I
saw your movie. What happened?
Bill Murray asked this question
in Tootsie (1982). After I saw The Master the first time, I asked the same question. What was the point of the exercise? Was this really about something, or was it
[to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld] a movie about nothing? I watched the movie again the other day, and
I’m still scratching my head. The word
about this movie when it was released was that it somehow was inspired by L.
Ron Hubbard and Scientology. The only
thing I know about L. Ron Hubbard is that he churned out a lot of books after he died, and Scientology is the
“religion” of choice for Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and Kirstie Alley, among
others. So is this movie about…I don’t
know.
The film starts out in the
Pacific at the end of World War II.
Freddie Quell is in the Navy.
He’s a sex-obsessed alcoholic. He
makes his own brand of moonshine out of paint thinner and whatever else happens
to be lying around. He drinks fuel from
a torpedo. He simulates having sex with
a woman-shaped sandcastle while he’s on R&R waiting for the war to
end. He ends up sleeping on the beach
next to this ‘sandcastle.’ When he’s
discharged from the Navy, he enters a hospital for psychiatric treatment,
presumably for battle fatigue. During
his treatment he does the Rorschach test,
where everything looks to him like genitalia [male or female, it doesn’t
matter]. He gets a job as a department
store photographer, but he loses that job after he gets violent with a
customer. Then he goes to Salinas, CA to
harvest giant cabbages, but he loses that job after on elderly worker gets sick
from drinking his moonshine. So he’s an
alcoholic sex-addict with a nasty temper who can’t hold a job – in short, a
loser.
Somehow he ends up in San
Francisco. He stumbles upon a yacht,
where a party is being held. So what
does Freddie do? He stows away, of
course. It’s a place for him to sleep,
nobody will find him [until the sun comes up].
This is when he meets Lancaster Dodd, aka The Master. He’s the leader of the group called The Cause. What is the purpose of The Cause? Be freer, more
productive and more in command with your life.
Free yourself from your ailments. To do so, you free yourself from past
trauma. And by “past trauma,” they mean
trauma from previous lifetimes. The
"processing" begins with inducing memory – The first question is ‘can
you recall?’ After the first question,
the interrogation begins
to help potential converts to relive traumatic events from their past and maybe
past lives so they can clear their souls of toxicity.
When The Master and Freddie meet
face-to-face for the first time on-film [that they talked the night before
during the party was alluded to]. Freddie asks for a job on Master’s boat. They’re sailing from San Francisco to New
York via Panama, and Freddie tells Master he’s an able-bodied seaman as he was
during the war. Freddie asks The Master
‘what do you do?’ Master - 'I do many,
many things. I'm a writer, a doctor, a
nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher, but above all I am a man. A hopelessly inquisitive man, just like you.’
The Master is also very fond of
Freddie’s moonshine. So for the price of
making moonshine for The Master, Freddie gets his first “processing.” He tells Freddie “You’ll be my
protégé and my guinea pig.” There turns out to be a lot more to it than that.
They are father and son, guru and disciple, passionate friends and bitter
competitors locked in a relationship. During the “processing” we find
out that Freddie’s mom was crazy and institutionalized for being such, his dad
was a drunk who is now dead, he had sex with his aunt several times, and he
left a girl named Doris behind in Lynn, Massachusetts. Freddie is one messed-up dude.
Peggy is The Master’s
very-protective wife. When she meets
Freddie for breakfast she says Freddie has inspired The Master to write. He can't write at home, there's too much
pulling him in each direction- people who are scared, people who are greedy,
ex-wives. So here it’s established that
Lancaster Dodd and his following are some kind of social outcasts for preaching
whatever it is they preach. And in what
comes next it’s established that The Master doesn’t take criticism, is easily
put on the defensive, and loathes having to explain himself to ‘non-believers.’
Once in New York, there is a
dinner party at the house of one Mildred Drummond, who has some sort of
philanthropic foundation. She had
invited Lancaster Dodd and his Cause devotees to dine with her and others. Lots of well-to-do people attended. One guest named Margaret O'Brien has just
undergone a "session" with The Master. A lot of people watched.
Margaret: I
think I was a man. What I just
experienced, was that me? That man in the armor, was that me?
Dodd
[The Master]: Yes, that was your
spirit. Our spirits live on in the whole
of time. Exist in many vessels through time.
This is the vessel you're existing in now, in 1950. As you all
may recall, during the trauma
that you were going through while we were processing, it was of the upmost
importance that you experience every detail every specific detail, every
specific detail, through all of your senses, of that memory. And that we go over it again, and over it
again, until it loses its power. This is
very important. Why is it important, is
if you bring someone out of a traumatic event back to the present time, no
matter how carefully you do that, if you have not gone over the memory…
One guy in the back of the room
kept trying to ask The Master a question.
The Master finally got to the point where he could no longer ignore this
guy.
John
More: Some of this sounds
quite like hypnosis, does it not?
Dodd
[The Master]: This is a process of
de -hypnotization, if you will. Man is
asleep. This process wakes him from his
slumber.
