The Master

"Free winds and no tyranny for you, Freddie, sailor of the seas. You pay no rent, free to go where you please. Then go, go to that landless latitude and good luck. If you figure a way to live without serving a master, any master, then let the rest of us know, will you? For you'd be the first person in the history of the world."

When "The Master" was released in 2012, it was engulfed in controversy due to Paul Thomas Anderson's story about a nascent cult known as "The Cause," which was allegedly about the rise of Scientology. The current Church of Scientology, which wields considerable financial and legal power, condemned the film but curiously did not seek to stop its release. While the film has noticeable allusions to Scientology and to its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, Anderson changed the story to focus not on the historical aspect of Scientology but rather on the purpose of religion itself and the symbiotic relationship between a religion and its followers. "The Master" is a surprisingly sympathetic film to religion and its leaders. It shows us the seemingly altruistic intentions of religion to civilize man, its necessary indoctrinating practices and falsehoods, and, finally, its ultimate failure to fulfill its goals as its purity is intermingled with that which it sought to control. Thus, "The Master" is not really a movie about Scientology; it is an exploration of our collective search for structure, order, and meaning. 

The main theme in "The Master" is the ongoing dichotomy of civilization and barbarism in the human race. The film opens with its main character, Freddie Quell, a Navy man during World War II, on a beach. He resembles an ape like creature: smashing coconuts with a machete, climbing trees, and relishing in a spontaneous fight between nearby soldiers. Freddie then comes upon some compatriots making a naked mermaid sculpture in the sand. He approaches the inanimate woman and proceeds to violate her with gusto. He then wanders off and masturbates into the ocean to release the sexual tension created by his instincts. After Freddie calms himself by giving into his primal nature, he lays quietly next to the female form, giving her a wistful, almost loving gaze. He becomes civilized again after releasing his inner animalistic nature. Throughout the film, Freddie exhibits this type of primal behavior by enacting violence, engaging in anonymous sexual activity, imbibing an alcoholic concoction that includes poisonous materials, and condoning general crude behavior. In total, it is no mistake that the main character is named Freddie Quell, the last name pointing to exactly what Freddie is unable to do: quell his nature.         

How does society control someone like Freddie and prevent him from self-destruction or erratic behavior against others? The answer is structure. At the film's opening, Freddie is in the Navy. Although he often exhibits bad behavior (such as drinking missile fuel) the Navy provides him with an opportunity to use his abilities and distract himself from inner desires, creating a "safety net" for him. Anderson employs some beautiful metaphors and imagery to demonstrate this point. Chaos and barbarism is likened to the open sea, while stabilizing and civilizing forces are likened to ships, some of which literally have safety nets preventing slippage back into the unknown. Sea vessels are small islands of civilization floating over the sea of meaninglessness and erratic impulses. 

After the end of World War II, the soldiers are lectured by the Navy about how they have to reintegrate into society by finding a use in the economy: starting a business (a grocery store or filling station), farming, going to school, etc. Freddie loses the structure he once had and now must concentrate on "his responsibilities in peacetime." Yet, as we have seen, Freddie needs structure to function, lest he fall into the abyss of his instincts. What will replace the Navy as his necessary buffer from chaos? Before Freddie is discharged, he sees a psychiatrist who shows him Rorschach inkblots. Predictably, all he can distinguish is crude sexual imagery. This small vignette seems to question whether psychiatry, at least in the 1950's, could adequately help someone like Freddie gain control of his life. Today, certain medications could probably help Freddie control his impulses. But in the 1950's, many of these newer, useful medications did not exist, leaving many psychiatric problems to the psychotherapy depicted in the scene. Anderson seems to question the effectiveness of this approach. When asked by the psychiatrist about his past relationships, which we later learn is a hot button of regret for Freddie, he glibly answers, "I believe in your profession, it's called... Nostalgia." One important aspect that the psychiatrist does elucidate is a dream Freddie had about being at home with his mother and father around the kitchen table, a clear unconscious desire for the order and structure of his childhood that he ironically subverts in his own life. What's strange is the fact that Freddie later embarks in a method called "processing" offered by The Cause that is very similar to psychotherapy. Why does psychotherapy fail and processing work? As we'll see, there is a religious authoritarianism about The Cause that is not in psychiatry, a force that imposes rather than elucidates. 

