A little bit of film trivia for you to begin. In the 'good old days' (a phrase usually used by my parents to indicate a time before I was born) films were recorded on 35mm film stock. The film looked like you get in old cameras, and 35mm was the width of it. As light (i.e. an image) hit the film, it stained it in a certain way and that's the image you got when you projected light through it again. This then was how film was originally made - film recorders and projectors.
Then the digital age came. And newbie filmmakers saw that it was good. What's the point of investing hundreds of pounds in expensive filming and projection equipment when you can buy a £150 camcorder from any high street? And the industry, being an industry, followed suit. Suddenly, everything was filmed and projected in digital. It was cheaper and easier, at both ends of the process. This is how most films were made.
Paul Thomas Anderson is not most filmmakers.
The five-time Oscar nominee decided when making 2012's The Master that he would go back to the old ways and use film. Not just mucky old 35mm though. No no - that's what everybody else would do! He decided to use a very rare 70mm film stock. The wider aperture of the camera (the lens will mirror the size of the film) means the quality of the image is richer and altogether deeper.
Unfortunately not all cinemas are equipped to project this type of film, so most people saw The Master projected in a digital form converted from the film - the same type you will get if you buy the DVD or Blu-Ray. Fortunately for me working in London last year, Leicester Square Odeon had a limited run of 70mm projections of the movie. And honestly, it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The quality of image, and in particular light, is rich and unprecedented in film in my opinion. At times I genuinely thought I was watching a play - it was that realistically.
Anyway, onto the film itself. Joaquin Phoenix, the enigma himself, plays a Freddie Quell - a boozing ex-Naval officer who can't seem to work out what to do with his life. He stumbles upon to the boat of Lancaster Dodd, AKA The Master, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and ends up following him round the world as he preaches his seemingly phoney and made up religion to anyone who will listen. Since I do want to work in the film industry quite a lot, I will be as careful with the S word as PTA was. But... Yeah. Pretty much. Bar the aliens and the placenta eating. With me? Let's continue...
Phoenix is unnervingly brilliant in this film, as he is in most. His attention to detail with characters is remarkable. The little things, like how he puts his hands on his hips or how he squints, make him just become Quell. He brilliantly portrays a tortured soul, a damaged man who wants to love and be loved but seems incapable of either without frequent implosion.
Hoffman is masterful (sorry) as Dodd. His presence within the role is looming, and he and Phoenix take turns in stealing scenes from each other, sometimes line for line. He manages to switch from lecturing and posturing to sheer bloody anger in the space of a second, perfectly portraying the fear Dodd has of being uncovered as a phoney.
The story itself isn't the richest, but this is one of those rare films where that doesn't really matter. There isn't really any character development, and everyone really seems to be back where they started by the end, but the quality of the interactions between the characters and the beautiful images (the opening shot of the wake of a boat in particular for me) is what stays with you.
This is a fine, fine film, and for what it's worth I think it should have taken home Oscars over Argo. But hey, it's not a film about Hollywood saving the day is it.
Oh damn there I go again. Please forgive me LA.
Anyway: watch this film. Until next time!
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