On the Road (Walter Salles, 2013)

The journey to adapt Jack Kerouac’s autobiographical novel has been a long one. Francis Ford Coppola acquired the rights in 1979 and since then the project has been victim of one false start after another. This makes sense seeing as how the book is not known for its story as much as its mood. The work of the beat generation relishes in abstraction and experimentation – this is basically its definition. On the Road is as much a celebration of the written word as it is a portrait of post-WWII, non-conformist ideology. This is a book that is inherently tied to its medium, which makes it an unlikely candidate for adaptation.   Another beat-defining work, Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” was recently given a film adaptation and the result was awkward and hokey. It’s appropriate, then, that On the Road was largely believed to be unfilmable.

The project never fully died as a result of Coppola’s dedication to it. He finally found its director in Walter Salles, whose 2004 historical road movie - Motorcycle Diaries - makes him an appropriate choice. Salles directs On the Road with playful ease. He translates the bebop rhythm of Kerouac’s prose with quick cutting and handheld camera moves. The magic-hour lighting casts a warm glow over the widescreen panoramas mirroring the book’s unabashed romanticism. Salles creates a mood that feels true to the Kerouac ideal, however, this is only half the battle. In regards to the film’s stunted history Coppola said “…(On the Road is) definitely something of a spirit, but no one quite knew how to put the flesh on it”- herein lies the challenge.

The script by Jose Rivera addresses this issue by playing to the book’s autobiographical nature. The cast is billed with two character names – the names from the book as well as their real-life alter-egos. This allows the film to depict the making of the novel as well as its content. Throughout it we see Sal/Kerouac furiously taking notes and sitting at his typewriter struggling to get started. This all builds to a climactic “Eureka!” moment where we see him type compulsively onto a scroll as it spills onto the floor. This subplot is plagued with cliches but seems to be the best shot the film has at a compelling through-line – it could have been worse.

I think about a speech Nicholas Cage delivers in Spike Jonze’s Adaptation. Cage plays a screenwriter struggling to adapt Susan Orlean’s sprawling book The Orchid Thief.  Speaking to an executive about the script he says “It’s just, I don’t want to compromise by making it a Hollywood product. An orchid heist movie(…)Or cramming in sex, or car chases, or guns. Or characters learning profound life lessons. Or characters growing or characters changing or characters learning to like each other or characters overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end. Y’know? Movie shit.” I imagine similar conversations surrounding On the Road.

On the Road does avoid compromise by staying true to the bohemian narrative of the book. The problem is, by avoiding “movie shit”, it falls short of being a very good movie. It wanders through its running time in the spirit of the protagonists, Sal and Dean. It sacrifices narrative strength for picaresque tourism. In the realm of cinema, this can only go so far. This kind of film depends on the strength of its performances – if we’re going to watch characters wander aimlessly for two hours, they better be damn interesting characters.

Sal is played by Sam Riley whose smokey voice-over (sounding a lot like Christian Bale’s Batman) interprets Kerouac’s road-worn narrative with precision. Riley’s Sal is charming and empathetic – even when picking cotton, he appears to be soaking it all in. Even though his voiceover tells us that his father’s recent death made him fall ill and feel like “everything is dead”, he doesn’t act as if he’s too beat up about it. His muse and hero, Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund), is free-spirited and reckless – he drives fast and always answers the door naked. The film charts the push-pull relationship of Dean and Sal, who share a weary wanderlust brought on by the absence of their fathers. In Denver, Sal is shown trailing behind Dean as he desperately asks barbers and bartenders if they’ve seen his father. This is a sad and self-contained moment – Sal’s empathy draws him close to Dean but, as the events of On the Road demonstrate, his view from across the street might be the safest distance to show his support.

The supporting characters supply the best performances in On the Road. Kristen Stewart affectionately portrays Marylou, Dean’s abused wife, as a strong independent rather than a sex-crazed submissive. Viggo Mortenson plays Old Bull Lee (the stand-in for William Burroughs) with a depth and nuance that is unequaled. His segment (as well as one involving Steve Buscemi) suggests a movie that could have been great. On the Road has many moments like this but fails to make much of them. Given all of its cool-guy charm, the film ultimately lacks weight, relevance, or even a point. Y’know? Movie shit. 

