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. 

On Violence Begetting Violence with Rust and Bone

De rouille et d'os (Rust and Bone) is Jacques Audiard’s follow up to the fantastic A Prophet (2009). The latter achieved what it set out to do with perfection, combining style with substance and creating a masterpiece of the crime/prison genre. Rust and Bone does not replicate this achievement, which may be the result of it being a combination of two short stories and therefore feeling more episodic. 

However, it is incredibly well acted and at times as stylish, brutal and powerful as A Prophet was. 

A Prophet was a film that did not shy away from violence and used it often to force the audience to face the realities of the protagonist’s incarceration. It is interesting to look at Rust and Bone from the point of its violent interactions, which ultimately propel the film forward and, as A Prophet did, forces an audience to face uncomfortable realities about characters they have engaged with.

Matthias Schoenaerts’ Alain is inherently violent; he treats his young son with the temperament of a man with a short fuse; he is drawn to jobs that require confrontation and attempts to make it as a professional mixed martial arts fighter. This is a man who lives with violence, even if he is not explicitly violent that often. Marion Cottillard’ s Stephanie, a trainer of killer whales is a woman who has violence done to her. While putting on a SeaWorld show she is attacked by one of the whales and loses her legs. This act of blameless violence draws her into the arms (literally as he carries her) to Alain. The violence done to Stephanie begets, to a greater degree, Alain’s own violence as she encourages and inspires his illegal mixed martial arts fighting. Yet, Stephanie is a woman coming to terms with violence, she is not a home with it and ultimately Alain’s treatment of her and others drives them apart.

It is only an act of self harm – violence unto himself – that allows Alain to develop as a person. Here Audiard, while looking at (often glamorously) violence, may be making the point that only when violent people turn their brutality inwards and accept it can they develop.

Rust and Bone can feel contrived. Yet it is at times beautiful and challenging cinema. The scene where Alain and Stephanie walk into a illegal fighting ring, with the sun setting behind them to Springsteen’s State Trooper is as memorable as anything this year.  

On Mise-en-Scene and On the Road

How do you adapt one of the most enduring and loved novels of the 20^th Century? Hiring a director perhaps best known for already making a great road movie is a good start. In 2004 Walter Salles directed The Motorcycle Diaries and word has it that it was this film that got him the job of bringing Jack Kerouac’s On the Road to the cinema screen.

To compare the film to the book is a pointless exercise. They are different mediums and use different tools to achieve something absorbed in completely different ways. Fans of novels, especially ones as meteoric as On the Road will never be happy, even if Kerouac could somehow direct it himself.

Therefore, how does On the Road work as a film? The best way to approach a review of this film is through Salles’ construction of his mise-en-scene, which is very impressive. From the costumes to the sets to the props, all communicate an incredibly vivid sense of time. Even the roles are very well cast. Everything within the frame is so meticulously constructed that we wish we could step into the screen and be instantly transported to this world of bohemian intellectuals in New York, or San Francisco.

But we can’t step into the screen and if we could would we like what we found, for even though Salles’ mise-en-scene is rich and warm, his film is cold. There is a distance between the characters and us that is never breached. We remain observers unable to enter the world of Sal and Dean; uninvited for being too conventional or conservative. So much occurs within this film and that we never feel engaged with the story or care about the characters is a major problem. On the Road may have suffered by being swamped by its own expectations.

On Cinematography and Skyfall

Even for a Bond film, Skyfall has received massive amounts of hype. Maybe this time (the 23^rd in the series) it was justified. An award-winning director in Sam Mendes, the talented Javier Barden as the antagonist and Daniel Craig returning as James Bond. None of this really matters when the films are so formulaic that any talent attached to them is diluted by the strictures imposed upon the story. However, this is a ridiculous criticism to make of Bond films as they remain essentially unchanged and if you don’t like the formula, don’t see the films.

Where Skyfall deserves celebration is in hiring Roger Deakins as cinematographer. Deakins has worked on countless films of a quality far greater than that of Skyfall and has brought to this most average of spy franchises a beautiful image. Fargo (1996), Jarhead (2005), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) and True Grit (2010) are just some of Deakin’s more recent films as director of photography.

