"It's also one of the great movies of the year — an ambitious, challenging, and creatively hot-blooded but cool toned project that picks seriously at knotty ideas about American personality, success, rootlessness, master-disciple dynamics, and father-son mutually assured destruction. Played by Hoffman with outwardly placid, inwardly volcanic force, Dodd may be the master alluded to in the title. But he's nothing as an all-American guru and salesman of salvation/bunk without his unholy mess of a disciple by his side. Phoenix inhabits the role with a ferocious urgency, his whole body twisted in painful lack of self-knowledge. He's great, and he's frightening. (...) Anderson works here in rare, gorgeous 65 mm cinematography by Frances Ford Coppola's favorite director of photography Mihai Malaimare, Jr. (...) And the images are intertwined with another ear-bending score from There Will Be Blood composer Jonny Greenwood."
by Lisa Schwarzbaum in Entertainment Weekly
"Anderson is a rock star, the artist who knows no limits. Fierce and ferociously funny, The Master is a great movie, the best of the year so far, and a new American classic. (...) Written, directed, acted, shot, edited and scored with a bracing vibrancy that restores your faith in film as an art form, The Master is nirvana for movie lovers. Anderson mixes sounds and images into a dark, dazzling music that is all his own. (...) High praise to genius cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. (Youth Without Youth, Tetro and Twixt), whose visual poetry is matched by Jonny Greenwood's haunting, hypnotic score. (...) Hoffman excelled in four of Anderson's previous films, but his tour de force here as a do-gooder-turned-silky-charlatan tops them all. (...) His (Phoenix's) animal-like breakdown in a jail cell makes Robert De Niro's raging bull seem mildly miffed. Phoenix wears the role like a second skin; he's a volcano in full eruption. You can't take your eyes off him."
by Peter Travers in Rolling Stone
"Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master is both feverish and glacial. The vibe is chilly, but the central character is an unholy mess — and his rage saturates every frame. (..) There's no middle ground for Phoenix, either. He's both riveting and painful to watch. He also seems to be channeling other actors' tics: Eastwood, Brando, even Robin Williams' Popeye, the words dribbling out the side of his twisted mouth. But his scenes with Hoffman are amazing. Hoffman's Dodd is perfectly nuanced, in the tradition of flimflam visionaries so in love with their own spiels they forget they're frauds. (...) Like There Will Be Blood, The Master is more austere than Anderson's overflowing ensemble dramas. He shot it on now-rare 65 mm film stock, which gives radiant depth to the palette of browns and blacks, while low-angle close-ups make Dodd and Freddie monumental. (...) Amy Adams adds a chill as Dodd's wife, who presses her lips together and exhorts Dodd to attack those enemies before they attack him. Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood has composed a score full of abrasive plinks and discordant horns. It's alienating — like the movie."
by David Edelstein in NPR
"Anderson’s sixth feature is both magisterial, in the sense of having a kind of authoritative dignity, and masterful, in the sense of being surely and expertly crafted. And yet this movie, powerful as it was scene by scene, never quite achieved mastery over this viewer. (...) Shot in bright, crisp colors by Mihai Malaimare Jr. on that now hard-to-obtain 65mm film stock, it pays homage to the look of ‘50s films without pastiche or nostalgia. (...) It’s a movie that seems to unfold at a distance, aesthetically dazzling but emotionally remote. (...) Though the characters they play remain inscrutable, Hoffman and Phoenix are as vibrantly present as they’ve ever been onscreen. (...) Phoenix gives Freddie a stoop-shouldered, shambling old-man gait that says more about the hard knocks he’s taken than any war flashback could, while Hoffman leavens his frighteningly intense character—a charismatic, short-tempered narcissist. (...) The Master tells a story that seems somehow to exceed the narrative frame the author provides to contain it. (...) I left the theater not entirely sure what The Master was about. I can’t wait to get back and see it again."
by Dana Stevens in Slate
OSCAR POTENTIAL CATEGORIES:
- Best Picture
- Best Director (Paul Thomas Anderson)
- Best Leading Actor (Joaquin Phoenix)
- Best Leading/Supporting Actor (Philip Seymour Hoffman)
- Best Original Screenplay
- Best Cinematography
- Best Original Score
- Best Editing
BUT...
The Master may be JUST a "film festival hit", in the way that it is a movie everybody recognizes as being great, but it may be a flick that few will consider its favorite one of the year. But it benefits from having raved performances from its two leads and PTAnderson's writting (acting and screenplay Oscar buzz only increases the Best Picture buzz) and it seems to be collecting the same kind of reviews Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life received, which may translate into a crazy love from the more intellectual Academy members.
Comments