Much was made of Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master being shot on 70mm, and for good reason: Those lucky enough to live close to a theater projecting the film in that format had a much different experience than other viewers. While some puzzled why Anderson would use a format traditionally associated with epics for a film dominated by conversations captured in close-up, an optimal format viewing quickly clarified this reasoning: There are strong lights behind the characters, and in 70mm, viewers are positively irradiated by dazzling levels of whiteness.
Moving away from the entrancingly over-the-top, aggressively in-your-face Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood, The Master outlines the relationship between the loosely L. Ron Hubbard-ish figure Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and sexually troubled World War II vet Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix). After sneaking onto Dodd’s yacht during a party, Quell becomes Dodd’s aide-de-camp: ad hoc bartender, attack dog against skeptics, and partner in partying. Both lead actors are at their rhythmically idiosyncratic best, justifying Anderson’s confidence in paring back his visual fireworks.
The film’s investigation of male bonding through bad behavior is one thread in a rare film that wonders, without snickering, how trauma and asocialization are shaped and expressed through sexual dysfunction. If it’s not as memorable a spectacle viewed at home, that just means Anderson made his point about the glories of shooting on and projecting celluloid. Even stripped of that factor, The Master is typically dense, unexpectedly funny, and predictably unpredictable, an actor-fueled installment in Anderson’s ongoing portraits of 20th-century American history. —Vadim Rizov
No comments:
Post a Comment