#5) The Master, by Paul Thomas Anderson (2012)

About two weeks ago, I was walking around Walt Disney World, staring at people on lines and wondering about evolution; how we got to this point, venturing through such severe constructs of imagination, the various bloodlines associated with face types, commonality and a shared human experience of seeking meaning through the grandiosity of myth. I wanted to write a piece about evolution when I got home, and I was fortunate to run into the YouTube page Must See Films, who theorize that the #5 film on my list, The Master, is about evolution.

They break it down in three parts: Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) the id, apeman; Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) the ego, superhuman; and Peggy Dodd (Amy Adams), the superego, the master. Freddie is a drifter at sea, returning from World War II in the Navy without any direction in life, driven purely by animal instincts such as sex, violence, and alcohol. On a beach with fellow Navy men, we see him climb a tree like a monkey, chopping down coconuts, pretend to copulate a sand sculpture of a naked woman, masturbate into the ocean (his seed returning to the primordial sea from whence all life evolved), and wrestle. Without a solid feminine foundation, his animalism is never tempered; he lays his head beside the nipple of the sand sculpture, yearning for that lack of nurturing. His mother has been in an insane asylum, and he left the love of his life, Doris, to be in the Navy, trading love for initiation. The rug has been ripped from beneath – his only parent was this militant chain of command, and now he’ll be expected to find his own way. But he can’t pass a Rorschach test without seeing only cock and pussy. He denies the power of Doris, but cries over her. He denies having visions of his mother as only dreams. What else could he seek besides another command that offers some sense of schedule, structure, discipline – a master.

He becomes a mall photographer, encountering doppelgangers of Dodd (customer) and Peggy (store model), who we have yet to meet. He hooks up with the store model; again, emphasis on nipples, as well as a potbelly. The potbelly recurs in Peggy, being pregnant, and Winn, his final score, symbolizing his place in the womb and the unformed being he is. This is also suggested by the various direct shots of the ocean between pivotal transitions in his journey. The customer is someone Freddie antagonizes, leading to a fight that ends his job at the store and winds him up a cabbage farmer. Here, he encounters a doppelganger of his father, who he poisons with one of his many dangerous alcohol concoctions. He runs away again, this time across a tilled field that has yet to sprout, another symbol of Freddie’s infancy. Freddie will not take responsibility for his actions, blaming his poison on the person who took it, physically lashing out against the community.

There is no place left for the id without the ego, entering Lancaster Dodd, a powerful figure who claims to be many highbrow things, including a scientist, but ultimately just a hopelessly inquisitive man. Freddie has snuck onto his boat and they are out at sea when they meet, an instance of the ocean transitioning Freddie from one trajectory to another. But who is Lancaster Dodd? Freddie is as oblivious as we are, along for the ride with a seemingly well off man, a decent family, and a group of people who adulate him. His wife Peggy is welcoming, inviting him to their table for breakfast. Easing Freddie into the environment is important to their goal: hypnosis. We realize this is a dianetic-like movement devoted to a cause akin to Scientology, with past life regression hypnotherapy, a questionnaire called processing (auditing in Scientology), and an ongoing series of experiments meant to cure engrams (traumatic memories of reactive mind). Dodd boasts a superior position, putting Freddie in the seat of a preclear for processing, a command hypnosis structured like a personality test, with a repetition exercise intended to relax and create importance focusing on past failures. Dodd is keen on picking away at Freddie’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Through the processing, we learn that Freddie had an incestuous relationship with his aunt, killed men in war, doesn’t like other men touching his girlfriends, and his primary engram is abandoning Doris. In a flashback, he receives Doris’ goodbye letter while out at sea, the ocean again present as Freddie is on the cusp of a transitory initiation with Dodd’s tribe. He farts when asked if he’s unpredictable, to which Dodd calls him a “silly, dirty animal.” This emphasis of rising above animal nature is key for Dodd. But we have to question Dodd’s own impulses along the way, as it is his own repressed animalism that draws him to Freddie in the first place. Dodd has an appetite for Freddie’s alcoholic concoctions, has outbursts at people who question his methods, and resorts to disparagement when things aren’t agreeable.

It is only through the superego that the ego Dodd is influenced; the master, Peggy. Lancaster Dodd is credited as the master - he’s the face of it all - but Peggy is the guiding hand who is critical, moralizing, and idealizing. Dodd may be the author, but he’s transcribing her dictation. Peggy bears a resemblance to Doris, though this is never played in a cliché, expectant affair. Peggy seems to be the one woman Freddie keeps his hands off of, allowing her to play a more motherly role, though one he’s quietly defiant of. She tells Freddie to put something in the future and go after it, while also telling him he has to stop drinking. She decides when Dodd will have pleasure, jerking him off in the bathroom, telling him he can have anything, as long as nobody finds out, empowering him. Undoubtedly, she is the most dedicated to the cause without blemish, whereas Dodd is pulled between the appeal of Freddie’s impulses and her requirement for perfection.

Freddie remains an animal throughout the film, making Dodd only more desperate to prove his methods work. Freddie challenges Dodd’s entire purpose for living with his endlessly lewd behavior. He can listen to a hypnotizing recording Dodd’s made about how we are not part of the animal kingdom, but at the same time solicit sex with another member. During any given exercise, he may never get further than childish name-calling or hitting. He’s clearly insecure about his involvement with the cause, and projects this on others who may show less faith by beating them. But he’s constantly treated like a dog, scolded for doing wrong, “bad boy,” or rewarded for right, “good boy.” Dodd is the only person in Freddie’s life, bonding through drinking and smoking, but interferes with his nature to such a degree that his self-conflict is ceaseless. For all the naysayers Freddie beats, he also echoes their sentiments to Dodd – ‘you’re making this all up, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ At the same time, Dodd might be his only hope.

The Master is one of the most morally ambiguous films ever made. One can argue that since very little changes, very little happens, and we are left unsure of what to make of it, or how we’re supposed to feel about it. While Lancaster Dodd surely reflects a cult leader like L Ron Hubbard, it’s not so one dimensional that he’s painted evil and manipulative. Dodd sincerely believes in what he’s doing, and his exercises are experiments, earnestly trying to fulfill his desire to help people through the cause, to get it right. Freddie enters the picture at a time when the cause is expanding and the threat of a less personal approach looms. Books will be the guides going forward, and they may leave members confused if they contradict previous information learned. Freddie, like Alexander DeLarge (Clockwork Orange), can never really be cured of his nature. He’s a sailor at heart, going where the wind takes him. It’s likely he was never ready to leave the fluids in the womb, and he’ll go wherever he feels closest to it. We can be harsh and say Freddie is a failure of evolution, but then so is Dodd.  Whether striving for idealism, or acting completely base, both are shackled to their demons, denying themselves a fundamental truth about the nature of cause and effect. Neither of them, nor Peggy, can control the ramifications of their actions, or the defamatory response they receive from the outside world. In the end, they are all equal.

Special thanks to YouTubers Must See Films, Nerdwriter, and Film Radar

From Focus Features. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Produced by Megan Ellison, Daniel Lupi, and JoAnne Sellar. Cinematography by Mihai Malaimare Jr. Edited by Leslie Jones & Peter McNulty. Music by Johnny Greenwood. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Jesse Plemons, Ambyr Childers, and Rami Malek. Rated R.

Now available on DVD and Blu-ray