The Master

In anticipation of Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest, One Battle After Another, we revisit one of his towering achievements.

This aching, ambitious, and deeply ambiguous psychodrama pairs alcoholic ex-serviceman Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) with messianic flimflam man Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) in a cage-match bromance that doubles as a meditation on the postwar groundswell of new faiths—Dodd’s Scientology-like “The Cause” and, implicitly, Method acting—amid American prosperity. Laura Dern’s Helen Sullivan, a wealthy Phoenix benefactor who dares to question the inconsistencies in Dodd’s slapdash religion, becomes pivotal in cracking his façade. Over the course of this strange, sensuous film, that façade unravels, revealing what many consider one of the premier cinematic accomplishments of the 21st century.