Category Archives: Drama

Low country + western: The Broken Circle Breakdown **

September 5, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on November 23, 2013)

The Kingdom of Belgium is renowned for its Flemish painters and chocolatiers, but its thriving bluegrass scene has been perennially overlooked. Until now. Once meets Scenes From a Marriage in a generally well-acted but somewhat overwrought 3-hankie mellerdrama called The Broken Circle Breakdown.

If you love the sound of banjos, mandolins, and fiddles, topped off by them good old-timey close harmonies, you may be more receptive to this little ditty ’bout Jack and Diane…I mean, Kris and Rita…sorry, Elise and Didier, two Flemish kids livin’ in the low lands.

One fateful day, Didier (Johan Heldenbergh) a banjo player in a bluegrass band, waltzes into a tattoo parlor, where he Meets Cute with the fetching, well-inked proprietress, Elise (Veerle Baetens). When he asks her who the “greatest musician of all time” is, she says Elvis. Pshaw, says Didier, the correct answer is “Bill Monroe”. Who? she says…and they’re off.

Technically, I’m getting ahead of myself, as director Felix Van Groeningen (who co-adapted the screenplay with Carl Joos) elects to use the flashback/flash-forward device we’ve seen in similarly non-linear romantic relationship narratives like Two For the Road, Annie Hall, (500) Days of Summer and the aforementioned Bergman film.

We strap in and join Elise and Didier for a ride on the roller-coaster of Love, Marriage and Parenthood over a period of 9 or 10 years, through sickness and health, good times and bad times, joy and sorrow (mostly accentuating the sickness, bad times and sorrow).

The musical performances by Elise and Didier’s bluegrass outfit (The Cover-Ups of Alabama) are heartfelt (I’m curious if the actors actually did their own singing and playing). Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the drama.

The story runs wildly off track once someone has a grief-induced onstage meltdown, resulting in a bizarre political rant that seems to have party-crashed from a wholly different narrative. I’m not the world’s biggest country and/or bluegrass fan, but in this case, I could have used less soap-and more Opry.

Drama, Family Issues, On Politics, War(s) on Terror

Homeland insecurity: Torn ***

September 5, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on November 23, 2013)

In the wake of the recent LAX shooting, The Islamic Monthly ran an interesting piece by its Senior Editor Arsalan Iftikhar, who made this pithy (and prescient) observation:

Now, the same right-wingers who would shout “terrorism” from the rooftops if the LAX airport shooter was a Muslim will likely avoid using the word “terrorism” at all since the shooter was a white Italian dude from Jersey. They will characterize this non-Muslim terrorist as a crazy kooky loner whose undiagnosed mental-health issues or work-related stress probably led to the attacks.

Also, these same right-wingers who always call for the “racial profiling” of Arabs and Muslims after every terrorist attack will now be silent since they would now have to call for the racial profiling of every 20-something white dude from New Jersey.

As if on cue, there’s a new indie called Torn (running in limited engagements) that tackles that meme head on. Set in a quiet Bay Area bedroom community, Jeremiah Birnbaum’s modestly budgeted drama opens with a dreamy, lazily-focused montage of pure, tranquil suburban-American imagery: shoppers at the mall, doing what shoppers do.

Shortly after the segment dissolves into heavenly white light (rarely a good sign), we learn through a TV news bulletin that Something Terrible Has Happened. There’s been an explosion at the mall (possibly a gas line), and there are fatalities.

The TV is in the home of an upscale Pakistani-American couple, Maryam (Mahnoor Baloch) and her husband Ali (Faran Tahir), both just home from work and setting the table for dinner. On their answering machine, they hear a message from their son, telling them he’s headed for the mall after school (I don’t think it’s a spoiler to tell you what that portends).

As the couple begins to deal with their soul-shattering grief in the days following the tragedy, Maryam forms a bond and strikes up a friendship with a woman named Lea (Dendrie Taylor), a divorced, financially-strapped single mother who has also lost a teenage son in the incident.