Freddie goes out into society and gets his first job as a photographer in a department store. This occupation is chock full of metaphor, as he takes pictures of pristine, stereotypical 1950's people who mirror the prevailing cultural and social order. While Freddie is able to capture the stable essence of 1950's society, he is ironically not able to hold this same pose. Joaquin Phoenix's performance is really excellent. While he is a young man, Freddie looks slumped over, drowning in his clothes, and generally just out of place. Tempted by a woman modeling a dress in the store, Freddie invites her to the backroom where they drink his elixir and fool around. Likewise, in an intense scene, Freddie experiences boredom and seeks to entertain himself by antagonizing a customer by slowly placing a hot lamp in the man's face until he is uncomfortable. Freddie wants to break the facade of order and bring out the inner animal in the customer. The man understandably protests and pushes him away, causing Freddie to choke the customer with his own tie which then escalates into a scuffle. Freddie then takes a job as a lettuce picker on a huge farm. Again, he is bored by the mundane tasks and establishes himself as the bootleg liquor supplier of the community. His concoction is not simply alcohol, but a mixture of dangerous chemicals including paint thinner, designed to produce a powerful disconnect from reality at the expense of health. Freddie gives his elixir to an old man and says, "You remind me of my father," a reference to the parental structure that Freddie seeks to overthrow yet subconsciously desires. The man nearly dies from the beverage, causing the farm community to literally chase the drunken Freddie out of their endeavor. Notice that Freddie is chased into a field with no lettuce, a metaphor for his continued abandonment of civilized life. 

Rejected from society because of his inability to control himself, Freddie stumbles aimlessly until he finds a boat docked at a pier. He sneaks onto the boat and becomes a stowaway. He wakes up and is led to the ship's owner, a man named Lancaster Dodd, who heads a cult-like organization called "The Cause." As a quasi-religious leader, Dodd immediately identifies a wounded, lost sheep, remarking "You wandered from the proper path, haven't you?" As in the Navy, Freddie again finds a civilized boat on a sea of chaos, a structure that will help him control his desires. Unlike the real L. Ron Hubbard who clearly desired riches from his religion of Scientology, Anderson's character of Lancaster Dodd is much more altruistic and shows a genuine desire to help guide struggling people. In the film, Dodd repeatedly uses language to describe Freddie such as "silly animal" and with a touch of affection a "horrible young man" acting like a "dirty animal that eats it's own feces when hungry." Dodd sees the erratic Freddie and wants to use the method he developed to civilize him. 

As in any religion, Dodd's movement is based in the beginning on a cult of personality, an admiration that he cultivates with his followers. Upon meeting Freddie, Dodd introduces himself as "a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist and a theoretical philosopher."  A man with those accomplishments must be trustworthy and informed, right? The real L. Ron Hubbard likely suffered from intermittent psychosis due to either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, both of which could explain his bizarre delusions and extreme grandiosity. Hubbard thought he had been royalty in a past life, possessed the knowledge that humanity was the product of an intergalactic battle that occurred trillions of years ago, and alone had the method to cure all of humanity's unhappiness. Lancaster Dodd, in contrast, is not delusional in his identity, abilities, or knowledge. Instead, Dodd's assertions about his background are purposely meant to build his status among his followers. In one scene later in the film, Dodd takes Freddie to a beach and digs up a manuscript of his new book that he buried for safekeeping. Again, this creates an air of importance; Dodd's books are so valuable that he needs to hide them. The real L. Ron Hubbard did not bury his books, but instead believed that he was royalty in a previous life and had buried treasure for his future self to find. For Dodd, a belief in past lives allowed people to understand that primal urges and the unhappiness that stems from the social control that has been ingrained in humans since the beginning of time.    

In the interest of civilizing humanity and assuaging its struggles, Dodd, as any religious leader, engages in falsehoods and indoctrination techniques to achieve a greater goal. The key premise of The Cause, Scientology, Christianity, and many other world religions is that human beings have something inherently wrong with them, a problem that can only be removed by that religion. In Christianity, for example, the concept of "original sin" was inherited from Adam and Eve after they broke God's law. In The Cause and Scientology, the defect is the presence of prehistoric alien bodies that have usurped human beings. At best, these fictions are metaphors for an imperfect society that perpetually allows instinctual desires to control it, a lesson learned through example and propagated by future generations. When both Dodd and Freddie end up in jail later in the film, Dodd tries to calm down his follower by telling him:

"It's not you. You are asleep. Your spirit was free. Moving from body, to the next body. Free. Free for a moment. Then it was captured by an invader force, bent on turning you to the darkest way, you've been implanted with a push-pull mechanism that keeps you fearful of authority and destructive. We are in the middle of a battle that's a trillion years in the making and it's bigger than the both of us!"