John
More: I still find it
difficult to see the proof with regards to past lives that your movement
claims.
Dodd
[The Master]: Would you care to
submit yourself to processing? 'Look through the telescope' as my friend
said?
John
More: Perhaps another
time. You've also said these methods,
Cause Methods, can cure leukemia, according to your book, and...
Dodd
[The Master]: Some forms of
leukemia. In being able to access past
lives we are able to treat illnesses that may have started back thousands, even
trillions of years.
John
More: With a T, sir? Earth is not understood to be more than a few
billion years old
Dodd
[The Master]: Even the smartest of
our current scientists can be fooled, yes.
John
More: You can understand
some of the skepticism, can you not?
Dodd
[The Master]: Yes, yes. For without it, we'd be positives and no
negatives therefore zero charge. We
must have it.
John
More: Good science by
definition, allows for more than one opinion, does it not?
Dodd
[The Master]: Which is why our
gathering of data is so far reaching...
John
More: Otherwise you will
merely have the will of one man, which is the basis of cult, is it not?
Dodd
[The Master]: ‘Tis ‘tis, and
thankfully we are, all of us, working at breakneck speeds and in unison towards
capturing the mind's fatal flaws and correcting it back to the inherent state
of perfect. Whilst righting civilization
and eliminating war and poverty, and therefore the atomic threat.
John
More: Well, I find it
quite difficult to comprehend, or more to the point believe that you believe
sir that this time travel hypnosis therapy can bring world peace and cure
cancer.
Dodd
[The Master]: I have never been to
the Pyramids, have you?
John
More: No.
Dodd
[The Master]: And yet we know that
they are there because learned men have told us. May I ask, what is your name?
John
More: John More.
Dodd
[The Master]: Mr. More, if I may,
is there something frightening to you about The Cause's travels into the past?
John
More: Frightening? No,
no.
Dodd
[The Master]: What scares you so
much about traveling into the past? Are
you afraid that we might discover that our past has been reshapen? Perverted?
And perhaps what we think we know of this world is false information?
John
More: Time travel does not
frighten me sir, because it's not possible.
What does frighten me is the possibility of some poor soul with leukemia
coming to you...
Dodd
[The Master]: There are dangers of
time as we understand it, of traveling in and out as we understand it. But it's not unlike traveling down a river,
you see? You travel down the river,
'round the bend, look back, and you cannot see around the bend, can you? That does mean it is not there, does it? But certain clubs would like us to think that
a truth, I say truth, uncovered should stay hidden.
John
More: I belong to no club
and if you're unwilling to allow any discussion...
Dodd
[The Master]: No, this isn't a
discussion, it's a grilling. There's
nothing I can do for you if your mind has been made up. You seem to know the answers to your
questions. Why do you ask?
John
More: I'm sorry if you're
unwilling to defend your beliefs in any kind of rational...
Dodd
[The Master]: If you already know
the answers to your questions, then why ask, pig fuck? [Mrs Drummond looked
most displeased when she heard that.
Additionally, John More didn’t get the memo that whatever The Master
says should be taken as gospel]]. We are
not helpless. And we are on a journey
that risks the dark. If you don't mind,
a good night to you. [Freddie throws a tomato at Mr. More].
Dodd
[The Master]: Freddie, stop! This is not the time, stop!
The ride up the elevator to
their hotel rooms was a quiet one. They’ve
been exposed as frauds, and they know it [they just don’t want to admit
it]. Once Peggy and The Master are in
their room, The Master starts to type feverishly, while Peggy sits on the end
of the bed and starts to speak. She’s
revealed as a cold-as-ice, hard-as-nails [pick your favorite metaphor] true
believer who may even be more devoted to The
Cause that her husband who leads it.
The dutiful, attentive wife and mother is just a mask, but here the mask
comes off.
Peggy: And this is where we’re at, at the lowest
level to have to explain ourselves, for what?
For what we do we have to grovel.
The only way to defend ourselves is to attack. If we don't do that we will lose every battle
that we're engaged in. We will never
dominate our environment the way we should unless we attack. And this city, city is just noise. I know this city. I know its rotten secrets city its filthy
lies and secrets. They invited us here
and welcomed us. Only to throw us down
and kick us out. It's a grim joke.
And because John More disagreed
with the Master, Freddie and the Master's new son-in-law go over to his
apartment and beat the shit out of him.
After The Cause crashes and
burns in New York, they decamp to Philadelphia, where they are welcomed as
houseguests of another wealthy woman, Helen Sullivan [Laura Dern]. There’s a very strange moment at Helen
Sullivan’s house. There’s another party in which
The Master performs the mildly bawdy traditional song “I’ll Go No More
A-Rovin’” for an admiring group of acolytes, including his pregnant wife Peggy,
while Freddie watches in a drunken stupor from a nearby chair. In the first
shot everybody is clothed, but then without skipping a beat all the female
partygoers appear naked. What is up with
this? Is this a fantasy of Freddie’s? He is a sex addict, after all. Does he want to screw all the females in the
room, young and old, small and tall, skinny and fat? When The Master and Peggy get back to their
room, she tells him he can do whatever he wants sexually as long as she and
nobody she knows finds out about it, all the while giving him a handjob. And while she is doing so, he refers to Peggy
as “master.” After the deed is done, she
tells The Master to stop drinking Freddie’s moonshine. Then she goes downstairs to tell Freddie that
he has to quit drinking if he wants to stay with The Cause.