5 out of 10 

Top 10 Films of 2012

1. The Master

The most fascinating film of the year was Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master. Its vivid imagery, hypnotic pace, and larger-than-life performances stayed with me long after I left the theater. I went back twice more.

2. The Color Wheel 

Alex Ross Perry’s idiosyncratic film is a prime example of what independent, DIY cinema can (and should) be. The Color Wheel is the work of a true auteur – it is daring and distinctive. The film embraces our ingrained expectations in order to playfully flip the rom-com genre on its head. Its climactic ending, executed in one 10 minute unbroken shot, is one of the most startling moments I saw in a movie this year.

The Color Wheel is available On Demand at Amazon, iTunes and Vudu. 

3. Moonrise Kingdom

Suzy: I always wished I was an orphan. Most of my favorite characters are. I think your lives are more special.

Sam: I love you, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. 

Suzy: I love you too. 

———————-

Sam: Those sons of bitches. They got him right through the neck. 

Suzy: Was he a good dog?

Sam: Who’s to say? …but he didn’t deserve to die. 

4. Holy Motors 

Leos Carax’s latest film was by far the most perplexing movie I saw in 2012. I found the experience of watching Holy Motors to be similar to David Lynch’s Inland Empire. Even when seeming incomprehensible, the film seduces with striking imagery and an impossible-to-predict plot.

5. The Loneliest Planet 

Julia Loktev’s film builds its hypnotic two hours around a moment that lasts no more than two seconds. The Loneliest Planet is essentially broken into before and after segments. In the ‘before’ segment, Loktev expertly builds tension as we wait for something to happen. The ‘after’ segment employs an equally glacial pace to allow us to internalize the dark implications of the incident at the same pace as the characters. Some will find the slow pace of this film difficult but it poses a question so big, so universal that, trust me, it’s worth your time.

The Loneliest Planet is currently available on Netflix 

6. Silver Linings Playbook 

Silver Linings Playbook is built on wonderful performance and a razor sharp script. David O. Russell’s manic sensibility results in performances that are nuanced but never muted. Russell frames characters on the brink with care and affection resulting in a film that lovingly paints a poignant portrait of mental illness. It’s also quite funny.

7. Django Unchained 

A fierce provocation in the guise of an action-comedy. I found Django Unchained exciting, intense, tragic, hilarious, exhausting and, ultimately, a whole lot of fun. Tarantino’s cinema is defined by this all-inclusive mash-up of film experience.  Although I think Inglorious Bastards is a better film for its depth and operatic climax, Django Unchained is further proof of Tarantino’s unmatched ability to predict and exploit the audience’s experience.

8. Cosmopolis 

David Cronenberg is a master of adaptation and with Cosmopolis he boldly chooses a book that is largely built on seemingly un-cinematic monologues and discussions. With surreal green-screen work and an unexpectedly great performance from Robert Pattinson, Cronenberg renders a film that is characteristically dense and ultimately fascinating.

9. Argo

Ben Affleck’s historical crowd-pleaser is undeniably entertaining. Argo had me on the edge of my seat more than any other movie this year.

10. Dark Horse 

I am a fan of writer/director Todd Solondz. His great films, Happiness and Storytelling, display an ability to craft stories that can feel initially off-putting but eventually reveal their emotional and subversive undercurrent. Perhaps none of his films prove this talent more than Dark Horse. I was sure that I didn’t like Dark Horse while watching it. I was disappointed by dull scenes and flat and predictable characters (with the exception of our hero, Abe, brilliantly played by Jordan Gelber). This all changed about halfway through Dark Horse when things start to get weird. The film got inside my head by the end and I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days after. I’m wouldn’t say this is a great film but it is one I will surely never forget.

This is 40 (Judd Apatow, 2012)

Knocked Up is a great film. This might seem like a bold claim. At first glance, Knocked Up seems more in line with the “guilty pleasure” category with its broad appeal, box-office success, and use of Katherine Heigl. The film, however, has become a template for the modern American comedy and a major player in the forming of a subgenre – The Apatow comedy.