The other falsehood told by Dodd and many other religious leaders is that human beings are above the natural world. On one of his audio tapes, Dodd asserts, "Man is not an animal. We are not a part of the animal kingdom. We sit far above that crown, perched as spirits, not beasts. I have unlocked and discovered a secret to living in these bodies that we hold." Likewise, in Christianity, God created Adam and Eve and then created the animal world separately and later bestowed control of it to Adam. According to Genesis, humans are made in God's image, an attribute not shared by the rest of creation. Dividing humans from the natural world allows them to deny the predominance of their animalistic tendencies. Instead of viewing primal urges as an inner battle with civilization, Christianity blames outer spiritual forces, namely Satan, for human beings behaving like animals. Dodd's assertion that "man is not an animal" is meant to convince followers that they can rise above their own nature. At his daughter's wedding, he states:

"There's a cycle, like life. Birth, excitement, growth, decay. Death. Now... now. How about this? Here comes, a large dragon. Teeth! Blood dripping! Red eyes! What do I got? A lasso. And I whip it up, I wrap it around its neck, and I wrestle! Wrestle! Wrestle him to the ground. I snap up, I say "Sit, dragon!" Dragon sits. I say "Stay!", dragon stays. Now it's got a leash on. Take it for a walk. And that's what-where we're at with it now. It stays on command. Next we're gonna teach it to roll over and play dead." 

The Cause, as well as Scientology and Christianity, is a systemized attempt to control the inner desires and erratic actions of its followers. In one beautifully wrought scene, both Dodd and Freddie venture out into the desert to ride a motorcycle. Dodd gives Freddie clear directions that are metaphors for self control: "The game is called 'pick a point.' You pick a point, drive straight at it as fast as you can." Dodd drives his motorcycle to his named point and then returns. Freddie drives the motorcycle into the distance well past his point until he disappears into the mountainous horizon. He cannot be held back by the rules of the game. 

To indoctrinate yet empower his followers, Dodd employs a range of hypnotic techniques. He has his followers lay on a couch, relax, concentrate, and think about their past traumas (Today, this is known as regression therapy). By finding their traumas, they can re-experience them and let the emotions that cause their unhappiness dissipate. Even today, this technique is a very common and effective hypnotic therapy. Dodd then encourages followers to travel back to past lives to face other traumas that have occurred. While there is no evidence for past lives, the concept of a person imagining them can be therapeutic. If unhappy, a person could be comforted by imagining that they were royalty or a celebrity in a past life. Additionally, imagining past lives could bring forth an unconscious picture of the person's true desires or traumas which could then be addressed. In "The Master," Dodd seems to view past life regression as a therapeutic tool which demanded that the follower completely believe in its validity. The truth of past lives does not matter. In Scientology, Hubbard insisted that past lives were real. Going further, he explained that human beings were inhabited by an alien force that came to earth as prisoners trillions of years ago as the result of an intergalactic war. The alien forms were programmed by their captors to be unhappy and submissive to authority, which accounted for humanity's plight. Interestingly, while there is even therapeutic value to Hubbard's myth, the story seems to be the product of him trying to make sense of his own mental illness. He was a science fiction writer and tried to understand the feelings of dissociation, alien forces, and grandiosity within the lexicon of science fiction. Again, Anderson's portrayal of Dodd is not someone who is mentally ill; it is sympathetic to his altruistic ambitions.  

Along with hypnosis, Dodd propagated a therapy called "processing," which deftly used the power of suggestion and positive visualization to benefit struggling followers. In perhaps the best scene of the film, Freddie and Dodd sit at a table and conduct a processing session. Dodd continually asks Freddie questions about his happiness and traumas: "Are you unhappy? Do you get frustrated? Are you thoughtless in your remarks? Do your muscles spasm? Do past failures bother you? Is your life a struggle? Do you like to be told what to do? Is your behavior erratic? Do you find it easy to be fair? Are you often consumed by envy? Are you scientific in thought? Are you concerned about the impression you make? Are you truthful to others? Are you unpredictable?" The trick to these questions, all of which are asked in Scientology questionnaires as well, is that most people will answer "yes" to most of them, thereby making the follower feel that there is something wrong with them that needs to be corrected. If Dodd, did not like the answer he got, he would ask the question again and again planting the answer in the head of the other. Notice that Freddie changes his answers after the repetition.

