Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Freddie, a volatile, heavy-drinking veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, finds some semblance of a family when he stumbles onto the ship of Lancaster Dodd, the charismatic leader of a new "religion" he forms after World War II.
The Master is a singular, deeply enigmatic work from Paul Thomas Anderson, shot in 70mm by Mihai Mălaimare Jr. with stunning visual grandeur that ranks among the decade's finest cinematography. Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman deliver towering, career-defining performances — raw, textured, and utterly inhabited. The film's conception is genuinely one-of-a-kind: a post-WWII portrait of spiritual searching, masculine codependency, and cult formation that resists easy allegory. However, the plot is deliberately elliptical and resistant to conventional dramatic momentum, which earns admiration but limits its narrative satisfaction. The ending is the film's weakest element — it trails off inconclusively in a way that feels less like earned ambiguity and more like unresolved drift, leaving the central relationship without meaningful culmination.