The lopsided friendship in The Master exhibits both the dependency and intimacy of a love affair without overt sexuality. A destitute outcast and a charismatic cult leader have the fortune to find each other in a world that would not have them. The film makes no analysis of the pathology of cult members. It is content to point towards the complexities of the self that we cannot resist trying to understand, but which defy our capacities to explain. But this film is more than a meditation on a strange bond between outcasts. On another level, Paul Thomas Anderson invites the viewer to see the relationship between Master and student, Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) and Lancaster Dodd (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), as a metaphor for a struggle within one man. Their connection is aptly described by Aristophanes’ myth in Plato’s Symposium, which says that lovers are two halves of one complete being. The film’s richness comes in large part from the subtext of sparring half-men, eager to become whole.
Freddie is always near crumbling under the weight of mental anguish. He is a man child in an adult world. If he were born wealthy in 2012, he would be diagnosed and precisely medicated. In the world of the film, he is like an urge with no voice to speak it. He seeks relief from his psychic alienation in the dissociative effects of imbibing torpedo fuel and aftershave. This is not enough to calm his carnal desires. His childish expressions of lust turn vicious when proper adults find him unnerving and weird. In his most successful moments, of which there are many, Joaquin Phoenix is a shadow. Lancaster Dodd on the other hand, attempts to exorcise demons through a convoluted self help system reminiscent of twelve step. His arcane beliefs are a palliative for inner turmoil. It is no accident that Dodd and Freddie bond over their taste for Freddie’s concoctions. Their struggles are intertwined. Their pains have familial roots. One can imagine a younger Dodd constructing his dogma in an attempt to transcend the struggles he faced as a younger man; the kind of struggles that Freddie faces. Many dissatisfied members of Alcoholics Anonymous have described it as a cult.
Visually, watching The Master is like eating an icing-heavy piece of cake. The burning colors of 70 mm celluloid render an impression of hidden metaphysical secrets in nature. From the waves of the pacific to the shapeless desert, the world on screen seethes with life. The shots of Freddie Quell in the crow’s nest of a battleship, gazing over the kodachrome waves evoke The Mast-Head chapter in Moby Dick, where Ishmael experiences a pantheistic communion with the sea. The painting of the scenery transcends mise en scene and exhibits a tumult that resonates with the psychological anguish of the characters. The world of The Master is beyond natural, reflecting Dodd and Freddie’s discomfort with their humanity.
While the actors are enchanting in their invocation of suffering, the world around them evokes a deeper level of mystery. There are scenes in the film that seamlessly transition from portraying the world to the interiority of the mind. The torture that Freddie betrays in his twisted smile and the pathology of Lancaster Dodd’s overcompensating bombast are made manifest. A party at Lancaster Dodd’s house turns surreal in an instant. All the women in the room, young and old, buxom and lithe are suddenly naked. They all swoon over the protean entertainer, Dodd, who moves throughout the rooms enchanting them with his song. Dodd’s imagination of a room full of naked women, worshipping him, becomes reality. His thoughts take over the images we see on the screen.
The blurring divide between characters and their environment invites a further, thematic blurring between the two main characters. The prohibition, which says “You can never know my pain” is overturned. Near the end of the film we see Freddie and Dodd part ways. Before they do, Dodd sings a song to Freddie, much like he did at the party. This scene is so strange it begs the question- Is this scene really a wishful dream of Freddie’s? The surreal moments in the film dissolve the boundaries of subjectivity, both between the protagonists and their world and between each other.
Perhaps Freddie is a wanderer not because his psychosis precludes empathetic communion with others, but because he is not a man at all. Perhaps Freddie is a ghost, doomed to haunt the earth. Take the initial meeting of Freddie and Lancaster Dodd. Freddie, in a drunken delirium stumbles aboard a ship that carries a party through the San Francisco bay. In an amnesiac cut, Freddie awakens and is introduced to the master. It is as if Freddie has awakened into a dream. Freddie is seeing a vision of the man he thinks he should be. He wants to shed his damned skin and become Dodd through a strict rehabilitation process. Or perhaps it is all really Dodd’s dream. His subconscious facilitating the communion between him and his daemon. In Freddie, Dodd sees the problem in himself to be worked on. In Dodd, Freddie sees a way to be a real man.
The film ends on an elegiac note. Freddie, having been excommunicated from Dodd’s group, is in bed with a woman. He is unable to lose himself in the pleasure that he has desperately groped for throughout the film. He laughs nervously, while recounting principles he learned from Dodd. He has failed to transcend himself. He can merely ape the noises of his fallen ideal. In the end, that was to be expected. The best thinking of a sick mind led Freddie to the Master.
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