Remember Joker Deux? Yeah, nobody seems to want to. Still, as far as Joaquin Phoenix’s repertoire of playing emotional disturbed characters goes, today’s subject is my favorite—and probably my personal best of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films, even after his Oscar win lately.
The Master here delves into something I find fascinating—that of the cult, the welcoming yet closed, everything every confused and lost person since the dawn of civilization has sought when nothing else would work for them. We’ve had mystery cults in the Roman era, underground occult sects, and more recently, we have all manner of online enclaves, sometimes revolving around a gurning moron on a screen or something about anime bikinis. In comparison, Manson makes sense almost.
And this one was inspired by one of the most famous—well, most assuredly not one by L. Ron Hubbard, who definitely was not bilking people to cleanse them of dead alien space ghosts through dubiously hypnotic pseudo-therapy. Not at all. In fact, everything that came from that direction was brilliant, including that one amazing scifi movie with Travolta that wasn’t filmed by a drunk guy at all.
Phoenix here is a disturbed navy veteran in the aftermath of WW2—an era when, for understandable reasons, all manner of people were seeking new spirituality for comfort, and as the Cold War went on, this would lead to the expansion of certain new movements of varying levels of disturbing. Here, he stumbles onto the boat of a man called Dodd, played charismatically by Philip Seymour Hoffman, in charge of a movement that also has something to do with odd psychological practices.
One of my favorite moments of acting period is when Hoffman grills our lead through one of those practices—barraging him with questions to seemingly expose his guilt and psychosis. Of course, it’s all to peel open his vulnerability for the cult—but, as we can see, Phoenix is damaged and alone enough that he needs someone, anyone to listen. With every moment of interrogation, he finally breaks down—and Hoffman, of course, retains absolute control. Combine that with charisma, and much like certain real-life figures, you begin to see why he draws them in.
Of course, he’s also pretty mercurial as we see, and reacts poorly to anyone daring to really question him. As the film goes on, Phoenix questions him too, but is still torn between embracing a new life in the cult, and trying to find something in a world that may or may not have moved him by. And as we see, sometimes, who really has much of a choice in that situation?
It’s a film where the performances keep you going entirely by their own strength—check it out.
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