demoncleaner
Posts: 2176
Joined: 3/10/2005
From: Belfast
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Yes, I'd just like to go on record of re-recording my thoughts on The Master and take this opportunity to cast misgivings on any petty misgivings I initially had about it and say I think it's an absolute masterpiece. I wasn't much of a fan of PTA's earlier work, I almost had a binary response to his films: Hard Eight was pretty decent (I saw it after Magnolia). Boogie Nights I just thought was "meh", I only saw it once, like David St Hubbins would say it just never passed my transum...I had and still have no response or opinion about it. I really, really liked Magnolia (again I've only seen it once), it was deeply, deeply contrived but worth it for the devastating scenes that it pulled out of the hat to give half-assed justification to the contrivance.
Punch-drunk Love (I've only seen it once) I absolutely despised. There Will Be Blood floored me...absolute worship was my response to that. But still, there's a guilt in liking that too, because after holding its substantial cards close for all of its running time, it kind of "shoots its load" tonally in a giddy apoplectic release. I love TWBB, it's a stone cold 5/5 masterpiece, but there's a slight guilt issue with it, in terms of having to defend it in the pub against cynical mates.
The glory of The Master is that PTA has become slightly less contrived. Easier to defend in other words. But the joy for me is this idea that he is still Mr. Contrivance, that he is still a shallow film maker at heart (like Kubrick) in that his first impulse is to make "cool" Cinema, imagery and movement, in stillness, then in a concert dynamic that just looks... fucking... cool. And in order to make a valid excuse of doing that PTA's side effect (particularly of his last two films) is to contrive a substantial subject matter to drape those cool images around (just like Kubrick). At heart, it's playful, it's mischief, but the real result is a fucking cool Cinema aesthetic!
Now that sounds like criticism, that sounds like sneering, But the current joy of PTA is that the "side effect", that is, the secondary substance he puts behind his writing, and of course, the substance behind the acting performances (I'm just talking about his last 2 here) means that these are INCREDIBLY SUBSTANTIAL, MEATY AND FASCINATING fillums that - just in case people are getting too self-important or analytic about - are simply thrilling, giddy, beautiful motherfuckers that dance on the full expanse of Cinema's canvas (that sounds a bit wanky cause I'm listening to Kate Bush as I type this...but that doesn't stop it being true!)
But yes, PTA is now, for me, the most exciting filmmaker we have. My own personal theory about him is that he is far more playful than he's given credit for. At the start, the overhead shot with Freddie lying over the gunwale (fuck knows if that's what it's called) with the sailors desultorily throwing banana skins up at him; the foot-chase pan across the arrid terrain when he "poisons" the vegetable picker. The next one-shot, where he walks up to the boat, and the camera overtakes him and "walks" on ahead "walking crab-like", focusing on Dodd's boat which is anchored, and therefore isn't moving, but which looks like it's humping past us in the other direction; uncaring; we're sitting in cinema seats, relaxed, but feeling that huff and hump of Freddie and the camera taking us past. What I mean is an idea of fluent movement but natural, and not steady-cam slick. We have a moment of the fluid movement, that is mesmeric to watch but one that also puts us in there at the same point.
The "pick a point" scene! Don't get me started on the "pick a point" scene, In my own reading of the film it's exhibit A in own my theory of picking a shallow reason to film something "cool". This is the way I think that was conceived. A) PTA wants to film a vintage motorcycle going like jimmy-o across that terrain B) Dodd is a fucking child that wants a shallow excuse to go like billy-o on a motorcycle across that terrain. C) Dodd invents a profound mental exercise to make that happen D) The marriage of shallow enterprise between fiction-maker and fictional character prove the point of utter shallowness in The Cause. E) Meanwhile this great character of Freddie escapes Dodd and PTA... and the film! with a fixed, pragmatic expression which clearly says "fuck this for a game of cricket" 
Joy upon joy, a really giddy, ambitious, pleasantly articulate and "heavy" film, if you want it to be. Kubrick and David Lean (for different reasons) would love this. A satiric wag of the finger, not of cults per se, but geared toward anyone that can be beguiled by charismatic knobs with an inchoate and fucking tenuous grasp of common sense, all wrapped up in a veneer of Cinema (Cinema with a capital C) from someone who is skilled enough to make the art form look organic, not "polished" like David Fincher (who I fucking love) and Michael Bay (who I fucking don't).
5/5
Second best film of the year.*
The 1st best is Berberian Sound Studio by the way. Everyone spare a thought for wee British Peter Strickland who has made 2 humble internationally based masterpieces, off his own entire bat with his first two. Empire should rightly celebrate Ben Wheatley as a wry, cult, alternative, but I think wee Mr. Strickland is a burgeoning, unassuming wee master who can do "Cinema" (with a capital C) for "Real" with a capita R-rrrar!". Please give him the attention he deserves, otherwise he'll grow middle-aged and obverse indulgent, and no one needs another Mike Figgis on our hands!
< Message edited by demoncleaner -- 29/11/2012 2:53:41 AM >
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