A decade ago, I was driving around Downtown Long Beach looking for a coveted parking spot. I didn’t want to go to the pay lot across the way because that’s where the suckers went. If you were patient and attentive, there was a great chance that you’d find something along one of the many side streets. Why was I there? Because of the name on the marquee. The Long Beach Art Theater had just gotten a print of Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master (2012) and I was eager to see it at this exact location. This was a place with history, as if stepping back in time to another era. Given that they had advertised the venue’s legacy status as a reason to see The Artist (2011) there a mere 10 months ago, there was something exciting about being here to see one of the most anticipated movies of the year.
I never found parking. I complained on Facebook as I chose to book it down to a less impressive theater closer to my house. In the 10 years since, the place has gotten worse for wear, desperately trying to draw in a crowd while the Islands Restaurant tries to reestablish itself after half of it burned down. However, in 2012, it was still a place that could fill The Long Beach Town Center parking lots for miles. Buying a ticket, I sat down late one night and finally witnessed a film that would come to change my life.
There was a lot of allure around The Master. For starters, it was Anderson’s first film since the critical darling There Will Be Blood (2007) which would go on to be considered one of the greatest films of the 21st century. There was star Joaquin Phoenix fresh off a staged mental breakdown that he filmed with Casey Affleck called I’m Still Here (2010). He was at an interesting time, trying to rebuild his career and choosing one of the most enigmatic young filmmakers of his generation. The trailers were dreamlike masterpieces that felt like stepping into the past. Who could forget Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd getting into a fight about how his new religion was a cult? What about composer Jonny Greenwood’s uneasy plucking as Phoenix’s Freddie Quell taught soldiers how to get rid of crabs? Early previews compared it to Stanley Kubrick, creating something that was mesmerizing in its obliqueness. Not everyone would like it, but Anderson promised that you’d have an opinion. Given that it had been five years since his last, there was also speculation about how prolific he’d end up being in the decade ahead.
I was 23, still a student of journalism eagerly finding art that mattered to me. There was something about sitting in that theater that changed me forever. With exception to Blue Valentine (2010), Frances Ha (2013), and Carol (2015), it was one of the few films that decade where you could feel it reach inside and rearrange your DNA. From now on, you would be obsessed with The Master. This is what high art looks like. Freddie Quell would be one of the greatest characters cinema has ever created. You’ll think way too hard about how cool it was to see Amy Adams’ eyes change to black. Nothing would ever come close because nothing was The Master, where two actors at the top of their game could sit across from each other and sell you on their anxieties by simply not blinking. It was sublime. It was pure cinema.
Much like its subject matter, the idea of trying to find a deeper satisfying answer in the murkiness was hopeless. The closer you stared, the quicker you were to realize that there was nothing there. Maybe Dodd was a fraud, modeled after L. Ron Hubbard as some great commentary on Scientology. Maybe he didn’t hold any of the answers that Quell was looking for, and yet symbolized this sense of masculinity and success that he craved. After all, he had a family. Quell first sees him officiating a wedding, a joyful event that connects everything together. As a veteran rattled with some unexplained PTSD and alcoholism so prominent he’d made drinks out of paint thinner if he had to, he wanted to believe that this man and his teachings would hold some of the answers.
It’s a film that has one of the funniest parodies of 2001:A Space Odyssey (1968) as Quell wrestles men on a beach and masturbates into the ocean. He is a man evolving to something more civilized. The military didn’t make him a hero. Odds are that he lost his sweetheart and is feeling lonely, quick to anger as he takes a job photographing happy strangers at the mall. He wants to create the perfect image of Americana while himself being far from it. When he sees men circling women he claims, it ends with their head being gagged by their tie. Quell is man, but is he human? As evident by later scenes where he’s seen wrestling with Dodd like a canine, he’s more animal instinct, desperately trying to evolve into something much more respectable.
I suppose the most difficult part is answering why this movie changed my life. Why was I so attracted to Quell as he held up his back, growing weary as Dodd sang “I want to get you on a slow boat to China” for reasons not immediately obvious? There had to be something there, and yet I found him alluring. Maybe it’s the sense of being young and lacking an identity, that you’re ultimately wandering through life and screwing everything up. There is that embarrassment of failure, the desire to grow into something more respectable. Phoenix has always been phenomenal at embodying characters isolated from others. Even as he stood in a crowd, you felt like he’d have trouble even relating to them about the weather. His joyful smile felt devious. Was it mental illness, or some greater animal instinct holding him back from complacency? Much like the rest of the text, Anderson doesn’t care to say too much.
