The Master

Annotation for KRRR! 2013 by Soňa Morgenthalová

Although the 70mm film has long since passed its prime, from time to time a fan of this exceptional (and unfortunately also ephemeral) material can still find some grain among the chaff. This is especially true of restored copies of such cinema legends as The Sound of Music or Lawrence of Arabia, which have returned to cinema screens in recent years. There are several such "returns" every year, but a 70mm encounter with a contemporary film is less common.

The year is 1950 and the world is still recovering from the traumas brought by World War II. Soldiers return home from the battlefields, scarred by horrors that their loved ones cannot even imagine, let alone understand their frustrations. One of them is former sailor Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), who, like other veterans, is trying to return to normal life. Over time, however, it turns out that this is a relatively unrealistic goal, and Freddie moves further away from it the deeper he falls into addiction to homemade alcohol. Delirium follows delirium, and when Freddie's horn really rings, he encounters the Master. He is a man named Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who is the spiritual leader of a community of people practicing strange forms of psychotherapy and mind training. Lancaster takes a liking to Freddie, begins to apply his experiments on him, and at first he really acts as a savior. The Master is, of course, a film about addictions. Both those that are obvious at first glance and rejected by society, and dependence on others, on their attention and recognition. The motifs and characters in The Master can be perceived in a number of different ways - as completely normal and as purely pathological. It is believed that Lancaster Dodd's model is the founder of Scientology, Ron Hubbard, while the informed viewer may notice other allusions to this "religion". Rather than historical accuracy and biographical facts, Anderson built his film on the clash of two unique actors with the faces of Phoenix and Hoffman. The result is a multilayered work, inspired largely by film noir, or the work of Robert Altman or Terrence Malick.

Although the film The Master stands out for its great degree of ambiguity, despite this (or precisely because of it) it was favorably received, was nominated for dozens of critical and festival awards and also received three acting Oscar nominations (in addition to Phoenix and Hoffman, also for Amy Adams in the role of Lancaster's wife). Joaquin Phoenix is ​​the most appreciated, but also cinematographer Mihai Malaimare and his spectacular shots, created specifically for the wide screen. The Master may also be one of the last films that you will be able to see on a 70mm copy. Fox is expected to stop distributing its films on celluloid this year, and other major studios are said to follow suit soon.