This is 40 is Judd Apatow’s fourth film as writer/director. His first two (The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up) were deservedly successful for their off-the-cuff comedy and affectionate portrayal of the white, middle-class fuck-up. This is 40 (as well as Funny People) trades an airtight comic structure for Woody Allen-esque self-examination. With a move towards intensely personal subjects (marriage, aging, adulthood), Apatow walks a fine line between maturity and self-indulgence. 

This is 40 catches up with Knocked Up characters Pete and Debbie a few years later. The earlier film portrays an underachieving pot-head’s forced transition into adulthood; Pete and Debbie are exhibit A. They are borderline dysfunctional and seem to be in a constant state of trying to make it work. In Knocked Up, Alison (Katherine Heigl) uses the couple as an example of what she doesn’t want. “Every day is a constant struggle for them because they’re not right for each other” she concludes. She might be right but it’s clearly not that simple. In This is 40, Apatow stares long and hard at the implications of Alison’s assessment. In one of many vulnerable moments, Debbie asks Pete if he thinks they would stay married if they had never had kids – he doesn’t respond.

About the kids - Pete and Debbie have two daughters, Sadie and Charlotte (Maude and Iris Apatow – Judd’s real-life daughters) who are in two very different states of emotional development. Sadie is 13 – she watches Lost and is interested in boys. Charlotte is 8 – she watches Shark Week and is interested in Sadie. Rather than employing his daughters as kids-say-the-darndest-things quip machines, Apatow treats them as equally important parts of the story. Sadie’s subplot seems unfocused at first but pays off when the family’s dysfunction causes her to finally lose her shit in one of the film’s more startling moments. Apatow seems to be taking a cross-examination of his life in order to figure out where exactly all of this dysfunction comes from. On the other side of the spectrum, the script gives equal weight to Pete and Debbie’s lonely and pathetic parents – Apatow is dead-set on seeing all sides of the argument.

When viewed in the context of the mainstream comedy, This is 40 can seem sluggish and melodramatic. Riffing off Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage, he sacrifices the constant laughs of his earlier films in order to explore something deeper. This is a noble effort but one that is bound to disappoint given its billing as the “sort of” sequel to Knocked Up. Where that film balanced the drama with the endearing silliness of Ben Stone’s (Seth Rogen) slacker roommates, this one attempts to supplement their absence with peripheral characters played by Chris O’Dowd, Jason Segel, Melissa McCarthy, and a few more. Rather than feeling essential to the plot, these characters often feel like they interrupt the movie to make a few jokes.

The aspiration for omniscience makes the film often feel meandering. Following the embarrassingly overlong Funny People, This is 40 clocks in at over two hours in defiance of the former film’s critics. Although these two films share a decidedly loose structure (by mainstream comedy standards), the former feels clunky and unfocused where the latter feels more calculated and intentional. Apatow is utilizing his self-made-millionaire freedom to make nakedly personal films and he seems to be getting better at it.

6 out of 10 

Flight (Robert Zemeckis; 2012)

Addiction movies have a certain amount of unavoidable banality. Even Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call, New Orleans ends with an awkward tone shift towards after-school-special territory. That film, however, benefits from a point of view defiantly tied to its twisted and troubled protagonist (with the exception of a few characteristically Herzogian interludes from the perspective of observing reptiles). In Flight, Robert Zemeckis directs a broader, softer addiction movie that flirts with edginess but, in the end, concedes to moralist sentimentality.

Denzel Washington’s Whip is the kind of guy who wakes up drunk, does a line of cocaine, then drinks a little more. Our knowledge of his lifestyle precludes our knowledge of his profession – a commercial airline pilot. The reprehensible nature of this introduction is undercut by Whip’s inherently suave charm. By portraying him as a cool Keith Richards type, Zemeckis convinces us to think “I can’t believe he’s getting away with this” rather than “I can’t believe he’s doing this.”

The flight is doomed from the start with a white knuckle struggle to get above the clouds. Whip skillfully navigates the situation with a steady hand in spite of his co-pilots skepticism. We know, however, that the plane will go down and Zemeckis wisely milks the tension giving Whip some time to grab another drink and take a nap. Then it happens, the plane jerks Whip awake and alarms start sounding. He quickly grabs the controls and starts barking orders. This sequence is undeniably spectacular. Not only do we get a realistic portrayal of the chaos and panic of a plane plummeting towards the earth, but Zemeckis ties Whip to our other principle player, Nicole (Kelly Reilly), in one awesome shot. Nicole is being rushed to the hospital after OD’ing when Whip’s plane flies directly over their heads and is inexplicably (to them) upside-down. 