However, Maryam and Lea’s burgeoning relationship is about to hit a major roadblock. Police investigators discover irrefutable evidence that the explosion was caused by a homemade bomb. The detective in charge of the investigation (John Heard) informs Maryam and Ali that their late son is the prime suspect, and that the FBI has been called in.

Suspicion weighs even more heavily on the family when the local media dredges up the fact that Ali himself had been picked up and interrogated after 9/11 (although never charged). Lea gets caught up in the rush to judgment, lashing out at Maryam and then giving her the cold shoulder. Lea’s moral superiority is short-lived. It turns out another teenager killed in the explosion had been bullying her son; he had vowed revenge and is now being investigated as well (the shoe is now on the other foot).

Despite the setup, the odd red herring and the fact that there is a “reveal” in the final shot, Birnbaum’s film is not a “whodunit” so much as a “why do we?”. Why do we rush to judgment? Why do we always fear the Other? And why do we always find it so difficult to look in the mirror?

Screenwriter Michael Richter wisely keeps the police procedural elements on the back burner, instead focusing on these central questions, via the shifting dynamics of Maryam and Lea’s relationship.

In other words, by handing each protagonist a glass house and a bag of rocks, he is leveling the playing field; thereby he is daring the viewer (by proxy) to cast the first stone after examining his or her own fears and prejudices. And for the most part, this device works quite well, thanks to strong performances from Baloch and Taylor. The message has been proffered many times before, but until it finally “catches on”, perhaps it cannot be repeated enough.

Drama, Dystopian, Fantasy

SIFF 2013: Die Wand **

September 4, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 25, 2013)

Adapting first-person narratives like Marlen Haushofer’s dystopian novel Die Wand (The Wall) for the screen can be a tricky affair. Consider Julian Roman Polsler’s film, wherein our heroine (Martina Gedeck) wakes up one morning and finds that an invisible, encircling “wall” has confined her within the perimeter of an Alpine lodge, with only a dog, a cow and woodland animals for company. As she adapts to her Robinson Crusoe lifestyle, she begins keeping a journal. Since she has no one to converse with, we get voice over narration. A lot of voice over narration. Gedeck (a skilled actress) is left with little to do but stare into space. There’s a lot of staring into space. Atmospheric, nicely shot, but ultimately it is little more than a picture postcard-festooned exercise in tedium.

Drama, Road Movie

SIFF 2013: The Rocket ***1/2

September 4, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 18, 2013)

The Rocket could prove to be one of this year’s sleepers. Australian writer-director Kim Mordaunt tells the story of Ahlo (Sitthiphon Disamoe, in a remarkable performance), a 10-year old Laotian boy who can’t catch a break. In rapid succession, a member of his family dies in a freak accident and then the surviving members are forced to relocate after their village gets earmarked for razing to make way for a hydroelectric project. Ahlo’s dour grandma labels him as a “bad luck charm”. Determined to redeem his standing, Ahlo sets out to win an annual Rocket Competition. Mourdaunt has a Terrence Malick-like penchant for gorgeous “magic hour” composition; perfectly capturing the dichotomy of UXBs and battle-scarred ruins as they contrast with Laos’ lush, rugged natural beauty.

Drama, War

Blu-ray reissue: The Duellists ***1/2

September 1, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 6, 2013)

The Duellists – Shout! Factory Blu-ray

If you can get past Harvey Keitel’s anachronistic Brooklyn wise guy stance and Keith Carradine’s oddly mannered take on a 19^th-century “popinjay”, there’s a lot here in director Ridley Scott’s sumptuously photographed 1977 debut (adapted from a Joseph Conrad story) for cineastes to revel in. Keitel and Carradine play a pair of officers in Napoleon’s army who engage in a series of duels spanning three decades (some people just don’t know when to “let it go”).

Happily, the existential futility of this purloined stalemate becomes moot, as it is cloaked in one of the most visually stunning period pieces you’ll ever feast your eyes upon this side of Barry Lyndon (all the more impressive when you consider the $900,000 budget, which is coffee and a doughnut compared to the $130,000,000 spent on his dreary-looking Prometheus). Shout! Factory’s Blu-ray skimps on extras, but this long-overdue HD transfer is most welcome.

