The Master or The Young Man and the Sea: A Deconstruction of Paul Thomas Anderson's Exquisite Masterwork

Freddie Quell is a bird of the vast, grey, and infinite sky. He drifts through life like dust motes in a shaft of afternoon light. Women, jobs, alcohol, and people in general try to pin him down. To label him, diagnose him, explain him. Put him in the cold dank prison cell we all call a purpose. Many think they have the answers to Freddie, they know what's wrong with him. Whether it be doctors, therapists, or Philip Seymour Hoffman's charismatic cult leader Lancaster Dodd. Many try, but they all fail. Quell is a character like that of some elusive and far away indecipherable message. One can try and understand him, to grasp him and fit him into a peg in society, but they will fail. When Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master was released in 2012, a common criticism was that Joaquin Phoenix's character Freddie Quell did not change, evolve, or develop. He started out a confused and mumbling drunk and then stayed that way throughout the entire movie. What critics failed to realize was that Quell wasn't supposed to change. To have him develop would be completely disregarding everything the film has worked to establish. In fact, in launching this very complaint at the movie critics themselves are falling prey to the exact mistake almost every character in the film made: they tried to put Freddie under an umbrella. This is an impossible feat. He is a man so broken by the war, by life. Left with nothing to do but float drunkenly through the bottomless abyss of this here world we are all prisoner to. Freddie is the unchanging sea. Try as we might, we simply cannot chart his waters. No Captain Cook could ever penetrate through the exterior of him. Philip Seymour Hoffman's last monologue sums it all up perfectly: "Free winds and no tyranny for you, Freddie, sailor of the seas. You pay no rent, free to go where you please. Then go, go to that landless latitude and good luck. If you figure a way to live without serving a master, any master, then let the rest of us know, will you? For you'd be the first in the history of the world." Freddie is a seaman, a directionless drifter who is bound by no chains, subjugated by no master. The film opens with a beautiful shot that repeats throughout the film. The flowing vibrant blue ocean. It is breathtaking simple. It is Freddie Quell himself. At another point in the beginning of the movie, Freddie lies down next to a woman he has crafted out of sand on the beach. In what I believe is the very last shot of the film, he once again lies down next to this mysterious sand mistress in an almost identical shot. He has not changed. Held down by no bride, he chooses to lie with the alluring beauty of the sea. I've often hear people complain about this movie in that it is too confusing and has little to say. Hogwash, says I. Anderson awes us and entrances us with his visuals and complex story about cults and religion. Yet, at heart The Master is truly about one man and his quest for ultimate freedom. A man so detached and broken off from the regularity of society he can only drift among the eternal waves of the Pacific. The film takes a look at the effects of war on a single man, but doesn't do it in the same formulaic way we have all seen before.  In many ways, Freddie's inherent wanderlust has made him a better person than most of the characters in the film. He, at least, is outright with his flaws of drunkenness and laziness. He does not hide behind any veneer, nor does he make himself slave to his intricacies and downsides. Everyone else in the film chains themselves to their persona's and auras of perfection they think they have. Amy Adams character looks down on Freddie as a boozer and possible criminal, but is too cold and uppity to see her own problems. Hoffman's Lancaster Dodd is so trapped in his hubris and power trip he simple cannot realize that he shouldn't try to change Freddie, but that it's really himself that needs changing. The Master in this film is not Dodd, but Quell. A man who in having no master, has become the master himself. Master of living life the way he sees fit. Like an eagle flapping its wings, Freddie glides along the winds of pure freedom and easy living. He is a man out of place in time, for there is no real time for Freddie. He lives outside the boundaries of linear time. His time is an ocean, and he is commander of the ship sailing on its waves. The Master is a beautiful, somewhat misunderstood, masterpiece from the Kubrick of today. An austere and wondrous tone poem that looks at humanity for what we are. "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." I believe F.Scott Fitzgerald unintentionally sums up the film best.

