It’s impossible to deny the correlation between “The Master” and the origins of Scientology. No story about a midcentury mystic starting a religion based on sci fi could avoid the comparison, but Tom Cruise and John Travolta needn’t boycott the film. Director Paul Thomas Anderson simply uses the birth of the religion as a backdrop for a study in extreme behavior focusing on two troubled men, Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix).
Quell, a WWII vet with a taste for gut rot hooch and post traumatic stress disorder drifts through life until he meets Dodd, a self described “writer, doctor, nuclear physicist, theoretical philosopher [and] hopelessly inquisitive man.” Dodd is the godhead of a new movement called The Cause aimed at maximizing human potential. His disciples, who believe his mix of sci fi and religion will rid them of past trauma, call him the Master.
Quell is invited to join the group with the welcome, “leave your worries for a while. They’ll be there when you get back. Your memories aren’t invited.” The bewildered sailor agrees, becoming a pet project for Dodd, who “processes” him to cleanse past lives and free his spirit. What follows is a beautifully choreographed ballet of loyalty, deceit and betrayal with Quell and Dodd taking turns leading the dance.
Giving away too much more isn’t fair to the movie or the viewer. The relationship between the men is complex. It’s doctor-patient, or perhaps father-son, maybe almost oedipal. It’s been suggested that Quell is a Tyler Durden character; that he doesn’t exist except as a manifestation of the rage that Dodd manages to keep in check most of the time. I don’t buy that. They may be two sides of the same coin, but they are definitely two different people.
As Quell Phoenix is a raw twitching nerve, part Brando, part Bukowski. He’s restless, disturbed and feral. The kind of man who enjoys drinking a home brew made from paint thinner, picking fights and crying when he thinks of lost love. Emotionally damaged, he’s unpredictable and Phoenix embodies him. It’s an astonishing, revelatory performance that recalls “Raging Bull” era De Niro.
As untamed as Phoenix is, Hoffman is controlled, handing in a performance brimming with confidence, power and charisma. Imagine Orson Welles as a wannabe prophet and you get the idea. He’s a charlatan with a silver tongue, a true believer who presents his wacko ideas “as a gift to homo sapiens,” and, alongside Phoenix a lock for an Oscar nomination.
The leads are joined by an impressive cast of supporting actors, notably Amy Adams as the steely wife of the Master and Laura Dern as an early disciple.
“The Master” won’t satisfy those who like their stories tied up in neat bows. It is an enigmatic story about impenetrable people; an opaque, singular experience that is best thought of as a tone poem about man’s aspirations and failures.
Reservation Road opens with every parent’s nightmare. At a rest stop, while the mom and dad gas up the car, little Josh wanders away and is killed by a hit-and-run-driver along a rural Connecticut road. What follows is meant to be an examination of grief and the repercussions of loss, but is in fact, little more than a revenge drama tarted-up with an a-list cast
Joaquin Phoenix and Jennifer Connelly play Ethan and Grace, parents of the young boy. Behind the wheel of the deadly vehicle is Dwight Arno (Mark Ruffalo), a lawyer and father of Lucas, who he lost in a custody battle with his ex-wife Ruth (Mira Sorvino) and now only sees on the weekends.
Try as they might to cope with the death of their son, Ethan and Grace fray at the edges. Grace tries to move on, but Ethan, consumed with thoughts of revenge and retribution becomes obsessed with finding his son’s killer in lieu of finding inner peace. In the kind of twist that only happens in Hollywood movies Ethan hires Dwight to help him with his case.
A guilt-ridden Dwight—a recovering something—rage-a-holic, alcoholic—struggles with doing the right thing and turning himself in, but he knows that as soon as he speaks to the police he will likely never see his son again.
Reservation Road can boast good performances all round. Phoenix and Ruffalo hand in the kind of work that has made them both award magnets in the last few years, but for my money it is the quiet portrayal of a grieving mother from Jennifer Connelly that wins the movie. As Grace she seems to actually experience the steps of grief and work through her pain, and in doing so becomes a much more rounded character than Ethan, who simply retreats into a miasma of hate and revenge.
Based on the novel by John Burnham Schwartz Reservation Road is a serious minded, glum film for adults—a la 21 Grams or In the Bedroom—which may pick up a couple of nominations for acting, but despite its heartrending subject, falls flat. Perhaps a different director could have tightened up the pacing and really developed an emotional connection with the audience, but as it is this story of loss is missing something.
Watching Joaquin Phoenix in Two Lovers made me wish he would go to the barber, get a shave and stop his infantile flirtation with becoming the new Vanilla Ice and get back to doing what he does best—create interesting, layered characters for the big screen. In Two Lovers, which Phoenix claims will be his last film, he hands in a towering performance that is simultaneously quietly intense and tortured.