Some of the dialogue in Skyfall is excruciating and there are plenty of times when the film could be muted and pleasure could be taken from what Deakins has achieved. A silhouetted fight scene atop a Singapore skyscraper is incredible. The mist hanging over the Scottish moors communicates more about the atmosphere of the film and the mood of the characters than the script can achieve. Talent will (almost) always survive being attached to a Bond film, but rarely does it shine throughout it. Deakins makes one aspect of Skyfall something to be admired. 

On Beasts of the Southern Wild

Beasts of the Southern Wild is one of those films that comes out of nowhere and is suddenly everywhere. The actors and filmmakers are relative unknowns, which allows the film to quietly approach cinemas, but also means that its success seems to be magnified, as if critics can’t quite believe these unknowns made a full feature length film.

BOTSW tells the story of a young girl and her father living in the bathtub, an area of an unnamed US state that has been flooded in a storm and then walled off by a levy. The leap to the real life events of hurricane Katrina are purposely and clearly made, despite the film taking on a more surreal direction, where some residents, despite being asked to leave, have decided to remain living in the bathtub.

The narrative is very loose and at times shaky. There are elements that feel contrived and those that feel repetitive. Yet, it is an ambitious film and for writer/director Behn Zeitlin it is a very impressive debut feature. Where Zeitlin’s skills lies are in the performances he extracts from his inexperienced cast, specifically Quvenzhané Wallis, who as the young girl forced to learn how to survive in the bathtub, carries the film. Wallis’ performance is beyond her years and acting experience and the immediate attached we feel to her makes BOTSW the emotional rollercoaster it is and makes it easy to forgive or forget some of the more obvious weaknesses.

Cinematographer Ben Richardson has done a fantastic job as the film has a beautiful grainy feel to it that uses light majestically. Richardson brings what is a hard landscape to film to life. BOTSW is not a flawless film and is probably not fully deserving of the unending praise thrown on it, but it is a brave film and should be celebrated.

On the Writer and Ruby Sparks

Is writing the least glamorous glamorous job that one can hold? You may walk red carpets, mingle with celebrities, travel round the world and earn money to make life a comfortable experience, but in many cases remain anonymous. Without your work the finished product doesn’t exist, yet once it does and it is out there, an audience unfamiliar and uninterested unconsciously casts you aside with your methods, as do a press concerned only with the ‘names’ of entertainment.

Ruby Sparks concerns itself with a rare creature, the novelist who has achieved recognisable fame.  Fame he doesn’t necessarily crave. Yet, he is still portrayed as we expect writers to be portrayed; an indoors type, lonely, bookish (obviously) and out of place in a gym. Despite this stereotypical presentation, Ruby Sparks is mostly about writing, the pleasures, the difficulties and the dreams of writers. When we meet the film’s protagonist he is writing using a typewriter, despite this being the 21^st Century; he is anachronistic. Not just in his equipment, but also in his approach to love, believing in the magic of romance (a magic that becomes literal).

As the film progresses, his love of writing and of what his writing manifests reveals its true nature, its difficulties and complications. He writes less and when he does it is not for love of writing, but for a need to control his writing from spiralling out of his control. By the end of the film, he has come to learn that the magic of writing and of love does not exist in a romantic ideal somewhere located in the past, but exists in the present where it requires work and constant attention. He swaps his typewriter for a MacBook Pro and writes his next great novel. 

On Safe Comedy with Liberal Arts

It’s easy to think that a young, hipster looking writer/director like Josh Radnor would, when tackling the romantic comedy genre, produce something off beat or indy-esque. You would not be at fault for thinking this; he stars in a popular E4 comedy, How I Met Your Mother (2005 -) and his first film as writer/director was perfectly titled to connote eccentric cinematic sensibilities, Happythankyoumoreplease (2010). His new film, which he wrote, directed and stars in is Liberal Arts and tells the story of a graduate of a top university finding himself, twenty years later, back on campus and falling for a freshman.

However, Liberal Arts is, beneath the liberal, arty title, a very traditional romantic comedy. There is the mismatched romantic pairing, the wiser, foreshadowing older mentor, the off beat side-kick and a style of comedy which falls very much under the family friendly, don’t offend the elderly banner.

All of this feels very nice and fresh within the continuing onslaught of comedy inspired by the Judd Apatow lewd, bromance genre. Liberal Arts is funny and is touching and is able to reach out to a wide audience and make itself relevant and relatable. The performances, like the direction aren’t flashy, but display the restraint of a director confident of his vision. A film that is memorable for being unremarkable.