Drama

The winds of Var: The Well Digger’s Daughter ***

September 1, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 21, 2012)

There is an unbilled co-star stealing nearly every scene in the latest film adaptation of Marcel Pagnol’s novel, La Fille du puisatier; it’s the immutable breeze that rustles the verdant forests, fields and groves of France’s Provence region.

It’s no coincidence that this is the same intoxicating locale that informed two of the most acclaimed Pagnol film adaptations, Claude Berri’s Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring. It’s also no coincidence that the first-time director overseeing The Well Digger’s Daughter is veteran actor Daniel Auteuil, who played one of the major characters in Berri’s 1986 diptych.

Auteuil casts himself as the father of the eponymous young woman. The story begins on the eve of WW I. Pascal is a working class widower with six daughters, literally scraping to get by. His eldest, 18 year-old Patricia (Astrid Berges-Frisbey) has in essence filled her late mother’s shoes, selflessly devoting herself to attending to the welfare of her father and younger sisters.

Patricia is special in another way . When she was 6, a wealthy (and childless) Parisian woman on a countryside visit was so taken with the angelic young girl that she offered to take her back to the city and become her guardian. Seeing this as an opportunity for one of their daughters to have a shot at a better life, her parents agreed. But when her benefactor died, Patricia returned home at 15, now carrying herself with a certain air of refinement that set her apart from her peers.

Patricia’s trifecta of beauty, carriage and saintliness has certainly not been lost on at least two potential suitors. One is Felipe (Kad Merad). Felipe, a kindhearted bachelor in his mid-40s, is Pascal’s closest friend and sole employee (Merad’s characterization reminded me of Karl Malden’s turn as the quietly desperate, romantically awkward but well-meaning Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire).

When Felipe begins dropping not-so-subtle hints about his intentions, Pascal gives his blessing, mostly for pragmatic reasons; Felipe’s house is nearby, so he wouldn’t “lose” his beloved daughter, and it would be one less mouth for him to feed. Still, it would be up to Patricia, who, while fond of Felipe, has no romantic feelings for him.

Patricia’s introduction to her second suitor is straight out of Red Riding Hood. While cutting through unfamiliar woods one day to bring some lunch to her father and Felipe at their well dig, she encounters a somewhat over-confident (yet undeniably seductive) young man (Nicolas Duvauchelle) who introduces himself as the son of a local well-to-do store owner.

It’s love at first sight; although Patricia doesn’t realize it yet. By the time she does, the young man, a military pilot, is called to serve at the front, and she is left with a child on the way and a disappointed and conflicted father.

If that sounds like the setup for an old fashioned romantic melodrama, you would be 100% correct in that assumption. And I mean that in the best possible way (as I have never had an opportunity to see Pagnol’s own original 1940 film version, which doesn’t seem to be readily available on any home video format, I can’t address comparisons).

This is a magnificent “old fashioned romantic melodrama” in the tradition of Ryan’s Daughter; a beautifully acted, sensitively directed, emotionally resonant film, with lushly photographed scenery (by Betty Blue DP Jean-Francois Robin) that becomes a palpable character in the story.

Auteuil plays his Noble Peasant with a sense of aplomb that reminded me more than a little of Gerard Depardieu’s performance as the hunchback in Jean de Florette (I did have to chuckle though, when I recalled the late Pauline Kael’s droll assessment in her review: “…Depardieu wears ‘GOOD MAN’ in capital letters across his wide brow; in smaller letters we can read: ‘He has poetry in his soul.’).

As a bonus, Berges-Frisbey (radiantly lovely) and Duvauchelle (vibing the young Alain Delon) make great eye candy. Tired of superheroes, aliens and car crashes? This is your cure for the summertime blues.

