As Ruskin Bond put it deliciously, rum is for the soldiers, gin for women and beer for schoolboys.
For men, who are as ‘hopelessly inquisitive’ as Lancaster Dodd, the choice of drink could be a pint of moonshine that can make them chortle in delight first and wonder about the contents later.
Freddie Quell, Dodd’s latest acolyte and- in a crucial touch- the cocky manufacturer of this ‘remarkable potion’, is visibly delighted by his triumph at pleasing his new-found master and, when pressed for the truth, answers back, ‘Secrets’.
And it is this winsome romance that Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘The Master’ doles out to us in the form of the dizzying, giddily intoxicating moonshine of a tale of two men in mid-20th century America, a land and a time both unmoored by the end of one shell-shocking World War and nudged towards the paranoia of another one in its possible early throes.
Notable films and books have explored this oft-ignored yet troubling timeline of a nation questioning its own foolhardy heroism, assailed by doubt and mistrust amidst its own people but this is Anderson after all, one of this generation’s most relentlessly probing and incisive storytellers and ‘The Master’ is no different- a narratively spectacular, visually stunning and emotionally absorbing wide-eyed glance at the quietly devastating chaos through the distorted perspective of these two men serving two ends of a dysfunctional leader-follower relationship.
Quell kick-starts the story and not even with a shred of optimism. He is a US Navy veteran on the loose, a man helplessly addicted to sex and alcohol (that is, the alcohol that he makes). Back in the lazy layovers between the gunfire on the beaches, he was desperately carving out and humping sand sculptures of voluptuous women. Now, things are even more unhinged, as he scavenges for both carnal pursuits and a sense of purpose without quite getting to any of them successfully.
Fleeing from what seems like a freak case of poisoning one of his minions at a cabbage farm, Quell seeks solace and, in a bid for escape and freedom, ends up confining himself instead to a burgeoning self-improvement movement at play. Its leader is the charismatic Dodd, a man who gushes with warmth and affability but whose ruthlessly clever eyes twinkle with additional warmth at the sight of the hapless able-bodied seaman in front of him.
The two hit it off immediately and while everything seems hunky-dory for Quell, cracks are already appearing on Dodd’s perfectly manipulated reality-distortion field, called ‘The Cause’. Bonding on a boat trip to the East Coast, on the occasion of the marriage of Dodd’s pretty daughter (who seems to have a roving eye for the edgy Quell), Dodd submits to his fascination with Quell, a man so completely unhinged and utterly indifferent to whatever gospel that this self-proclaimed genius would want to say. You can sense the dissonance early on; while bright, blonde women scribes are listening intently to Dodd intoning that ‘man is not an animal’, Quell is busy propositioning his own hungry sexual advances on one of them. Clearly, what unites them as friends is that delicious moonshine that he makes but then they cannot stay away from each other.
Anderson is an extraordinary storyteller, the kind of filmmaker who warbles with both the spoken word and the visual idiom, to paint his immaculate strokes and ‘The Master’ is a showcase of his pitch-perfect finesse. Shot on gorgeous 65mm film and scored to the whimsical yet intense beats of Jonny Greenwood's score, the film aches with visible, almost organically painful beauty. Cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. shoots visuals that are immersive, hypnotic and grand in their scope and scale- blending spell-binding sun-kissed daylight and majestic lighting to create miracles on the screen as the film’s plot takes its characters from kinky frolic on sunny beaches to the shopping aisles of buzzing departmental stores to foggy fields to drawing rooms and porches where most of the action of the latter half takes place. Anderson uses his images to profoundly poetic effect, lending an elegant long-shot that gazes with wonder at a girl wearing an overcoat simply to sell it to the shoppers in the market and extraordinarily phenomenal close-ups of both Quell and Dodd so that we notice not only the way how they look but also how their faces twitch with both excitement and disillusionment, with both drunk joy and ravenous anger.
He also knows how to button his flourishes- as in the scene where Dodd grills Quell with questions that hurtle up a horde of demons from the latter’s soul before cutting away to a wistfully romantic flashback that brings the emotions to the fore. Make no mistake: for all its buzzing and brilliant mental masturbation, ‘The Master’ is an evocatively human story, a tale of a mutual hunger for freedom and happiness sated only by a mutual grudging love that the rest of the world cannot quite comprehend.
The writing is exquisite, punchy and nuanced- in the midst of a raunchy coupling, Quell’s latest lust- the same girl selling the overcoat- wilfully eggs him more, saying that she has an ‘apricot belly’. Later on, Dodd delivers a charged monologue about a fantasy of wrestling with a dragon, a scene that has deeper cryptic meaning that what one could think. Dodd, left defenceless by dissent and disagreement around him, can only lash out a nasty bit of profanity while Quell, serving as his obsessively devoted servant, pummels the very people who question his ‘master'. A bit of questioning makes Quell pour out his heart but that relentless self-improvement mumbo-jumbo clearly cannot soothe his pain. We are wondering by now- what exactly makes these men come together again even as they differ so much and even as Quell himself loses faith in what is being taught to him?
The answers come mostly from the twin massive performances bolstering Anderson’s genre-busting ambition and drive. Joaquin Phoenix creates, in Quell, a man so rippling in his taste for violence and sleaze and yet so utterly helpless in his vulnerability and predicament, especially when being asked to surrender his free will to the self-deluding traps laid by nation, love and pop-philosophy. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is even one up, playing Dodd like both a charismatic buccaneer of a broken ship and a charlatan running a losing game. His immaculate words, spoken with a trademark air of his grace and subtlety, serve as a perfect foil to the damaged, trapped man beneath the veneer of the imposing air of superiority that is to be expected of him. On the other hand, Phoenix imbues his mannerisms with the hint of wild-eyed menace beneath which he tries to hide his own baffling insecurities.
And then, there is Amy Adams. Playing Dodd’s quietly domineering wife Peggy, hers is the character that soon emerges as the film’s titular slave-driver. A woman of almost obstinate conviction in the school of thought that her husband preaches, she is also the one who leaps back, with snarling vengeance, at the ones who are likely to burst the bubble. Watch her eyes glimmer with elation when announcing a book launch, watch her count off Dodd’s enemies as his ‘ex-wives’ and watch her look down with steely brutality at everyone who dares to question The Cause- including Quell himself. Adams delivers each stroke with the fierce intensity that only few actresses of this generation can muster up.
It is through the intertwined strands of each of these three characters that Anderson drives home his passionate tale, a film which never fears to play its own game and never, for once, spoon-feeds or hoodwinks its audiences. It might be a tall order indeed, as evidenced by the virtuoso and mind-numbing power of the craft on display here- especially one dream-like sequence of an orgy of burlesque excess that leaves decency and mannerism to its very shreds- but then, some films are worth the intense love that it takes to admire them wholly. ‘The Master’ is after all a ‘master’piece and whenever it commands you to witness its dazzling power, you will surrender gladly.
My Rating- 5 Stars Out Of 5
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