There will be Oscar nominations for “The Master.” Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as a guru resembling L. Ron Hubbard, with Joaquin Phoenix (left) as his troubled acolyte. (Phil Bray)
Amy Adams turns in a superb layered tole as the cult leader’s wife in ‘The Master.” (
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TORONTO — “The Master’’ isn’t the Scientology exposé it was rumored to be, despite speculation that its release was moved up a month to exploit the headlines surrounding the Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes divorce. Instead, it’s a sharply written, unforgettably directed character study with brilliant performances by Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams — far more intimate but no less intense than director Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar-winning last film, “There Will Be Blood.’’
Making its North American debut to almost universal raves at the Toronto International Film Festival over the weekend, the much-anticipated “The Master’’ — opening Friday in New York — will prominently figure in this year’s Oscar race in a variety of categories, including Best Picture.
To be sure, there’s much more than a passing resemblance between Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and his fictional film counterpart, Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd, the charismatic leader of a self-help cult called The Cause.
In the early 1950s, Dodd and his disciples “audit’’ recruits in a hypnotic-like state to uncover past traumas as an alternative to psychotherapy, much like in Scientology and its predecessor, Dianetics. Dodd is a self-styled “writer, doctor, nuclear physicist and theoretical philosopher” whose core tenets include reincarnation, time travel and helping free his followers from their emotions.
While skeptics consider Dodd — or, as his followers call him, The Master — a charlatan who preys on the wealthy and the gullible, he isn’t the film’s primary focus. That would be Freddie Quell (Phoenix), a hugely troubled follower of The Master who becomes a surrogate son as well as something of a test case for Dodd’s dubious theories about spiritual rebirth.
A Navy man (like Dodd) who’s most comfortable at sea, Freddie spends the film’s first 15 minutes drifting through a drunken haze after World War II service. In one scene, we see him pleasuring himself on a beach. In another, he’s attacking a customer at a department store where he is fired from his job as a photographer.
A few years later, Freddie’s homemade liquor (which contains paint thinner) kills a migrant worker. On the lam, he winds up as a stowaway on a yacht where Dodd is holding his daughter’s wedding on a cruise en route from San Francisco to New York via the Panama Canal.
As Hoffman plays him, Dodd’s a genial, generous and sincere fraud who takes on Freddie as a disciple despite the reservations of his pregnant wife, Peggy (Amy Adams), and his new son-in-law (Rami Malek).
Sure enough, when a man shows up to mock Dodd at his first New York appearance, Freddie tracks the offender down to his apartment and beats him up. When Philadelphia cops bust Dodd for operating an unlicensed clinic in the home of a follower (Laura Dern), Freddie’s hair-trigger temper and ferocious loyalty manifests itself again in spectacular fashion.
Dodd has an endless fascination with his attack dog, and Mrs. Dodd tells the crazy drunk, “You seem to inspire something in him.’’ Reaching deep into Freddie’s psyche, Dodd pulls out some painful memories of a sexual relationship with an aunt — as well as his twisted surrogate son’s unhealthy obsession with a 16-year-old girl back home in Massachusetts whom Freddie promised to return to after the war (but for some reason couldn’t).
Despite his issues, Freddie has enough street smarts to realize that his benefactor is a phony peddling pseudo-religious twaddle about man’s “inherent state of perfection.’’ At the same time, The Master is forced to acknowledge that Freddie poses a threat to his growing movement — as a loose cannon always ready to go off.
The real fireworks, however, are the extraordinary performances by the three leads.
Phoenix, who took a lengthy hiatus from acting after playing a bizarre version of “himself’’ in the pseudo-documentary “I’m Still Here’’ (2010), does his best work ever as Freddie, twisting his face and body into a grimace of pain, suffering, anger and lewd thoughts.
Hoffman’s immaculately groomed Dodd provides a Zen-like counterpoint, calmly smoking a cigarette in jail while Freddie demolishes the adjoining cell in an astonishing scene — quite a contrast to the flamboyant guru played by Tom Cruise in Anderson’s “Magnolia.’’ Hoffman also provides some much-needed humor, something totally missing from “There Will Be Blood.’’
Adams, in the only major female role, does a great job of demonstrating the will of steel behind Mrs. Dodd’s exterior empathy.
Some may be disappointed that Anderson does not more directly confront the many controversies and scandals involving Scientology and its practices. Others may wish for a less enigmatic resolution of the widening gulf between The Master and Freddie.