frankie films: the master

Attention frankie film folksters (henceforth known as the FFFs): Welcome to our new cinematic section where we will bring you the freshest in films, what-do-I-need-to-know reviews, film festival run-throughs and the occasional golden oldie. Your captain will be Rowena Grant-Frost, our resident FFF. Her first foray is The Master: shot entirely on 65mm film and scored by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, she discovers the path to enlightenment is often eased along with the help of Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix. Enjoy, FFFs.

I often wish I had a life map. It would make my journey through perpetual adolescence so much easier if I knew what was coming next: "I don't need to worry about being poor!" I'd laugh. "Because next week I'll get a job being rich and influential and doing that thing I never suspected with cats! It's right here! On the map!"

I do not have a life map, but I see them for sale: from religion, philosophy, or science. And Paul Thomas Anderson's new film The Master explores these ideas in interesting and beautiful ways.

The Master

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Featuring: Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams

SUMMARY

The Master is basically about exploring the ways we make life meaningful and the various frameworks we use to make the messiness of human experience intelligible. In the film's opening scenes, the character Freddie Quell (Phoenix) and his fellow navy men are interviewed by psychologists and told what to expect from their post-war lives. They're told that being disturbed and distressed by war needs to be understood as a medical "condition", rather than a normal response to terrible events. This diagnosis is what doctors offer them to understand their post-war lives. This doesn't go down well.

Freddie, to a point, tries to follow the instructions he is given. But there are some wrong turns and, after one of them, Freddie meets Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman), who leads a passionate movement called 'The Cause'. Dodd had developed his own framework for understanding the world and tries to involve Freddie in it.

SIGHT

Unusually, most of The Master was shot on 65mm film (the last film mostly shot on 65mm was Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet in 1996). This gives each image a sense of vastness, especially ones that were shot outdoors in long shot: horizons are sharply in focus, mountains rise and fall in jagged lines and the ocean seems endless. It's beautiful.

SOUND

As with Anderson's There Will Be Blood, Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood is behind the score for The Master. Its mood lies somewhere between eerie, haunting, mysterious and melancholy. Some guy on the internet said it made him feel like he was "falling down a rabbit hole". This pretty much nails it.

SHOULD I SEE IT?

The Master is a bit of a difficult film. I know this because my friend Jesse wriggled non-stop during our screening and then complained loudly afterwards. I didn't feel this way — I thought it was thoroughly engrossing — and made a mental note to see it again. Films as thoughtful, beautiful and complex as The Master do not come along very often and I like to appreciate them while I can. Sorry Jesse.

SIMILAR

There Will Be Blood (2007)

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

Magnolia (1999)

Boogie Nights (1997)