PTA's latest... The Master

[Grug]

Impeccably crafted and performed. In the end I didn't feel the film added up to enough, not even a fully rounded character portrait, but it was always fascinating to watch.

+1

I got to see it in 70mm, but sadly I was crammed right up in a top corner of the cinema, so didn't get as much out of it as I would have liked.

I think the film's biggest failing is simply that it's characters never grow and never change. That may well be the point of the narrative, but it gets to the end and I found I was left with a sense of pointlessness. I got to see these characters, I got to see them go through things, and yet they were no different for their experiences at the end of the film. They learnt nothing, they didn't grow - and that lack of character development made it very hard for me to engage with the characters - they were no different in the final minute of the film to how they were in their opening minutes.

I suppose if nothing else, the film has taught me how utterly vital that progression of character is. I think it shows that you need that level of identification or characters just don't connect.

 

[Ted Spencer]

Finally saw this, and at the risk of getting slammed here, I have to say I really disliked this film (to put it mildly). I think PTA is an extraordinarily talented writer/director (mostly on the strength of "Boogie Nights", which I think is a masterpiece), but this film failed for me in so many ways. While all the major roles are played by excellent actors, and Hoffman is great, Phoenix's performance was so over-the-top that I was completely unable to stop seeing him and see "Freddy". Just infuriatingly indulgent 'acti-ness' in my book, in a pretty obviously 'designed for the oscars' way, which was even more annoying. Obviously enabled by PTA's direction of course, which made me annoyed with him too. Oy...

Then there was the horrendous under-editing; a ~140 minute movie that could have been about 90 without leaving out a single important thing. Scene after scene of self-indulgent near-masturbatory footage of on character or another walking this way or that, meaningless, boring B-roll...oy oy...

Then the "story" that never really goes anywhere, as others have pointed out. I thought there was great potential for it story-wise, but no...it just stayed in self-pleasuring mode for the duration. I imagined that everyone involved might have had just a heck of a dandy time making this thing, but I was perfectly miserable after about the first half hour or so. Oy oy oy...

I should mention that I did watch it in chunks over a few nights at home, because the boredom was unbearable. The skill of the actors and PTA were evident, so I wanted to see how it played out to the end. But on several occasions, especially later on, I was aghast to check a clock and note that I'd only been watching it for like, 8 minutes, which had felt like about a half hour. There's only one other film I can ever recall this effect so strongly in, and it was a screening of a 2 hour micro-indie (that eventually got properly edited down) that I was shocked wasn't 3 hours when it was (finally) over. I mean I *really* thought it had been 3 hours. That guy gets a pass though, because A) it was his first film, and B) he had the sense to cut it way down eventually. PTA gets no such slack from me.

Frank Capra said "there are no rules in cinema, only sins, and the Cardinal sin is dullness". Most filmmakers are also well advised to 'kill their babies". For my money, PTA failed both of these miserably. It was horribly dull, and full of babies that should have been sacrificed to the cutting room floor. Oy x 4...

Al in all, this is probably the worst 'acclaimed' film I've seen in at least a decade, and in the running for worst ever.

YMMV of course, and for many others who posted in this thread, it obviously did. On the other hand, the film tanked horribly at the box office: $16M domestic against a production budget of $37M (plus P&A). After adding worldwide and DVD it still lost almost $12M plus whatever they spent on P&A which I'm sure was not a small amount. Oy x 5...

(excuse me while I slip into my tomato-proof overalls...)

 

[Straight Edge]

The last 30 minutes of the film just felt completely lost, as if the director disappeared and the movie didn't know what to do, so it just kind of went until it didn't anymore.
.

At that point, Phoenix's character is suppose to be a helpless sheep -- sorta -- wandering without his shepherd, his master. It's suppose to be feel completely lost, especially after Phoenix's last visit to Doris' home. The very last scene of the movie was kinda weak, but it just solidifies his return to his pointlessness at the start of the film in my opinion. I would've ended it with Phoenix humping the sand mermaid again but at a different beach...but that's just me probably. Lol