall of the porn industry in the late 70's and early 80's in Boogie Nights, or the greedy and sociopathic oil tycoon in There Will Be Blood.  In his latest film, The Master, Anderson explores the founding of a cultish new belief system on the rise in the 1950's, specifically through its charismatic leader (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and a new recruit, a mentally unbalanced drifter (Joaquin Phoenix).

The drifter, Freddie Quell, is truly a mess.  We learn much about him in the early scenes.  Among other things, we learn he had an absent father and an instutionalized mother, he's clearly suffering from PTSD after fighting in the Pacific, and is prone to violent outbursts.  He concocts and guzzles beverages out of any chemicals he can find, including paint thinner, ground up prescription drugs and whatever other forms of brain damage are lying around.  But more than anything, he just longs for a real human connection, something Freddie is tragically incapable of.

The Master, AKA Lancaster Dodd, just sees Freddie as a project.  They're drawn to each other for very different reasons.  Freddie truly tries to believe in what Dodd espouses "The Cause", but his fractured mind just can't connect with it.  What he really wants is a father figure who will show him some real affection.  Dodd wants to use Freddie as the ultimate proof that his various tests, mind games, and parlor tricks can change a man.  It's very hard to tell where Dodd's sympathy ends and his manipulations begin.  Everything he does seems to be a ploy to exert his control over this poor square peg.  He's cold and calculating, unless he feels he's losing Freddie, then he's all buddy-buddy.

As expected in Anderson's films, the performances in The Master are all around incredible.  Hoffman, Phoenix, and Amy Adams (as Dodd's wife and devoted follower), all give performances worthy of Oscar nominations.  They may not win this year, but at the very least, I think Phoenix deserves it for his total transformation.

The cinematography is beautiful too, of course.  Anderson is continuing further down the stylistic road he began with There Will Be Blood.  This second leg of his career appears to be less Altman and Scorsese, waaaaaay more Kubrick.  Lots of one-point perspectives.  There are shots so beautifully composed in The Master, I must have gasped or something, because my wife told me she actually heard me reacting to them.

Also, as unsettling and creepy as Paul Thomas Anderson's movies can get, they're often strangely hilarious as well.  The Master is no different.  It's loaded with bizarre, funny moments, such as Dodd's love of Kool cigarettes, an explosive scene between the two of them at a jail, or a scene where Dodd is embarrassingly called out by a skeptic (possibly the most important scene in the movie).  These touches of humor are always underscored with a hint of menace or sadness, but they do provide some much needed levity to a very, very dark story.

I've heard a lot of criticism directed toward The Master saying that it looks great and the performances are great, but it fails to "gel" or come together in the end.  I wasn't even sure what I thought, as the credits rolled.  I suppose it's a little less pointed than some of his other work, but I would argue that some of the best movies out there are as good as they are because they didn't "gel".  We talked about The Master for a couple of hours after seeing it, analyzing every little moment, picking it all apart, trying to figure out the director's intentions behind the oblique parts.  I don't see a lot of movies that challenge the viewer to do these things, and it makes me appreciate them more when I do.

Martha Marcy May Marlene

We all find the subject matter of kooky religious cults to be fascinating, don't we? I mean, as far as I can tell, that's pretty universal. The non-religious among us get to point at them and go, "SEE?" and the religious among us get to go, "at least that's not us, right guys?" Martha Marcy May Marlene is a tense, unsettling, and engrossing look at what it's like to be in such a fringe religion, and the psychological damage they can cause.

Martha Marcy May Marlene stars Melizabeth Molsen in the title role (just Martha, really), as a girl who, after two years of living on a farm with a tiny sect, sneaks away and finds refuge with her older sister and her husband. Unfortunately, though she could elude their physical grasp, it is much more difficult to escape the hold these people have on her psyche. She has become seriously warped by years of psychological battering.

The narrative unfolds in two timelines, with flashbacks covering her time with the cult alternating with the present scenes of Martha desperately struggling to adjust to her freedom. She's distant and uncommunicative with her sister (played by the always welcome Sarah Paulson). As far as the sister knows, she was off with a boy for two years and now she's back. Of course, as Martha's behavior gets more and more bizarre and downright scary, the sister figures out it goes much deeper than that.

In the flashbacks, we see Martha's initiation into the cult through her own eyes. Upon her first meeting with Patrick, the charismatic leader of this commune, played by a scary great John Hawkes, Martha loses her name and is rechristened Marcy May. Of course, that's the first step, taking away the identity. Over the course of the flashbacks, we see her shattered much further, until eventually, she is actively aiding in indoctrinating the newbies.

The acting is all around great, but this is Elizabeth Olsen's movie all the way. Your heart breaks after first witnessing the outcome of the poor decisionmaking of a wayward youth, and then seeing first hand the events that caused all that damage. She has some pretty tough scenes in the movie.

John Hawkes is also pretty amazing as Patrick. At first glance, he seems benevolent enough, though it quickly becomes clear that there's a sinister undercurrent to everything he's saying. He demonstrates in his performance that ability a cult leader has to get under a person's skin, pick away at their vulnerabilities, and bend them to his will. From the things he makes these people do, especially the women, you can tell that he gets off on the power. In the very first scene, we see that the men get to eat first, while the women wait in the next room until it's their turn to have a crack at what's left.

Martha Marcy May Marlene is written and directed by Sean Durkin. I believe it's his first film. I really liked a lot of the dialogue, I think he really nailed that brainwashed culty way of speaking. A great example is the speech Patrick gives when he teaches Marcy May to shoot a gun, before then trying to talk her into shooting a living thing. There's a single line of dialogue in the movie that creeped me out to the extreme. It implies something extremely disturbing, and then it is never elaborated upon, wisely leaving it to the audience's imaginations. I won't spoil the line, I'll let the reader see if they can figure out which one I'm referring to.

Visually, Durkin plays a lot with contrasting Martha's two homes. The farmhouse she lives in, though seemingly homey and welcoming, is crowded and claustrophobic. She sleeps in a cramped room with the rest of the girls, practically in a pile. Everything is shared, she has no possessions of her own. She's trapped in by the forest surrounding the farm. Conversely, her sister's summer home is large and open. The walls are white and pristine, and there are huge windows everywhere. She's not walled in by a forest, instead, there's a lake out front. But for some reason, the summer home never feels welcoming either. It's a rental, so none of the furniture is theirs. It feels too clean, almost alien. Adding to the discomfort is the fact that her sister's husband is openly resistant to even letting her stay, because he doesn't understand her and she's really ruining his vacation.

One going to see this movie should be warned of a couple things: 1: Not a first date movie. Some pretty disturbing sex scenes are within. And 2: Don't expect a clean resolution, or very much closure, even. This isn't that type of movie. You never know at the end of the movie if she is really free from Patrick's clutches or not. It's wide open for discussion. I know people who find movies like this infuriating, so if you think you are one of those people, this movie is probably not for you. Even I was shocked by how abrupt the ending was.

Martha Marcy May Marlene was, for me, a scarier movie than all of the horror movies I've watched in the last month. Knowing that similar things to this go on in the real world makes ghost movies feel utterly ridiculous by comparison.