Capote review

Philip Seymour Hoffman died recently. The entire world of cinema went into shock when it happened. Some of his favorite performances of mine were in The Master, The Big Lebowski, and Magnolia. He won a Best Actor Oscar in 2006 for his role in Capote. I had heard for a long while that he was great in the film, but I never brought myself to watch it. So recently I sat myself down, and watched Capote. Boy, have I been missing out. Capote was a fantastic film. It combines great acting and writing, with Zodiac-esque tension and plotting. It's expertly crafted and I really did enjoy it. The movie is part biopic and part true crime thriller. It documents a tumultuous part of writer Truman Capote's life from around 1959 to 1962 as he researches the Clutter family murders for his book, In Cold Blood. I haven't read any of Truman Capote's novels or short stories. After watching the movie, I certainly am quite interested. He was an interesting man, Hoffman's performance really capitalizes on this in the best way possible. He gets the accent perfectly. He gets all of Capote's little tics, understanding his demons and problems fully. There's one scene in particular where Truman is talking to one of the killers, seeing him off to his execution. Hoffman makes the scene as powerful as movie scenes get. Raw, emotional, and just damn terrific. He isn't inhabiting the character, he is the character. I think he one hundred percent deserved his Oscar for this, the guy was truly fantastic. I think his performance in Capote is tied with The Master for his best performances he has ever given. Catherine Keener also gives a solid performance as To Kill A Mockingbird writer and good friend of Truman Capote, Nelle Harper Lee. She does a good job of supporting Philip Seymour Hoffman, but she isn't given much of a time to really shine. Keener has little powerful moments, but isn't given even a whole scene to herself. It's not a huge problem, but Catherine Keener is a great actress who isn't used to her full potential here. Luckily, that is one of the few complaints I have with Capote. Hoffman does a spectacular job here, but the movie has many other terrific aspects to it besides his wonderful performance. For starters, it's really well directed. Bennett Miller has only directed this, Moneyball (which I unfortunately haven't seen yet), and some movie called The Cruise. I don't know how this compares with his other projects, but I can tell just from this that he is talented.The film has a very polished, yet cold, feel to it that reminded me of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Zodiac. Each scene is framed and lighted perfectly, capturing the emotions of the scene and the feel of the era. He's also great at creating a suspenseful mood for the film. Working along side him is writer Dan Futterman, who wrote a terrific and Oscar nominated screenplay for Capote. His dialogue is great, and the way he writes the story really boosts the film in a great way. Futterman humanizes his characters very well. Making Truman Capote more than a big name author and making the two murderers look like more than just evil faces on the front page of the New York Times. In the end I really felt as if I understood the plight of the criminals and of Capote's issues. The film as a whole is a haunting and absorbing slice of history that is really, really well made. Often biopics are just a series of it's subjects achievements, eventually leading up to the inevitable death of the subject. Capote overcomes those problems by focusing on just one part of Truman Capote's life and then looking at that moment in the best way possible. Some biopics, like Lincoln, are informative yet very boring. Capote is really informative yet also very entertaining and interesting. It makes me really miss Philip Seymour Hoffman and appreciate what a fantastically awesome actor he was. I highly recommend you watch it. I wouldn't be surprised if I watched it again soon. Happy Viewing guys. If you haven't already, you can like me on Facebook at Facebook.com/WhitsMovies and follow me on Twitter @WhitsMovies. Thanks!

Salinger review

What a phony.
J.D. Salinger is one of the most famous American writers of all time. He wrote on of the most famous American novels of all time, The Catcher in the Rye. This documentary is all about him. Yet, it seems to completely miss the point of J.D. Salinger as a man. Salinger was a man who hated all the spotlights and falseness of Hollywood. This movie forgets that and makes J.D. Salinger out to be some heroic writing god. He wasn't all that. Salinger said himself that he's just a fiction writer. Yeah he wrote a fantastic book that really personified the feelings some people had but he was just a great writer. At first glance the film seems like it might be trying to make the point that he was just a man, but it quickly goes off the rails and makes him seem like some sort of Jesus figure. J.D. Salinger would've hated this movie. I think Holden Caulfield would've hated this too. It's just as phony and cheesy as all the things Catcher in the Rye was against. Every damn frame of the film is followed by swells of classical music, the end of the movie felt so saccharine and syrupy that I almost puked. The film doesn't even explain most of the man's life. His childhood is barely even mentioned, it just dwells on how messed up the guy got from WWII. They have all these celebrities lined up talking about how damn great Salinger and his works are when really the famous people are just there to catch your eye and distract you. Also, why the hell did Shane Salerno direct this out of anyone in the movie world? The guys written such astounding classics as Savages and Alien vs. Predator: Requiem. I was being sarcastic as you probably know but I didn't want to cause any confusion. Savages had the worst ending I've seen in any movie in a while, and AvP is just crap. And this is the guy we're trusting to handle our J.D. Salinger documentary. The whole thing just feels shoddy and fake. A lot of the interviews are shot with unnecessary and obvious green screen that takes away from everything some of the people are saying. The synopsis was saying that the documentary was absorbing. That couldn't be further from the truth. Salinger is boring, misguided, and overall pretty dull. The whole thing seems as if some overexcited high schooler made this for his school project, except had a much larger budget. At many points during the film I had a strong urge to just walk away from it or take out my phone. I actually found myself getting angry at the movie. As I said before, it's so stupid and phony. It's nothing like it should have been. Maybe if this had been made as a biopic with lots of talent attached, like The Aviator, it would've been better. This sorry excuse for a documentary disgraces the Salinger name. I know that sounds like a bit much, but this movie really bugged the hell out of me. It didn't inspire me or make me feel anything. Except for contempt. The only thing this film made me want to do was write an angry letter to Shane Salerno and reread Catcher in the Rye to try and forget this phony movie. Some people may like the documentary, I am not one of them. At the end of Salinger there's a long credits sequence which is basically a "subtle" commercial for some of Salinger's works that will be published soon. I get that these books are going to be famous and groundbreaking but please don't put a dumb message at the end of this dumb movie hitting you over the head with the notion that maybe you should read the books. J.D. Salinger would not approve. I saw a trailer for this movie a few weeks ago. It's already on Netflix. No wonder. This crappy doc should have never been released in the first place. I loved Catcher in the Rye. It's probably in my Top Five favorite books. This movie takes all the greatness of Salinger and his writings and does what never should have been done. Hollywood-ized it. I'll say it once and I'll say it again. This film is phony. I give Salinger 1.5 out of 5 stars. Happy Viewing (just not of this). You can follow me on Twitter @WhitsMovies and like me on Facebook at Facebook.com/WhitsMovies!