On Enigmatic Filmmaking with The Master

How do you follow a film like There Will Be Blood (2007), a film so instantly an American classic? If you’re Paul Thomas Anderson, writer / director of some of the most interesting contemporary American films, you release The Master, a future classic, but for reasons far less clear.

The Master is best described as a loose narrative piece of cinema exploring issues of posttraumatic syndrome following WWII, the notion of cult and the balances of power. Freddie Quell is a returning American solider suffering (or excelling, if you asked him) from alcoholism and an unresolved and untreated fear of female abandonment. Lancaster Dodd is a man of blind confidence, a man not to be trifled with who possess the power to control the malleable, backed up by his Lady Macbeth wife. When the two meet, what follows is a piece of filmmaking that is impossible to ignore.

An interesting facet of The Master, and one that contributes to the feeling of unease on the part of the audience is that way Anderson frames his scenes. As an audience we are used to seeing the action, seeing the character that the scene is focused on. What Anderson does brilliantly is keep hidden what we are so used to seeing. We hear it, we see the reaction of others, but we aren’t privy to it ourselves and this endears the film with a sense of mystery and is uncomfortable to watch.

Furthermore, The Master first presents us with Freddie Quell faking sex with a woman made of sand on the beach. This is not a man we can relate to. Lancaster Dodd on the other hand, when juxtaposed with Quell appears reasonable and focused. We are therefore naturally drawn to Dodd as a point of recognition, someone to relate to. Yet Dodd is a man of very questionable ethics and when considered objectively, outside of the film, is a character as unstable as Quell.

As well as the major themes discussed above, The Master examines the forced loss of identity, achieved through enigmatic means, surely the basis of cult. Quell, like Harold Pinter’s protagonist in The Birthday Party (1958), Stanley, is a man who has fallen out of expected societal conventions. Dodd and The Cause form the society that Quell is brought into, after his identity has been questioned. However, unlike Stanley, Quell breaks free, proving too much of a free spirit, too damaged if you like, to be controlled. Whatever your interpretation, The Master is filmmaking at its highest level.