The day after, Freddie
and The Master’s son Val have a conversation.
Val tells Freddie his father doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that
he’s making up everything as he goes along.
Freddie doesn’t take this well, but the seed of doubt is planted. Then The Master is arrested by Philadelphia
police. Apparently he took $11,000 from
the Mildred
Drummond Foundation [remember her?], and now she wants it back [the charge –
“wrongful withdrawal of funds”]. It
doesn’t pay to swear in front of those whom you are trying to rip off. As The Master is being arrested, Freddie
attacks one of the cops. It takes three
to subdue him. Once in jail, Freddie
destroys the toilet in his cell. The
Master is in the cell next to Freddie’s. The Master tells Freddie he has a fear of
authority that dates back millions of years.
Freddie tells him to shut up, that his son hates him, and that The
Master is making up everything. Freddie
is an erupting volcano of rage. But
after the two are released from jail, they reconcile at Helen Sullivan’s house. Freddie is then subjected to a series of
exercises, the object of which is for The Master to ‘cure’ Freddie. Freddie tires of these exercises and gets
frustrated.
The troupe then leaves
Philadelphia for Phoenix for the First Universal Process Congress of The
Cause. It is at this meeting that The
Master releases his new book. But there
is a slight change to The Cause’s methodology contained in the book, one that
doesn’t escape the eye of Helen Sullivan.
Until the publication of the second book, the first processing question
was always ‘can you recall?’ But Helen
notices this has changed to ‘can you imagine?’
So she starts to question The Master about this, all the while implying
that everything up until that time has been a lie. The Master gets impatient with explaining the
“new findings” to Helen and snaps at her – WHAT DO YOU WANT? Something else happens in Phoenix – Freddie
asks the publisher of The Master’s first book about his opinions of the second
book. The reply – I could have put it in
a three-page pamphlet. Again, Freddie
unhinges and attacks the guy.
The Master puts Freddie through
one more exercise. Called
“pick-a-point,” you pick a spot on the horizon, ride a motorcycle as fast as
you can across the Arizona desert, and return to where you started. The Master demonstrates, and then hands the
bike over to Freddie. Freddie picks a
point, hops on the bike and goes as fast as he can get the bike to go. But he never returns – he leaves The Cause. In the very next scene we see him back in
Lynn, Massachusetts to find Doris – the love of his life. But when he talks with her mother, he finds
that Doris didn’t wait for him, got married, moved to Alabama and has two
children. Doris is “the one who got
away.”
One of the weirdest scenes in
the movie takes place in a movie theater.
Freddie is sleeping in a dark theater while the cartoons are playing,
only to be interrupted by an usher with a telephone. The Master is calling from England! How did he find Freddie? First, The Master shows his continuing
paranoia when he asks whether anyone “got to him.” When Freddie says no, The Master asks him to
come to England where he’s established a school. And while he’s at it, could he bring a supply
of Kool cigarettes? The Master can’t get
them in England. So Freddie hops on a
ship, goes to England and finds The Master.
So when Freddie is brought into The Master’s gigantic office [Hitler
would be proud], the first person to speak is not The Master, but Peggy. She asks Freddie if he’s drunk – he says he
isn’t. She tells both The Master and
Freddie that The Cause is something Freddie does for a billion years or not at
all. She rises from her chair and goes
over to Freddie. She asks him “you can’t
take this life straight, can you?” He
doesn’t answer, so she says “he’s past help” and leaves. Freddie sits and chats with The Master. Is Freddie coming back into The Cause or isn’t he? No, he isn’t. So The Master tells Freddie that when he has
found out what it is like to serve no master, he needs to tell The Master about
it. The Master has a “master” of his own
– his master is his wife Peggy. Then,
out of nowhere The Master starts singing to Freddie that he’d like to get him
on a slow boat to China. That’s quite an
interesting way to end a ‘relationship.’
So what’s it all about? Is this a love story between Philip Seymour
Hoffman’s charismatic fake and Joaquin Phoenix’s barely-functional
alcoholic? Could be…
Peggy Dodd starts off being the
quiet, dutiful wife of The Master.
Throughout most of the movie, she’s either pregnant or holding a
kid. But as the movie progresses, she
reveals herself to be ruthless and single-minded about The Cause. She is the one
who goads her husband into doing the things he does. Peggy is really Lady Macbeth. Was The Master just a front-man for
Peggy? Given that the movie takes place
during the 1950s, it wouldn’t surprise me if that was the case. Peggy definitely was not June Cleaver.
Another question – the movie
pretty much starts and ends with Freddie Quell sleeping on a beach. Was everything that happened in between just
a dream?
How did The Master track him down to a movie theater? Cue The Twilight Zone music...