Whip wakes up in the hospital to learn that he saved all but six of his passengers. There are flocks of TV cameras and reporters outside the hospital. He retreats to his father’s old farm in the countryside to escape the noise. He knows he was drunk when the plane went down, he knows it’s a miracle that he’s safe, and he’s aware of the enormous luck it took for him to get away with it. Upon arriving at the farm he promptly disposes of all alcohol – he has learned his lesson. However, when he is informed by a NTSB official that a toxicology report revealed his drug and alcohol use, he quickly relapses.

The addiction film lives or dies by its middle section. It is here that the film can easily get lost in the banality of the “will-he-stay-on-the-wagon?” question. Although Flight does suffer from this obligation, its purpose is largely to add complexity to the moral question at the center of Whip’s imminent hearing. It is made clear that no one could have landed the plane with as steady a hand as Whip did. The NTSB is doing some major lawyer-ing to render the aforementioned toxicology report inadmissable in order to preserve this fact. The question, then, at the center Flight is simply whether or not Whip is a good person – his consistently reckless alcoholism throughout the film is a means to muddy the waters.

Flight relies on our desperate desire to like Whip even when his actions are reprehensible. It’s possible that Robert Zemeckis is too aware of this fact. As the film builds to its third act climax, he plays with our hopes and expectations in increasingly off-putting and manipulative ways. This culminates in one shot that, however beautiful it is, plays as if Zemeckis himself walked on camera and said “gotcha!”

The shot in question is of a tiny bottle of vodka and it takes place the evening before the climactic hearing. Whip has successfully (once again) stopped drinking in preparation for this crucial hearing and he is staying in a hotel room whose mini-bar has been preemptively emptied. He quietly eats a steak dinner by himself as if it’s his last meal before execution. He enjoys an unusual peace and quiet until a strange knocking sound disturbs it. The sound is of a door leading to the adjacent room that, for whatever reason, is not latched. He investigates this empty room to find that its mini-bar is fully stocked. He takes one tiny bottle of vodka, cracks the top, then comes to his senses and sets it back on the top of the mini-bar – phew. The camera then inexplicably holds on this bottle for, maybe, 15 seconds. We are meant to hold our breath hoping he doesn’t come back for it, but then he comes back for it. His hand snatches the bottle out of the frame in slow-motion and his fate is sealed. The scene’s heavy-handedness is admittedly effective – several people in the theater gasped – but it cheapens the moment with shamelessly self-conscious campiness.

Robert Zemeckis makes crowd-pleasing films that are often prepackaged for Oscar season. Flight is no exception with it’s faux-edgy performance from Washington and its script’s high-horse moralism. The film indeed exhibits skill from all involved but adds up to not much more than well-constructed fluff.

4 out of 10 

Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell; 2012)

The romantic comedy invariably deals with outcasts – an unlikely pair of characters are brought together by a shared sense of alienation. We love this story. We connect because we all feel a little like outcasts and like to imagine there’s someone out there who perfectly compliments our eccentricities. David O. Russell takes this formula several steps further with Silver Linings Playbook. 

Pat and Tiffany (Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence) are divorced from society because they are actually crazy, like, diagnosed-by-a-doctor crazy. Pat is fresh out of a psych ward with a restraining order against his wife. Tiffany is cultivating a reputation as the town slut after her husband died. Initially, they bond over shared medical histories like they were reminiscing about ‘Nam. This moment, like many others in Silver Linings Playbook, gives a fresh and funny take on a familiar trope – the “meet cute” as Roger Ebert calls it. Moving past the familiar fluff of this moment, Russell explores the darker sadness that lies underneath these archetypal characters.

Another early scene finds Pat in the lobby of a therapists office fresh out of a psychiatric ward. Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour” is playing in the waiting room. “Is that song really playing?” Pat suddenly asks the receptionist. This is a funny moment – we think he hates the song, it’s a pretty cheesy song, it makes sense he would hate it. The humor, however, lasts only a moment before Pat starts throwing furniture screaming “Who put you up to this?” At this point I felt almost guilty for laughing at a character who is so deeply troubled – I believe this to be the intended response.

