THE MASTER (2012)
I never know quite what to do with this one. The performances are outstanding—you could make the argument that both PSH and Phoenix are at the top of their respective games at around this time, and every scene with the two of them together is absolutely electric. The gifted roster of secondary cast members (Amy Adams, Jesse Plemons, Rami Malek, Laura Dern) turns in good work, too. And PTA's command of the image is as sure-handed here as ever: nearly every shot has something to recommend it.
But the script... well, the better Anderson films are scripted so that their pacing and intensity modulate carefully throughout their runtime before coalescing into a forceful finale. The script here starts out strong, but seems to grow becalmed in its final third. The narrative grows slack; the events make the same handful of points (Freddy is volatile, Lancaster is thin-skinned, Peggy is ineffectually vying for command); the motivations for why anyone is doing what they are doing grow more obscure and murky instead of coming more sharply into focus. The final emotional scene between Hoffman and Phoenix feels completely unearned, which is maddening given that it also somehow feels instantly iconic (tremendously shot, stunningly performed, indelibly memorable).
The person I watched this with said that they ignored the details of the story and watched it as though "watching something in a different language" and I ultimately feel like the film might feel more successful if approached that way: as a kind of raw sensory experience, absorbing, but with a certain layer of opacity that you'll never get all the way through.
