Thread by @tonytost

THE MASTER (2012). In the final analysis, despite my best intentions, I'm a pretty basic film bro. I'm most at home w/ Tarantino, the Coens, PTA. I dig Fincher & Nolan quite a bit less than my type. But I love me some Kubrick. And worship Scorsese. Very basic bro stuff.

Even in my film bro-ness, I've continually found myself resisting THE MASTER. But weirdly I've kept returning to it, I think because I find the first 40 minutes so visually captivating. This time, I think I internalized the film's (non) structure enough to get into its vibe.

I have some theories. One theory: the only reason PTA ever works as a writer is because he always gets PTA to direct his scripts. In the same way that Tarantino is only interesting as a director because he always gets to direct Quentin Tarantino scripts.

This was maybe the 6th or 7th time I've watched this film. I was on its wavelength for the first time tonight. One key, which in retrospect feels so simple to be stupid: realizing that PTA *likes* Lancaster Dodd and empathizes with him. This oddly opened up the film for me.

I think I carried too much Scientology baggage into my prior viewings. I think, now, that Dodd should be taken in a less critical light, as an imperfect but earnest searcher and voyager. With this in mind, the impulse to satire drifts away. Instead, you're faced with humanity.

I kinda think it's an Ingmar Bergman film with a rather robust budget. Impressionistic & defiantly reticent in terms of its aim to entertain. It doesn't synch up with genre or populist forms. And the 20 minute bonus feature of outtakes is way too central to getting the story.

As an artist, maybe one of my strengths is that I experience my life as a continual dance with the symbolic. As a human, that's one of my weaknesses. On this watch, such a conflict felt central to the Quell/Dodd dynamic, the pull b/w the materials & the symbols of existence.

For the first time, I also really connected Joaquin Phoenix's physicality with the physicality of my own grandfather who was of the same generation: a quarter Cherokee, chain-smoking & grinning through pain, & likewise wound into a kind of taut knot, via childhood Polio.

I also resisted the impulse for a summarizing narrative upon watching the film. My own insistent motto is that drama is a feeling, not a plot. But I forget this. On this watch, I approached THE MASTER as music: the modulation and juxtaposition of feelings, and trusting that.

And in a weird way, I also viewed the film as a pre-posthumous tribute to Phillip Seymour Hoffman. You can kinda read Joaquin Phoenix's deep reactions as a fellow actor simply responding to the towering power and basic humanity of Hoffman the thespian.

On previous watches, I was so busy trying to grab an intellectual grip on the film -- to anticipate & catch PTA's critique of Dodd's movement -- that I missed much of the spirit of the film. Right now on this watch, I just take it as a soulfully neutral dramatization.

Like, how to take Jesse Plemons' character, as Lancaster Dodd's son. He's skeptical. He calls out his dad to Phoenix, & invites the cops to arrest his dad. And yet at the end, he's there at the institute. Is it because he's a fraud? Or because he got over his immature rebellion?

The film leaves this open. & I think that's the point. Posing very dramatic questions, & then demurely stepping back from judgment. Ultimately, I think the film's accomplishment isn't the providing of any kind of answer, but simply how it opens up a specific kind of questioning.