Dec. 19, 2012 - Issue #896: New Year’s Eve - Style & Party Guide
The Master
The Master is, among other things, a portrait of Freddie; so much of this film, the latest from writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood), is made of haunting, gorgeously framed and photographed portraits which render every wrinkle, blink and lip-tremble as dramatically as the movement of armies across a battlefield. Indeed, faces, and the minds behind those faces, are battlefields upon which wills are bent and self-realization is a merciless, violent endeavour.
Freddie moves from job to job, until he meets Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), author, self-declared scientist, what we now call a New Age guru, and something of a stand-in for Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard. Freddie and Dodd recognize each other as the unlikeliest of kindred spirits, chosen father and chosen son, another of Anderson's surrogate families. Their scenes together are among the most riveting moments of cinema I've seen this year (and a lot of other years, for that matter).
The Master will draw different ratios of unease and awe in different viewers, but I feel no reservations about calling it a masterpiece, with all the provocations and points of contention that term implies.
Metro Cinema at the Garneau
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