Drama, Journalism

The owl and the pussycats: Elle **

September 1, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 5, 2012)

Let’s face it. At some juncture, we’ve all been whores. Take me, for example. I used to be a rent boy. OK, “stand-up comic” (same thing). I think it was Jay Leno who once drew some astute parallels. I’m paraphrasing, but it was along the lines of: “You degrade yourself entertaining strangers, but it’s over in 20 minutes and you get fifty bucks.” Or, have you ever had a job that you despised, but didn’t quit because the money was too good? If you answered “guilty”, I submit, sir or madam, that you have prostituted yourself!

Social observers have gleaned similar parallels with (smelling salts and fainting couch on standby?) marriage. In her book Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter posits: “What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many?” The great Emma Goldman once offered this: “To the moralist prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the woman sells her body, but rather that she sells it out of wedlock.”

And so it is that Polish writer-director Malgorzata Szumowska has dusted off this somewhat, erm, hoary feminist conundrum for reexamination in Elles: If a woman chooses to profit from her sexuality, is she empowering…or enslaving herself?

Juliette Binoche portrays Anne, a writer for ELLE magazine. She is working on an investigative piece profiling two young Parisian women (Anais Demoustier and Joanna Kulig) who are “working their way through college” as call girls.

At first, Anne maintains professional distance; however as she delves deeper into their lives, she transmogrifies from objective journalist into giggly confidante. Intoxicated by their youth, independence and sexual candor, Anne is copping something akin to a mainline rush as the women regale her with intimate details about their work. On the down side, the interviews are plunging Anne into an existential crisis.

On the surface, Anne’s lot in life doesn’t appear to be analogous to that of the two young women; in fact it is the very antithesis. Anne is older, financially secure, and settled into a comfortable bourgeois life with her husband and two children. What reason would she have to envy them?

Perhaps, when Anne contrasts the relatively adventurous lifestyles of the prostitutes with her own daily drudge of familial obligations and job deadlines, she discerns a sort of empowerment (not unlike Catherine Deneuve’s bored housewife ‘Severine’ in Luis Bunuel’s 1967 film, Belle de Jour).

Arguably, any true empowerment there is purely academic. That is, unless you feel “empowered” by allowing someone to urinate on you, or (even worse) sexually violate you Fatty Arbuckle style (as demonstrated in the two most disturbing and unnecessary scenes in the movie).

No, what Anne is really questioning is her role as wife and homemaker, which comes to a head as she prepares a dinner party for her husband’s boss. She has likely done this many times before, but suddenly the whole concept is anathema to her (much to her husband’s chagrin). Why is it so important she doll herself up and play the perfect little hostess, anyway? Just to “please” her husband? What am I, his whore? Oh, the humanity! Cue the meltdown.

When the film makes this awkward turn into Diary of a Mad Housewife territory, it loses credibility. Are we supposed to believe that all it takes is several interviews with a couple of student hookers for this woman, who has a great career, loving family and a fabulous Parisian apartment, to suddenly determine that all men suck and that her life is total shit? I’m just not buying it.

That being said, when you’ve got Binoche on board (one of the finest actresses currently strolling the planet), you can almost forgive the film’s weak script and narrative flaws. Frankly, she is the sole reason to watch it (if you’re looking for a reason). Binoche can hold your attention by simply staring out of a sunlit window (there’s a lot of that). If not for her presence, I would have summed up the film thusly: Eat Pray Love with an NC-17.

Big Money, Drama, Family Issues, Up the Workers

Crimes and misdemeanors: Elena ***

September 1, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 14, 2012)

Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.

-Anthony Burgess

It quickly becomes apparent in the opening scenes of Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Elena that you are settling in to watch a film wherein nothing is going to quickly become apparent.

He holds a static shot of a tree bathed in the cool light of dawn for what must be at least three minutes. Aside from the cackling of crows, there doesn’t seem to be anything of particular significance going on.

Wait a minute…is that a window, beyond the branches? It is, in fact, a balcony window, but we can’t quite see in; the glass only reflects the burgeoning sunrise. And (crows aside) it’s quiet…too quiet. This gives the viewer ample time to ponder: What’s going on behind that window? Are those crows an omen?