It's there in shots of him running across fields in Central California. The desperation as the rows of potted soil turns into a blur beneath him, escaping the very concept of time and space. It’s there when he’s suddenly arrested and has no choice but to freak out by banging his head on the upper bed and a foot through the toilet. Quell is a man who has so much interiority that it comes to embody a range of emotions. One minute it’s tragic. The next it’s comic. Given that Anderson doesn’t shy away from the sexual, there’s even something lustful about this character analysis. How does one possibly contain multitudes and come out being helped by Dodd to become a well-respected man about town? It’s not just a religious thing. It’s the struggle everyone faces as they pass others on the street, all reaching out and trying to find a connection through a shared story of hope.
Was this the subtext that drew me to The Master? At the time I remember the religious themes to be less important than the essence of Quell. I don’t believe that I had the language to fully understand it. The film looked amazing, but I was drawn to this man who seemed aimless where at the end he still hasn’t found his happiness. He settled for a mirage of what he had lost, too scared to fully disconnect from who he used to be.
It was a message that I responded to at 23 during a time when Travis Bickel’s musings were alluring not because he was homicidal, but because of his loneliness. There was something to watching Lars Von Trier capture these intense, traumatic stories that I assumed put me in connection with deeper emotions. There was something about pushing into transgressions that was attractive to me. The Master was contemporary, a work that could be proudly claimed as my own and studied because I was there. I had lived through its release and had a personal connection. From now until the end of time, I would see Freddie Quell and be taken back to my early 20s, frustrated that Downtown Long Beach has some of the worst parking imaginable.
When I say that I was obsessed, I want to suggest that I had been like I’ve rarely been since. Upon the film hitting DVD, I bought a copy and ran through the special features. I rewatched it, believing that I could somehow crack the code on what this majesty was actually saying. By this time, I wrote an article on my original website Optigrab called “The Ending of ‘The Master’ Explained,” which ended up being one of my most popular articles at the same time. Along with my friend group jumping on me at the time to stop talking about the film, I wound up with an active comments section that included everything from healthy discourse to this random guy who said he worked on the film and that sometimes water is water. Given that I wrote that at 23, I’m willing to bet I got a few things wrong, but that comment is one that’s echoed through my decade of film criticism since, if just for its specificity.
The ultimate way that The Master changed my life is that it inspired me to launch The Oscar Buzz, a website initially intended to chronicle Phoenix’s journey to getting an Oscar nomination that year. However, that website grew into regular content and connected me with several like-minded individuals that have made awards season this joyous occasion. Because of starting that website, I came to know the ins and outs of Academy Awards history, and I became aware of how difficult it is to live in bias during that time. The films you love will often not be nominated. It’s just the way things go sometimes.
Ironically, The Master is a film I turned to when I suffered from depression in 2021. For me, it was another chance to recontextualize what the film meant. Did I still relate to this man who seemed disconnected from the world around him? Maybe I was still a sucker for its entrancing mysticism, believing that Anderson’s meaning was brilliant in its obscurity. I still found it to be a phenomenal film, even as I considered the tragedy of Hoffman’s death alongside Phoenix finally achieving what I believed he could do. While I recognize its divisive status, it’s still the height of what I desire Anderson’s career to be. It’s the experimental head-scratcher that allowed him to open up into one of his most satisfyingly creative decades yet. He’s only become more intriguing with each passing masterpiece and quickly arisen into one of the finest voices California has produced.
Do I still relate to Phoenix’s performance? Not in the direct ways I used to. As I’ve gotten older, masculine rage has become less attractive. I don’t want to be him. With that said, I still feel something when noticing his emptiness, the struggle to feel connected to anything around him. Why is everyone going about their lives happy without him? How can he be like them? I suppose on some level I’ve gained more optimism than what this film suggests. I’m less likely to be drawn into bleakness without some belief that I’ll get better if I try. I don’t need pseudoscience. I just need myself.
It's crazy that it’s been 10 years already. It’s crazy that most of the supporting cast have won or been nominated for Oscars in that time. More importantly, I love how this collage of a movie keeps me perplexed about life, connecting me to my own past and ideas that exist somewhere in the ether. It’s a formative part of my life, doing so much more than the hundreds of films I’ve seen since. It lead to change, self-actualizations, conversations that I otherwise wouldn’t have had. It’s amazing what one work can contain, and to have it be presented as this symbolic puzzle is all the more gratifying. I know I’m closer to the answer, but I’m far from solving it. Maybe I never will. Still, I love the challenge and hope it never gets old.
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