Dodd then moves to a second line of questioning that is more personal and meant to reveal the traumas in Freddie's  life. To ensure truthfulness, he instructs Freddie to not blink during the questioning, a technique akin to hypnosis because it distracts the rational mind to the task of holding the eyes open so the unconscious can answer unfettered. He asks the following questions and repeats them if necessary: "Do you think about how inconsequential you are? Do you believe God will save you? Did you ever have intercourse with anyone in your family? Have you killed anyone? Where's your father? Are you trying to poison me? Did you have bad thoughts of me? If you were locked in a room, with whom would it be? Why aren't you with the love of your life?" Freddie's unconscious traumas and fears are released to Dodd, who then helps him with his inner struggles. Dodd also employs positive visualization, a technique by which a follower imagines whatever outcome they desire in their mind, which can help achieve that goal in reality. Visualization is also a powerful and successful tool of hypnosis because it calms stress about the future and changes ones attitude to be a positive one. In "The Master," Dodd has Freddie close his eyes and walk across a room, imagining that he feels moss and plants on the wall. In those scenes, and the ones involving Freddie controlling his emotions when fellow members yell criticisms at him, Dodd shows Freddie how to transport himself out of his body, thus, freeing himself from his physical body as well as the mental prisons created by instinct and the limits of our senses.

While Anderson again presents Dodd sympathetically, a cult leader could conceivably use positive visualization and repetition to make a follower believe in a false truth with sinister purposes. In a key scene, a dissenter erupts during one of Dodd's sessions and questions the validity of past life regressions and the use of hearsay evidence to support Dodd's therapies. The man states, "Good science by definition allows for more than one opinion, doesn't it? Otherwise you merely have the will of one man. Which is the basis of cult. Is it not?" Dodd answers, "No, this isn't a discussion, it's a grilling! There's nothing I can do for you, if your mind has been made up. You seem to know the answers to your questions, why do you ask?" Unlike L. Ron Hubbard who had financial motivations for Scientology, Dodd is angered by this dissent because it ruins the fantasy and cult of personality necessary for his therapy. Answering for his lack of decipherable evidence and data, Dodd answers, "We are not helpless. And we are on a journey that risks the dark. Have you ever been to the pyramids? Yet we know they are there because learned men have told us." For Dodd, the profound end justifies the questionable means.

Much like Anderson's previous masterpiece, "There Will Be Blood," "The Master" has two characters who represent overarching concepts or institutions. In "There Will Be Blood," Daniel Plainview was an allegory for ruthless capitalism while his nemesis, Reverend Eli Sunday, was a symbol of religion. In "The Master" Freddie represents man's barbarism while Dodd symbolizes the civilizing forces of religion. In both films, there is an intermingling of both metaphors and a demonstration of how both exploit each other for power with one finally winning in the end. Throughout "The Master," Freddie and Dodd fail to be a pure representation of their concept. Many times, in fact, they are mirror images of one another, each having the opposite balance of forces. For one, despite the fact that Dodd preaches self control, he still indulges in Freddie's poisonous concoction to get drunk and bows to his sexual urges by letting his wife bring him to orgasm with her hand in the bathroom. Likewise, Freddie often takes the rituals of The Cause and mixes them with his own primal desires. He explodes in violence whenever anyone speaks ill of The Cause. Additionally, Freddie mixes his sexual desires with cultish methods of control. While Dodd is engaging in a musical romp in which he meant to emphasize the possibility of controlled fun and humor in life, Freddie imagines all of the females in the room naked. In the last scene, Freddie has sex with a random woman and during the act begins a processing session with her. By the end of the film, it seems, at least for Freddie, he cannot expunge his passions, but only let them coexist with ineffective methods of control. That failed concomitance is the essence of religion's failure in the modern world.

The title of film, "The Master," is about the need for a guiding force in one's life, whether that be man's animalistic nature or a contrived set of rules or beliefs. Each of these masters are in a perpetual battle within every individual. While religion or any set of doctrines may claim to control human actions, it will always fail to a certain degree. Human beings are not black or white, all animal or all god,  or all good or all bad. We are all gray sketches with multiple attributes that compete, hopefully achieving some sort of balance. This dynamic is perfectly captured in the scene in which both Dodd and Freddie are in adjacent jail cells. Freddie acts erratically, tearing pillows apart with his teeth and smashing a toilet in anger. Dodd calmly tries to soothe Freddie by telling him about the fabled source of his unrest in the deep recesses of his past lives. At that instant, Freddy shouts, "Just tell me something that's true!" The prison cells that divide Freddie and Dodd is the essence of our untenable bargain with religion, which ultimately fails, only then to reappear out of necessity. Both men are trapped inside mental prisons that serve different masters. Yet, what binds them is their concomittant search for meaning and belonging.