Interior shots reveal a decidedly less sinister scenario; a well-appointed luxury apartment, where a plain, unassuming middle-aged woman shuts off her alarm and gets out of bed. Again, the director takes his time, documenting the minutiae of her morning ablutions. Just when we are about to assume she lives alone, she enters a different bedroom, drawing the curtains open to awaken a gentleman who is a number of years her senior. There is minimal verbal exchange.

As she diligently begins to prepare breakfast, new questions arise. Is she his live-in housekeeper? Or maybe a caregiver for an elderly relative? While arguably a bit of both, turns out she’s technically neither. Despite their undemonstrative behavior, they are married. Vladmir (Andrey Smirnov) is an aloof, well-do-do patrician, and Elena (Nadezhda Markina), a retired nurse, hails from a working class background.

Mundane breakfast chat reveals that Vladmir and Elena each have an adult child from previous marriages. Vladmir has a daughter, with who he is rarely in contact with. According to him, she is a self-centered “hedonist”, who “takes after her mother”. Still, he spoils her; sending her money to support her party girl lifestyle.

Much to Vladmir’s chagrin, Elena is off after breakfast to visit her son Sergei (Aleksey Rosen). Sergei, who is unemployed, relies on the money Elena funnels him from her monthly pension check to support himself, his wife, infant and teenage son.

Vladmir, despite his wealth, refuses to give Elena’s son financial support; to him, Sergei is a useless lay about who needs to “get his ass off the couch” and provide for his family. Elena, who has heard this tirade before, absorbs it all with quiet resignation.

Then, she’s off on a long slog via bus, train and shoe leather express to just beyond the outskirts of urban renewal, where Sergei and his family live in a drab, rundown beehive apartment complex (which, with its twitchy youth gang skulking about the stoop and trashed, graffiti-scrawled lobby, is reminiscent of the building where Alex and his droogs held their confabs in A Clockwork Orange).

The stark contrast in living quarters, along with Vladmir and Elena’s disparate social backgrounds are metaphors for the central themes of Zvyagintsev’s screenplay (co-written by Oleg Negin): the chasm between the haves and the have-nots, and instinct vs. morality (echoes of Kurosawa’s High and Low).

All the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out when Vladmir suffers a sudden heart attack. He is visited in the hospital by his estranged daughter (Elena Lyadova, in a standout turn). Despite her nihilist stance regarding Vladmir’s situation, father and daughter unexpectedly reconcile, inspiring Vladmir to make changes in his will.

This decision leads another character to make a moral choice that profoundly changes the family’s dynamics. When this decision occurs, it is so subtle and reflexive that you might miss it; but such is the banality of evil.

Zvyagintsev has served up a complexly flavored filet of dark Russian soul, spiced with a hint of Dostoyevsky, a sprig of Burgess and a dash of Hitchcock. You could describe his film as a “noir-ish thriller”, but not in the traditional sense.

For one thing, there are no suspenseful musical cues. In fact, save for a solitary Philip Glass piece that makes several brief appearances on the soundtrack, there’s no music to speak of (thankfully, the director is astute enough to realize that a little bit of Philip Glass goes a long, long way).

The deliberate pacing could be a deal-breaker for some; I’ll admit I found myself struggling a bit through the first hour or so. But if you are patient, you will come to realize that there is a Kubrickian precision to the construct. And you will finally grok what’s going on behind that window…it’s a primordial dance as old and familiar as human nature itself.

Drama, Drug Culture, Show Biz

Bingo and porn: Starlet ***

August 25, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on December 1, 2012)

As the Hollywood hype machine prepares to carpet bomb the multiplexes with hobbits and SEALs, it’s reassuring to know that even in the midst of Oscar-bait season, it is still possible to unearth a small, no-budget gem like Starlet. An insightful, 1970s-style character study in the tradition of Harry and Tonto and Harold and Maude, it’s an episodic slice-of-life tale about an unlikely friendship between a 21 year-old porno actress and her misanthropic 85 year-old neighbor. Now…I know what you’re thinking; while this film is “unrated” , it is not as salacious as it might sound.

