“The Master” (2012)
Rather belying the five-year gap that exists between them, while “The Master” is a very different film from “There Will Be Blood,” as a pair, they are perhaps more closely related than any two other contiguous titles in Anderson’s filmography. Both are unashamedly grown-up, richly intelligent, considered films, unafraid of challenging the audience to rise to their level, and supremely confident in their utter mastery of all the tools at a filmmaker’s disposal. If anything, “The Master” is even more enigmatic and unknowable than ‘Blood’ because where the earlier film built to a portrait of bombast and rage and towering monomania, “The Master” is about a quieter sort of brokenness. It’s about the impossibility of escaping our natures and our inability to outrun our pasts, self-deception and external deceit, and the knife-edge ambivalence that exists in a relationship predicated on the idea that one participant can “save” the other. Furthermore, beneath the stunning 70mm polish of its surface, perhaps no performances in Anderson’s astounding portfolio of showcase roles are rendered with such fathomless, oceanic depths as here. Central of course is Joaquin Phoenix’s unforgettable, irreparable Freddie Quell, as perfect a portrait of lost, fearful volatility as we might ever see, pitched into the orbit of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd. Within the now heartbreakingly closed loop that is Hoffman’s career, this role, despite having much less screen time than many of his others, proves all over again just what a great he was, and provides a pretty stunning grace note—who else could have lent so much nuance to the L. Ron Hubbard-esque part that it totally resists any easy assumptions about the “charismatic leader” role, while also defining it? A film that can easily slip through your fingers on first viewing, it continues to reveal itself subsequently, and from the stunning photography (from Mihai Malamaire Jr. rather than regular DP Robert Elswit) to the excellent Jonny Greenwood score to the richness of the setting and the mise en scene, “The Master” is PTA at his least accessible, and his most rewarding. [A-]
“Inherent Vice” (2014)
If Paul Thomas Anderson‘s “The Master” was an inscrutable picture with a threadbare plot that eschewed conventional narrative, then “Inherent Vice” is possibly just as enigmatic and/or impenetrable, only this time exhaling a maximalist fog of plotting—at least on the surface. An astute but loopy adaptation of Thomas Pynchon‘s stoner detective mystery, PTA does tackle the dreadlock-dense plot, but only as a means to explore the book’s hazy, blissed-out themes. Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye” is an ideal touchstone for a similarly laconic noir, but thematically ‘Vice’ is also a sprawling farewell to an era of hopes, dreams, and innocence from the peace and love generation. Within, there are flashes of absurdist comedy, swirling moody mystery and danger, and a melancholy longing for more. “Inherent Vice” takes a while to unpack because it is so vibrantly rich with tactile life. A loose-limbed Joaquin Phoenix is the perfect lead for a movie that includes a cavalcade of characters played by folks like Owen Wilson, Josh Brolin, Reese Witherspoon, Martin Short, and indie fairy-folk singer Joanna Newsom, to name just a few, but it’s also so atmospheric and textured. You can practically smell the swaths of pot-smoke, nervous sweat, patchouli and unbathed hippie stank that rises from them. Set at the top of the Charles Manson-era, just as hippie-dom is about to curdle into something feared and nasty, “Inherent Vice” also has a trajectory that eventually goes south. As the sun-soaked vibes and stoner comedy dissipates, even as that nostalgic forlornness dissolves, an uneasy feeling takes hold. “What’s next? Where do we go from here?” the characters ask themselves. Of course Anderson leaves this all to be inferred and many will leave the film questioning its coherence or lack thereof, but that’s a wash. It’s a beautiful, sad mood piece that demands multiple viewings before we can really pin it down. The titular “Inherent Vice” is a maritime legal term that essentially means that certain transported goods cannot be insured (also tying in to a mysterious boat that’s part of the plot). Somewhere in that miasma of love, loss and potsmoke, Anderson (and Pynchon) are suggesting nothing’s a sure bet, not even the ideals of would-be halcyon bygone eras. Expect to be baffled, at least until you get to soak it in once again. [B+]
–Jessica Kiang, Oli Lyttelton & Rodrigo Perez
