The Master is a contentious beast of a film. It’s a long, highbrow, art film. It’s a portrait and therefore an actor’s movie. A throwback, psychological drama shot in 65 mm and therefore a critic’s movie. It’s a complex, cinematic keyhole into of a very specific post WW2 American moment and so it’s a writer’s movie. It’s oscar bait. And it’s probably too much of all these things for you to watch in your lounge room. I loved it in the immersive world of the cinema, at home i’d be too distracted to give it its dues.
The craft of the thing is what sits in the foreground. We should note from the get-go: Paul Thomas Anderson’s bravely economic screenplay and minutely focussed direction. Beautifully composed images in washed out fifties pastels rise straight from the seafoam and into the mind. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Pheonix but also Amy…
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