Why The Master Is No Master-Piece
[I'm not sure a film like The Master actually has spoilers, but if so: spoiler alert.]
Near the beginning of The Master, Paul Thomas Anderson’s much-acclaimed new film about an L. Ron Hubbard-style cult leader, alcoholic WWII vet Freddie Quell, played by Joaquin Phoenix, takes an ink blot test and sees penises and vaginas in every image. By the end of the film, director Anderson is doing pretty much the same thing.
The brilliantly acted and well-made film, though watchable through its more than two hour running time, has left even its admirers baffled. Reviewer after reviewer heaped the film with praise while admitting they did not really know what it was all about.
Personally, I thought it was about less than meets the eye. In following Quell’s fascination with cult leader Lancaster Dodd, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Anderson has presented us with a dated, not to mention worn out, vision of humankind. The film struck me as a final helping of late modernism, with a dollop of reductionist Freud on top. Thanks, but we’ve had enough.
As I read it, the film seems to say that reality is so harsh that people will drink anything from rocket fuel to paint thinner — and will likewise follow even the most completely implausible savior — in order to avoid “taking life straight.” Only by freeing oneself from such drugs and illusions can one set sail masterless on the trackless sea of meaningless existence and thus achieve the ultimate goal of human spiritual development: getting laid. Quell’s journey takes him through several sexual stages: from a masturbatory encounter with a sand-castle dream girl; to a sexless, subservient relationship with a “Dad” who seems to him to hold the key to sexual power; to a final acceptance of the loss of his real dream girl (now hilariously named Doris Day); and a courageous break with Dad that frees him at last to put his penis in the vaginas of real, live women he meets in bars. Um, huzzah.
Andrew, you rock, as always. But that last bit, I have to admit I don’t understand: “…until we find a God that people of today can believe in —a savior for the age of science whom we can embrace with integrity…”
Millions of us already have found that God — the God that is ‘a savior for the age of science’. As your charming and always correct friend, Bill Whittle, states, science is merely a tool used to explore the world. There is nothing contradictory in our efforts to understand the world — which Christians believe is God’s creation — and faith in a Creator. And for 2ooo years Christians have joyously embraced Jesus Christ as not only the Messiah and personal savior, but also as our best friend to lean on in good times and bad. And that is something millions of us through the ages have done with integrity and gratitude.
Carla, I agree with you; I don’t see a conflict between science and faith in God. I’ve always believed that it’s a God-given divine spark that drives humans to uncover the mysteries of existence. The quest is part of his plan for us.
I also agree with you that Andrew Klavan rocks.
Moreover, as to the call for a larger conception of human existence than either Modernism or postmodernism allows, you will cheer for Saul Bellow’s Nobel Prize speech.
The Chicago novelist eviscerates both -isms by demanding to know whether what is old-hat and desperately out of date is not 20th century character-driven fiction but rather the endlessly reiterated cant of the Nietzsche, Baudelaire, Marxist academy. Splendid!
As you know, the Nobel committee has in effect announced in advance that no white American novelist will ever win again. This Chi-town-style beat-down of their shibboleths helps explain their desperate fear of free United States authors.
I too have no kind words for “modernism” as a phenomenon or mindset — although coming from a different direction than Klavan. It was/is a conceit which assumed that because humans were inventing all sorts of new conveniences and scientific/technological breakthroughs, that humanity had somehow “evolved” into something “superior” to what it was only decades earlier. It was/is utter, unscientific nonsense. I’ve even read drivel that claims Bronze Age brains were “different” from modern ones.
We are simply the same Homo Sapiens Sapiens who painted up the caves at Lascaux, but now we have planes and smart phones. Human nature will never, ever change, and evolution takes tens of millennia at a minimum to make a dent, not mere generations; and even evolution doesn’t change our basic nature.
– take a look at Ozti the Iceman’s tools and equipment. In his realm, he was so far ahead of us in every non-noetic measure of independence adaptability and creativity, it ain’t even funny. If you or i fell out of the future and landed beside him, we’d be awe-struck at his towering genius.
It doesn’t take a Frozen Ice Man from a zillion years ago to make that point.
Drop any Modern Liberal onto their *grandfathers* Omaha Beach, carpentry shop, coal mine or wagon train, and you will see the same effect…
Too many people today are only good at one thing…that perfect velvety finger-touch needed to whisk little bits of colored light around on a piece of glass….sorting, accessing, managing, seeking and sending…nothing…. not a single thing of any real importance, true value, or lasting permanence…
Experts at the manipulation of information ABOUT information, but no real working knowledge of any THING…
They can instantly tell me where the nearest Starbucks is, but could not boil the water themselves…the score of a dozen games they can neither play nor even WATCHED being played… Satellite Images of the very spot they stand on, and step by step directions to where they want to go, but no sense of North or South. …. Utterly paralyzed when the anticipated “blip-chirp” of their car-locks does not respond to the magic gadget in their hand.
Is there an App for emasculated stupidity?