For example, it may surprise you to learn that the eponymous character is actually a Chihuahua (and again, get your mind out of the gutter). The adorable little scene-stealer is in the care of a sweet natured young woman named Jane (Dree Hemingway), who shares a house in the San Fernando Valley with her high-strung co-worker Melissa (Stella Maeve) and Melissa’s skuzzy drug-dealing boyfriend Mikey (James Ransone). It goes without saying that the roommates have, shall we say, non-traditional jobs. Consequently they enjoy quite a leisurely schedule (you know…get up at the crack of noon, fire up a couple bong hits for breakfast, and then while away the days zoning out on video games).

While she obviously shares some of the lifestyle trappings, there’s something that sets Jane apart from her comparatively dysfunctional roomies (Melissa is a drama queen, and Mikey is the type of guy whose idea of home improvement is to install a stripper pole in the living room). Jane, on the other hand, possesses a down-to-earth quality that makes you wonder how “a nice girl like that” wound up in the porn biz.

However, she isn’t necessarily incorruptible, as is evidenced when she buys a thermos at a neighborhood yard sale from a cranky widow named Sadie (Besedka Johnson) . Jane discovers $10,000 in rolled-up bills stashed inside. While her first instinct is to return the money, she does decide to “give it back”, but in her own unique way. Initially, she wants to sate her curiosity. But as we know-you can’t always go digging into other people’s secrets without getting your own hands dirty.

This is an impressive starring debut for the 25 year-old Hemingway (daughter of Mariel). At times (not surprisingly), her brave performance strongly evokes her mother’s role as Playboy model Dorothy Stratten in Bob Fosse’s 1983 film, Star 80 (Starlet is more sexually explicit, but it’s rendered in a relatively tasteful manner, and while it’s still enough to earn the film an “NR” rating, the brief scenes merely serve to establish what Jane does for a living). Johnson is equally impressive, perhaps even more so considering that she apparently has never acted before (at 87, she is likely the most mature “hot new talent” to keep an eye on). She and Hemingway have a lovely chemistry; both give warm, naturalistic performances.

I was surprised to discover that director Sean Baker and his writing partner Chris Bergoch were the same creative tag team behind the cult TV series Greg the Bunny (I never would have made a connection between a whacked out, puppetry-based satire like that and a thoughtful, beautifully acted art house drama like Starlet…but then again, Peter Jackson made Meet the Feebles and Heavenly Creatures…so anything’s possible).

Thematically, Baker’s film reminded me of two other L.A. based character studies-Adrian Lyne’s highly underrated Foxes, and Robert Altman’s 3 Women, in the way that it delicately sifts through the complexities of female friendships (inter-generational and otherwise). Also akin to Altman’s film, the cinematography (by Radium Cheung) utilizes the hazy, diffuse light of the sun-bleached L.A. environs to help create a languid, dreamy mood; providing the perfect canvas for a story that moves right about at the speed of life.

Con Game, Drama, Religion

You’re gonna have to serve somebody: The Master ****

August 18, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on September 29, 2012)

Starring Montgomery Clift and Charles Laughton (?)

The characters and events depicted in this photoplay are fictitious. Any similarities to actual persons, living or dead are purely coincidental

(Standard end of film disclaimer)

“Comparisons are not invariably odious, but they are often misleading,” Orson Welles once wrote, in reference to the debate over whether or not the many parallels in his film Citizen Kane to the real life story of William Randolph Hearst and the rise of his powerful publishing empire were purely coincidental. It is quite possible that current and future generations of critics and audiences will engage in similar debate regarding the parallels in writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, The Master to the life of L. Ron Hubbard and the founding of his Church of Scientology. Neither the church nor Anderson have confirmed or denied.

