the amount of layers this thing has, intentional or not, is increasingly astounding.
this is the problem.
i don't know if it's a product of the educational system, shallow popular culture, mass literary ignorance, or what.. but the fact the film contains "layers" should be the LEAST surprising aspect of it, it is a basic inherent GIVEN.
the impasse i think most people come to is some kind of crippling angst when they ask themselves "is this what the author meant." and the dissatisfaction with the answer "it doesn't matter what he meant." these statements seem to be so destructive and insurmountable to most people that they simply retreat to "well we'll never know so anything we intuit is fucking bullshit and worthless, even if it feels true, because it was not approved by the creator."
dudes. that's idiocy. the distinction between a movie/book/painting basically any work of ART and a TOASTER is that a toaster was made for a single purpose with well defined parameters by people who just wanted to make a toaster and nothing more. a genuine work of ART made by a great artist has no single purpose, if it does then it's bullshit and should have been an essay or a press release or a mathematical formula. the idea of a work of art is not that it's worthless because it requires interpretation but that it is MUCH MUCH more significant because of this interaction with the observer that is not present when you use a toaster.
the process of creating art is also a mystery to most consumers, who see films especially as just another item intended for a single purpose expressed by way of genre. this is a comedy so i'm going to put this much money into the booth and i'll get this much laughter, that's the contract most people expect out of films and that's why most people hate this movie and anything else worth a damn.
what ACTUALLY happens when you create art is that you do NOT think about the final be-all end-all meaning. this doesn't mean that PTA is just writing blindly making shit up absolutely out of nothing, what that means is he's thinking about it to a certain point and then letting intuition guide him or letting something else take control. the most effective way this takes place in a film is giving freedom to other artists and collaborators. when JP comes up with something like Freddie's gait, PTA was not able to come up with that but left it in there because this inspired choice by another artist FELT RIGHT in the context of the greater work. this means that this is an aspect PTA didn't have to fully work out or justify himself, so it's conceivable and in fact quite common that a true work of art (of which there are in fact many) is not even fully understood by its very creator.
so keep that in mind when you give yourself to the movie. take everything you know about everything you can think of, and let the movie filter it. the themes of a film are patterns that should guide you towards a more refined filtering process. eventually you will get to insights like this guy above has made. the first things you notice may be obvious, gauge their veracity by testing it against the film itself. the first failure of most audiences was this step, they went in thinking "this is about scientology" well lo and behold that might explain about 1 percent of the movie, that filter is worthless, try harder and find another.. the tools you need are right there in front of you.
in fact, the key to something as good as the master is even closer than that, it's something personal.. it is not an acquired intelligence, it is something deeply natural. whatever that is, a quest for salvation, a yearning for connection, a feeling of love and pain, an elegiac response to the traumas of war, a desire for truth, anything.. it's in the film and it's in you. after you've accepted this reflection in art, then you can start to find all kinds of meaning and purpose in things you once thought worthless.
this is nothing special to the master, though it appears here in a heightened state. his other films have given you more substantial clues to hold onto, and a basic reading of one layer was pretty easy to get to, but they were all this good.