Someone should write one.
Perhaps on the wall of a cave
The film aside, that is a great “this is for you, readers” review.
I am a big fan of both P T Anderson and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and the subject of this film appears fascinating. As such it’s on my definite too see list. Even a failure by Anderson, even if he reaches too far and falls flat, well I would bet it’s still way better than the usual Hollywood baloney and the vapid pretentious artsy films about nothing coming from both Europe and North America (well most of them at any rate). So will be checking it out…
“The depiction of the cult leader is wonderfully real in that his madness is obvious but his followers refuse to see.”
Hmmm … maybe it’s really about Obama?
So many of my O-voting friends STILL refuse to see … .
Empirically speaking, things that make one gasp with awe are ALWAYS associated with a religious impulse.
I don’t “know” why, but I do know that this is so.
Doesn’t the idea of finding “a God that people of today can believe in” play into the very lame ideology that the film puts forth?
To put it another way, from Aristotle until the early 60′s, science told us that the universe was eternal. Yet Judaism and its daughter religions insisted that it had a beginning. Only in the mid-60′s did science do a 180. What about all of the poor people in the middle who abandoned their religion because science said otherwise?
Eventually science and religion may converge. In the meantime, we have to do the right thing. And if we are just chemical machines with no free will, there is no “right thing”.
Wouldn’t you pay an obscene amount of money to see Hoffman portray Hemingway?
I’ve read much of the real Master’s oeuvre (I, in no way, think him a god, as many do. But, to not appreciate him at all, is to be a mere plebeian troglodyte), but the image of Hemingway in my head is so Hoffmanesque, it’s scary. He’s already proven his acting ability. Playing Hemingway may be, in fact, his true calling. Not many could portray such a complicated man. Cooper certainly couldn’t. I think, perhaps he can.
I think Phil could mine this unto his eventual death, may that be many years hence. If Papa’s farts were auctioned at Sotheby’s, they would fetch millions.
Watching him land a tarpon or a marlin on a wooden boat, with engine exhaust and the sea salt and the flying fish all around…
Why do the supposed “creative” types no longer have even the tiniest scintilla of creativity. “Island in the Stream” has yet to be filmed. Hoffman stands before you. Do I have to spell each and every syllable out, in idiot’s English, for you “creative” types to even get it?
It really isn’t hard.
If I, a mere engineer, can imagine it, what’s keeping the “artists”?
Alas, Noemie Emery was right. Our elites ain’t what the used to be.
By the way, Drew. I always loved your Old Man. My Mom was a big fan. I always saw why, even at ten. You’re a genius, at least. So was he.
George C. Scott brought ‘Islands In The Stream’ to the screen in 78.
Actually a pretty good flic. Better than most Hemingway based scripts.
But you are right, PSH should play Papa at some point. Probably the Key West/Cuba Papa. As he’s already to old for the ‘Young Man In Europe’ or WWII Hemingway.
Nah –he could do ‘liberation of France’ Hemingway –EH was already a graybeard by then –
curiosity made me check –EH born 1899, WWII EH mainly the year 1944, so he was 45 byrs old. PSH was born 1967 –so he’s 45 years old. Both 45, that’s pretty close!
Brilliant idea — almost, John J. I bow to nobody in my admiration for Hemingway. I refuse in advance to buy into the Papa that an actor of Hoffman’s age and acting style would promulgate. The emasculated Left in LA have no feel for the man, to put it mildly, exactly because don Ernesto was effortlessly and dynamically manly. Hoffman would play an incipient suicide with masculinity-issues, the usual academic BS, not the man who led, if only irregularly, the first WW II American Armed Forces into Paris during the Liberation. See what I’m getting at? With respect…
“It’s a reductionist vision of life that was already absurd in the 1950s and that has now been abandoned by almost everyone who is still thinking… except our own artistic and critical elite. ”
They think?
Of course Hubbard wasn’t (isn’t?) mad; he spoke about inveting a religion as a con, and then he did it. The irony is that super-rationlist icon Campbell, the legenday editor of Astounding/Analog Science Fiction, was taken in my the secular version.
appropo of nothing, this line had me in stitches:
Only by freeing oneself from such drugs and illusions can one set sail masterless on the trackless sea of meaningless existence and thus achieve the ultimate goal of human spiritual development: getting laid.
I’ve just tried and gave up trying to read a SciFi “classic” and Hugo award winner by Fred. Pohl, the Gateway. That quote about summed up the book. Him and Heinlein, they missed their calling. L. Ron had it right and was laughing all the way to the bank.
I know from Scientology. I did it on my gap year when I was about 18 yrs old. A wild trip for a while, but just another way of parting fools from their money.
Exactly, Michal!
There are a LOT of religions created by humans for the same reason L. Ron Hubbard created Scientology: To fool a bunch of morons into giving him free money.
In fact, religions themselves have nothing to do with the God of Creation. They were all created by humans–whose natures are sinful rather than holy–and therefore religions are just stumbling blocks to any individual wishing to establish and maintain a close, personal relationship with God through His Son Jesus Christ.