Despite the number of “coincidences”, the answer to the most obvious question is, “no”. This is neither a hagiography nor a smack down of any specific doyen or belief system (thinly disguised or otherwise). Anyone who would pigeonhole the film with such a shallow reading likely has not seen it (or is perhaps unfamiliar with certain themes running through all of Anderson’s films). What he has crafted is a thought-provoking and original examination of why human beings in general are so prone to kowtow to a burning bush, or be conned by an emperor with no clothes; a film that begs repeated viewings. Is it a spiritual need? Is it an emotional need? Or is it a lizard brain response, deep in our DNA?

As Inspector Clouseau once ruminated, “Well you know, there are leaders…and there are followers.” At its most rudimentary level, The Master is a two-character study about a leader and a follower (and metaphorically, all leaders and followers). It’s also a story about a complex surrogate father-son relationship (one of those aforementioned recurring themes in Anderson’s oeuvre; more on that in a moment). Anderson frames his narrative using the zeitgeist of America’s existential post-war malaise, in the person of ex-sailor Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix).

Socially withdrawn, prone to dipsomania, odd sexual compulsions and unpredictable fits of rage, Freddie’s transition back to civilian life has not been a smooth one. His character embodies many traits of the quintessential “disillusioned vet” protagonist that fueled post-war noirs like Act of Violence, Thieves’ Highway, The Blue Dahlia, Ride the Pink Horse and High Wall (in fact, The Master vibes overall with the verisimilitude of some great lost genre film of the late 40s or early 50s).

Freddie’s laundry list of personality disorders has not endeared him to the 5 o’clock world; he drifts from job to job. He hits rock bottom after his indirect responsibility for a tragic mishap has him literally fleeing for his life from a work site. Desperate to get out of Dodge and headed for a meltdown, Freddy skulks in the shadows of a San Francisco marina, where he crashes a shipboard wedding party, hoping to blend in with the revelers and then stow away.

The ship, a converted cattle trawler rechristened the Aletheia, is captained by the father of the bride, Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Dodd is a self-described writer/doctor/nuclear physicist/ philosopher and “hopelessly inquisitive man.” (if he were to take up guitar and form a rock band, he’d be Buckaroo Banzai). He is also a burgeoning cult leader; the boat is chock-a-block with devotees in thrall with Dodd and his philosophy, referred to as The Cause (the tenets have been laid out in Dodd’s eponymous book).

Initially, the paranoid Dodd admonishes his uninvited guest (suspecting him to be some manner of government spook assigned to infiltrate and/or sabotage his organization); but instead of giving him the heave-ho, “something” compels him to do a sudden 180 and invite the twitchy and troubled Freddie along for an imminent (Homeric?) ocean voyage with his family and followers to New York (some shades of The Stuntman).

And so begins the life-altering relationship between the two men, which vacillates tenuously between master/servant, mentor/apprentice, and father/son (the latter recalling Philip Baker Hall and John C. Reilly in Hard Eight, Burt Reynolds and Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights, Tom Cruise and Jason Robards in Magnolia, and Daniel Day-Lewis and Dillon Freasier/Paul Dano in There Will Be Blood). It’s also the catalyst for two of the most fearless and extraordinary performances that I have seen this year.

Not to denigrate Hoffman, who is mesmerizing as always; nor fine supporting performances from Amy Adams (as Dodd’s subtly controlling wife, who plays a sort of Livia to his Augustus), Laura Dern, or Breaking Bad’s Jesse Plemons , but Phoenix in particular has really hit one out of the park, achieving an Oscar-worthy transformation. I don’t know if this was by accident or by design, but I swear he is channeling Montgomery Clift, not only replicating his acting tics and vocal inflection, but his physicality (right down to the hunched shoulders and sunken chest-it is downright eerie).

The film is beautifully shot in 65mm by DP Mihai Malainare, Jr. (try to catch it in a 70mm presentation if you can), and nicely scored by Jonny Greenwood. Those with short attention spans are warned: This film demands your full attention (and begs repeated viewings). It’s exhilarating, audacious, and while at times a bit baffling, it is never dull.