Pat is a poster child for “positive thinking” and the film serves as a demonstration of the downfall of this perspective. Pat gets out of the psych ward clinging to the idea that every cloud has a silver lining and he reacts to the opposing perspective with aggression. This is demonstrated when he throws Hemingway’s “Farewell To Arms” out the window after reading its bleak ending.

Enter Tiffany – a damaged widow who embodies the bleak reality Pat is avoiding. Tiffany sees Pat as an equal and Pat sees Tiffany as pathetic. Pat’s superiority is fueled by the delusion that he will remain married and all it will take is some exercise to mend his marriage. Yes, this is the same old romance story: Character A is alienated, character B identifies with A’s alienation, A and B should be together but A is convinced he/she should be with character C even though it’s clear to us they’re wrong for each other. Russell embraces this convention with an acute awareness of the audience’s familiarity with it.

This tampering with form culminates in a pivotal moment within the climax of the film. This moment is another all-too-familiar one where Pat is finally faced with the chance to talk to his estranged wife, Nikki. In a conventional romantic comedy he would apologize to her, she would give him another chance, Tiffany would be heartbroken, there would be an all-is-lost montage, then Pat would chase after Tiffany (probably at the airport) to confess his love right before credits roll. The way Russell handles this situation, however, is surprising. Pat approaches Nikki cordially and then whispers into her ear leaving us out of the exchange completely – we don’t need it. By allowing us to fill in the blanks of this confrontation, Russell sidesteps the banality of this dramatic obligation by highlighting it.

Silver Linings Playbook is elevated by a pitch-perfect cast including Robert De Niro as Pat’s father in his most vulnerable performance in recent years. Jennifer Lawrence seems to be the most talked about but Bradley Cooper is the real revelation here. I honestly didn’t know he had a performance like this in him. His performance contains an angst and commitment I found fascinating.

David O. Russell has a reputation for an aggressive personality (to put it mildly). This results in films that contain fierce commitment and confrontational characters. With Silver Linings Playbook, Russell delivers a darkly funny film that exhibits a sweetness not seen in his work since Flirting With Disaster. Working within well-worn territory, he tells an emotionally authentic story about characters desperate for hope.

8 out of 10 

Argo (Ben Affleck, 2012)

Tony Mendez walks through the lavish balcony of a Hollywood party lost in thought. The sun is setting behind the gorgeous view of the Hollywood hills but Mendez isn’t taking in the scenery. He is a character gripped with loneliness and high-stakes responsibility – the lives of six people are in his hands. The party he is attending is for the public in-costume table read of the low-rent Sci-Fi epic, “Argo.” The thing that the party’s attendants don’t know is that “Argo” is not a real movie. The planned production of the Star Wars ripoff is an elaborate scheme by the CIA to save six US diplomats hiding in Tehran. Tony Mendez is the agent in charge. Mendez is played by Ben Affleck who also directs Argo (the real one). Affleck deftly cuts between the farcical read-through in Hollywood to starkly serious images of unrest and resistance in Iran presenting a precarious tonal juggling act. The effect of this duality is jarring and its presence throughout the film effectively elevates it above the usual procedural thriller to a multi-faceted experience that is undeniably entertaining.

Argo is based on true events surrounding the rescue of US diplomats during the 1979 hostage crisis in Iran. The CIA needs to “extract” the diplomats from Tehran before they are found and executed. Until Tony Mendez enters the conversation, the best idea they have is to bring them bicycles. While watching the Battle for the Planet of the Apes with his son, Mendez finds an unlikely solution to the CIA’s problem. “We’re a film crew,” he audaciously tells his executives. His plan isn’t a great one but it’s the best idea they have. Mendez will bring the diplomats out of Tehran under the pretense that they were there scouting exotic locations. In order to pull it off they have to cover all their bases: They create a studio, purchase a script, hire a well-credentialed producer (Lester Siegel played by Alan Arkin), hire a well-known makeup artist (John Chambers played by John Goodman), make storyboards, and get publicity.