God’s Word, the Bible, tells us that God WANTS a close, personal relationship with each of us; but to avoid forcing us to love Him back, He created an alternative (Satan) for us–giving us Free Will to choose between filling the hole in our souls with His Love (the ONLY thing that CAN satisfy that gap) and trying to fill it with anything else.
That hole creates a driving need in us to fill it. Since it can only BE filled by a close, personal relationship with God (the source and embodiment of Love), anyone who refuses to acknowledge God runs around frantically trying to fill that gap with anything else they can find on this earth: Drugs, alcohol, sex, lust, anything that can be desired outside the realm of Godly things. Yet, they remain unsatisfied and unhappy.
This is why such people have the worldview they have–one that says life is worthless and boring. I have no idea how they can possibly call themselfs “Intellectuals,” or “Scientists” or even “Educated,” when the Solution to their problem is right in front of them and they REFUSE to see it!
The amazing thing is, this entire perspective of theirs is explained by King Solomon in the (Bible) Book of Ecclesiastes! He explains how everything of this world is worthless without God (Love).
Bird, If all religions are invented by human beings and have nothing to do with God, how do you explain Christianity?
Coastal,
Are you referring to the word “Christianity,” or are you referring to folks who call themselves “Christian?”
First, the word “Christianity” comes from followers of Christ. It was first used in Greece many centuries ago.
Though many folks use the word “Christianity” and assume it is a religion, they do not take into account the fact that there are NO CHURCHES called “Christianity.” So, it is NOT a religion in that sense. Just because people have lied and claimed that the word “Church” in the Bible refers to the Catholic Church, doesn’t make it true.
Religions are man’s way of trying to institutionalize–or collectivize, if you prefer–a close, personal relationship with God. But, that is impossible to do because a relationship is an individual ONE-ON-ONE thing; all religion does is get in the way of establishing that relationship.
If you were to read the Bible, you would learn that God never instructed anyone to create religions. The word “Church” when used in the Bible refers to believers, not to any religion. The Church is the ‘body’ of believers–it’s the PEOPLE everywhere who have established and maintain a relationship with God through His Son Jesus Christ.
To join them, all you have to do is PRAY to Jesus, call on Him to ‘come into your life and be your personal Savior, Best Friend, and Leader.’ Repent of your sins, and He will forgive you! You will instantly receive His Free Gift of GRACE! Grace is free TIME to change your heart and your behavior. It’s a life-long journey–of learning about God and who you are in His Eyes–not a destination.
I am glad that Mr. Klavan explained, in advance, why I would not like this film. I feel that most current popular culture is, at an essential level, masturbatory. How else to explain the careers of Madonna, Lady Gaga and so many others? All of the self-reference, all of the hipness, all of the adoration of the surface.
Great art should draw us in and seduce us. In contrast, modernism and especially post-modernism ask us to watch others pleasure themselves. Not very uplifting, and it leaves me feeling like I need a good wash after. This film just seems to be a bit more literal than most other current offerings.
One thing I find ironic in modernism and post-modernism is that, in trying to make humanity larger by doing away with God, the concept that was supposedly keeping them small, they only succeeded in making humanity smaller, more puerile, and far less interesting.
Mr. Klavan, thanks for the review. I’ll stay home and feel a little less “icky.”
Thank you, Mr. Klavan, for your review!
The trailers for this movie make it look worthy of viewing–which, of course, is exactly what they’re supposed to do. But, instead of misrepresenting the film, I wish there were some law, or requirement of the advertising industry, of ‘truth in advertising.’ (I don’t know where that phrase came from, because most advertising tends to be false.)
Unfortunately, though, “truth” (aka, honesty) is nowdays a subjective commodity.
I found misrepresentive critiques/advertising for many films I’ve been fooled into seeing, including “Lost In Translation” (extremely boring!). So, now I take critical acclaim with a big grain of salt! LOL!
“Only by freeing oneself from such . . . illusions can one set sail masterless on the trackless sea of meaningless existence and thus achieve the ultimate goal of human spiritual development: getting laid.”
Andy, you’ve nailed it.
Mr. Klavan, I consider your claim that modernism’s existentialism in aesthetics is a disguised (and shallow) sentimentalism, to be on the order of Ayn Rand’s instance that business can be creative too. It’s just something that did not occur to me. I have been thinking about that one a lot. Thanks.
Oh, and I do not know of any modern cult, or New Age mysticism, that does not encourage a promiscuous hedonism. Just like atheistic socialism does.
–interesting thread — the results coming in on Existentialism, looks like? Reminds of The Big Lebowski (speaking of Hoffman btw), near the movie’s end, in the bowling alley parking lot, by the light of the burning car, when the self-styled ‘nihilist’ rockers discover there’s no swag, and cry out to the bowling team “But that’s NOT FAIR!” –to which Goodman, with grimly savage contempt, softly mutters “some nihilists.”