Two Lovers is set in Brighton Beach, a small community on Coney Island, New York. Phoenix is Leonard, a man left devastated by a recent break-up. He’s moved back into his parent’s home and is working at the family dry cleaning business. He lives a life of quiet desperation until his matchmaker parents try and set him up with Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), the pretty daughter of a business associate. She becomes love number one. That same week he has a chance encounter with Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), his beautiful, but damaged upstairs neighbor. She becomes love number two, and complicates Leonard’s already complex emotional life.
Two Lovers is a deliberately paced film filled with rich, interesting performances. Phoenix subtlety gives Leonard a full inner life as his bi-polar character swings from high points to low. It’s a quietly riveting performance and one of the best so far this year.
Paltrow redeems herself after her dull work in Iron Man. She brings the beautiful and tragic Michelle to vivid life, playing her as a woman blinded by her need to be accepted by men.
The rest of the cast is uniformly excellent and well cast. Vinessa Shaw as the nurturing Sandra takes the least interesting of the three main roles and creates a fully rounded and appealing character, while Isabella Rossellini and Moni Monoshov fill every frame they appear in with parental warmth.
Two Lovers moves slowly—one critic prescribed it as a “non-addictive, non-chemical cure for insomnia”—but for those willing to stay with the film’s reflective pace there are rewards.
This has been a banner year for celebrity bios on film. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is a lock for an Academy Award nomination for his performance as the title character in Capote and David Strathairn’s turn as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night and Good Luck has won raves. Add to the list of possible nominees the two leads in Walk the Line. Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash and Reese Witherspoon as June Carter are both Oscar worthy in a film that, unfortunately, isn’t a match to their talents.
Walk the Line follows the tried and true film biography template that Ray mined so successfully last year, providing the greatest hits of Cash’s life—a traumatic childhood event, a cruel father, years of pill popping, an on-again-off-again relationship with June Carter Cash and his rise to fame—in a competent but disposable film.
Phoenix—who imitates Cash’s vocals in a convincing deep rumble—brings the larger-than-life Cash crashing down to earth, playing him as a weak-willed man who fought a lifelong battle with the demons of his past. In Walk the Line’s version of events popping pills was the only remedy for Cash’s daddy issues. Reese Witherspoon’s June Carter is the best performance since Election. Her façade of cheeriness carefully masks Carter’s own inner heartbreak and inner strength. The scenes they share are the film’s strongest and it’s a pity that their relationship isn’t the main focus of the story.
Walk the Line is slick Hollywood product—everything that Johnny Cash wasn’t—and could have benefited from a more audacious and gritty approach.
Two things in the last 24 hours have gotten me thinking about movie stars who seem determined to throw their careers away.
First, I saw a picture of Lindsay Lohan slumped over in the backseat of a limo. With a tangled mess of flame coloured hair obscuring her face, the former A-lister looked, to put it mildly, a little worse for the wear and tear.
Secondly, I saw as a depressed man torn between two women. Watching his work made me wish he would go to the barber, get a shave, stop his infantile flirtation with becoming the new Vanilla Ice and get back to doing what he does best — create interesting, layered characters for the big screen.
Both are accomplished stars — he’s a two time Oscar nominee and just four years ago she won the Superstar of Tomorrow award — and both have recently been added to a long list of Hollywood actors who, through personal temperament, ego or bad management, have allowed their careers to swirl down the drain.
The most cheerless flameout of recent years has to be Tom Sizemore. After a string of arrests, failed drug tests (one involving a prosthetic penis) and a self-marketed amateur porn tape, the once formidable star of Strange Days and Saving Private Ryan has sunk so low even Paris Hilton denies having a one-night-stand with him.
Rupert Everett told the New York Times Magazine that defining his sexuality was career suicide as a leading man. “I wanted to be a movie star,” he said. “I had a difficult set of circumstances to deal with, particularly for a movie career. Being gay. It just doesn’t work.” Times have changed since 1997 when he came out, (just ask Ian McKellen) but the damage to Everett’s career was already done. I’d further suggest making horrible movies with Madonna (remember The Next Best Thing? Its 17 per cent rating at Rotten Tomatoes says it all) was the postscript on his career suicide note.
As difficult as it is to see once promising careers evaporate, like everything in this ever shifting world not even career suicide is permanent.
Just a few years ago Tom Cruise looked like he was, as Film Threat wrote, “a man on a career-suicide mission,” but even after the one-two punch of bad publicity following his couch gymnastics on the Oprah show, insults to Brooke Shields and the release of the fetid Lions For Lambs, Cruise bounced back. He was welcomed back by a Golden Globe nomination for Tropic Thunder, his first major award nod in five years.