Every detail of Argo is tailored to fit the time period. This is seen not only in design choices (hairstyles, clothing, interiors) but also in Affleck’s stylistic choices. The colors are muted, the music is groovy, the fonts are fluffy and the opening credits have artificial specks and dust added to trick us into thinking we are watching a 35mm print (I know it was artificial because the theater no longer has 35mm capabilities). Furthermore, archival footage (both real and fake) and newsreel clips, enhance the feeling that the events we are witnessing actually took place. These flourishes are necessary given that the subject matter’s believability is inherently dubious. Of course liberties were taken: the epic climax depicts our heroes being flown out of danger without a second to spare – this kind of thing indeed only happens in the movies. These liberties, however, are largely forgivable given the respect with which the event is treated as well as the fact that this is, ultimately, meant for entertainment. “We say ‘based on a true story,’ as opposed to ‘this is a true story.’ ” Affleck said in a recent interview.

Affleck’s Mendez is melancholic and internal. He is a man separated from his family and struggling with his responsibility to them. His work provides him with fake identities and classified missions allowing him to remain isolated.  When one member of the six in hiding refuses to trust him, Mendez drops the fake name and says vulnerably “My name is Tony Mendez, I have a wife and a son.” The intention is for us to feel Mendez’s guilt regarding his neglect for his family. Throughout the film he is coming to terms with this guilt and using it to fuel his motivation to protect these people. Unfortunately, this internal dilemma isn’t given enough screen-time to fully develop causing it to feel weightless and obligatory. Similarly, I wanted to know more about the six people in hiding but they are treated as no more than peripheral characters. Perhaps this is one aspect where some more dramatic liberties should have been taken.

The stellar cast makes up for a lack of development by making the most of what the script gives them. In general, the film is cast to type – Bryan Cranston as Mendez’s tough but trusting boss, John Goodman as the eccentric-yet-professional makeup designer, and Alan Arkin as the cynical Hollywood big shot – they are all inherently suited for these roles. If by the end of the film we don’t feel like we know these people, we at least know their type.

With Argo, Ben Affleck further proves himself as a serious director. The film is not perfect but is most definitely effective. Even with its shortcomings, the movie’s climax had me quite literally at the edge of my seat. I’m sure we will continue to hear about Argo as Oscar season approaches and a nomination for directing would be well-deserved.

7 out of 10

The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)

**I strongly recommend seeing The Master before reading this post (or any reviews for that matter). It’s great. Go see it.**

The latest film from writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson has left many baffled, confounded, and ultimately frustrated. What many assumed to be a scathing exposé on Scientology turned out to be a slow-burn character study in which the L. Ron Hubbard surrogate (Lancaster Dodd played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) didn’t even seem to be the main character. It seems to me that the disappointed were looking for elements they found in There Will Be Blood that seemed to be missing from this film. Blood is all masterpiece with epic drama and grand set pieces – it is emphatic and aggressive. Although I will argue that The Master is just as masterful as There Will Be Blood, the elements that make it such are less obvious.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s films have always seemed to be built from a strong, painstakingly perfected script. The script for There Will Be Blood, for example, is very close to what ended up in the final cut. The Master, however, feels very much like it was built in the editing room with a bold reliance on in-the-moment instinct (also the script is suspiciously nowhere to be found). In interviews, Anderson and the cast have admitted that many of the key scenes (most notably one involving Phoenix walking back and forth between a wall and window for what seems like hours) were conceptualized and filmed on the spot. This approach is a departure for Anderson and is a choice that seems to beg for critics to pan the film as containing a narrative that “goes all but dead in the last half hour“. But this is a filmmaker who has yet to make a bad film; He possesses a creative genius that inspires deserved comparisons to Kubrick and Scorsese; To casually pan his latest film for feeling thrown together would be rejecting his track record of films that always reward a second look.

The plot of The Master is built around the exploits of a troubled young seaman, Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), fresh off of service in WWII. The brilliantly surreal opening scenes characterize Quell through incidents involving his interactions with fellow seamen on a beach and on their ship. He creates semi-poisonous beverages out of torpedo fuel, paint thinner, and anything else he can find. After the war, he is employed first as a department-store portrait photographer and then as a worker in a cabbage farm. He is unable to keep either job very long due to his reckless and erratic behavior. In these early scenes, we are made to feel Freddie’s cloudy mental state through dreamy cutting and imagery. A particularly arresting moment occurs after one of Freddie’s drinks poisons a worker in the cabbage farm and he flees the scene through a painterly setting of endless dirt fields cloaked in purple-blue mist. This moment is the first of many depicting Freddie’s inability to fit into the confines of ordered society – he is a character that thrives on motion without a destination.

The aforementioned scene is followed by Freddie wandering onto a lavish yacht in the middle of a party. The next morning he awakes to learn that the ship is led by Lancaster Dodd, a well-spoken and charismatic writer who informs Freddie that he had too much alcohol the night before and was “acting aggressive” – sounds about right. Dodd invites Freddie onboard the ship for their trip to New York on the terms that he will make more of the mysterious potion they drank the night before. Dodd’s interest in Freddie’s potion is our first hint at what he sees in him – the drink provides a high with complete ignorance of logic and reason (reason tells us you’re not supposed to drink paint thinner, for example). This introduction alone tells us that this is in stark opposition to Dodd’s persona – Freddie listens suspiciously with ape-like posture wearing a faded earthy gray jacket while Dodd sits comfortably in a regal red robe flaunting his intellect with his “I do many many things” speech.

From this point on, the film deals with the relationship between these two opposing perspectives. The most obvious reason for Dodd’s attraction to Freddie is that he sees in Freddie the ideal subject for his teachings. Dodd’s cult, The Cause, is founded on the belief that humans are not animals and that through hypnosis one can unlock memories from their past lives in order to reach “their inherent state of perfect.” This does sound like a bunch of shit, but Anderson presents the cult not as a punching bag but simply as a point of view. Even when a skeptic challenges Dodd at a party, we don’t get a sense that this is Anderson’s opinion speaking out against Dianetics but merely a means to highlight Dodd’s largely unchecked power, underneath which hides his touchy insecurity. Freddie presents a potential foil to this belief, he’s all fart jokes and fuckin’, he’s a silly animal as Dodd condescendingly puts it.

Underneath Dodd’s fathering and teacher-subject control lies a certain admiration for Freddie. “No one likes you but me” he tells him at the end of a heated screaming match after they end up in jail. Even though Dodd is able to convince all of his followers that he has all the answers, that if they follow his ways everything will be alright, there’s still something about Freddie’s defiant individualism that intrigues him. Even when his wife, Peggy (his Master played beautifully by Amy Adams), admits she has had enough of Freddie, Dodd insists that they must keep him around and “help” him. Does Dodd really want to “help” him or is he studying him?

In a companion scene to the early cabbage-patch chase, Dodd takes Freddie out to the desert to play a game in which they ride a motorcycle as fast as they can towards a point on the horizon. When it’s Freddie’s turn he rides with careless abandon towards the mountains and doesn’t stop. Dodd watches him, notices his alarming speed and says to himself, “good for him.” This scene, like many others, seems to standalone with its own questions and mysteries. Was this one of Dodd’s tests? Does Freddie really drive off and never come back? We aren’t given any conventional narrative context so are left to interpret it theoretically – when surrounded by boundless space, Dodd joyously rides towards a defined spot then returns; Freddie, however, recklessly rides towards a vague spot and never returns.

The final act of The Master can seem like one without resolve or revelation. What became apparent to me after seeing the film for the second time (and discussing it afterwards) is that there is indeed revelation and it belongs to Dodd, but his own pride and circumstances prevent him from admitting it outright. Freddie originally signified the ultimate project for Dodd – a chance to prove the power of his teachings. In their last meeting in London, Dodd sees that what Freddie possesses is as close to enlightenment that the film offers – he is indeed “beyond help” and all the better for it.

Paul Thomas Anderson delivers a defiantly open-ended film that doesn’t offer easy answers. I saw the film with a couple friends and our discussion afterwards revealed how different our experiences had been. This is a film that utilizes the medium of film in order to deliver an experience akin to poetry. It is not an easy movie to describe (or write about) and this is evidence of its greatness not its flaws. This is a film that offers a visceral experience not found in any other film this year. When seen with an open mind, this film delivers an experience that may be difficult to describe but is impossible to forget. I don’t expect to ever fully understand all that’s going on in The Master nor do I hope to.

9 out of 10