I still struggle with The Master. Its probably the one film of his I have a hard time really getting into and appreciating as much as I do his other films. Which is strange because I know most people on here love it. FWIW it happens to be my wife's favorite film of his (although she's really digging PT too) because acting.
Me too. The acting is top-notch (Joaquin Phoenix's performance might be my favourite of all time), but the story seems stretched too thin for its runtime. The concept is a really great idea, but the film feels
too open-ended, vague, directionless, other than exploring this relationship between these three characters. It doesn't feel that the film is saying much in the end (which can be fine, but here it's stretched too thin). Great performances though and wonderful cinematography.
My issue with the film is that the entire thing is just long twisting conversations with the camera pushing in, nearly every scene is just Doc sitting and talking. This would be fine a few times but unfortunately it's the majority of the running time. The few times when the movie really takes off is when the music kicks in and helps things truck along better (Can's Vitamin C, the entire Martin Short sequence). I think the movie needed to be shorter and needed more up tempo moments.
I also wonder how Dylan Tichenor would have put it together??????
I think you hit the nail on the head for me here. I've posted before about how Inherent Vice doesn't feel "open" and "sprawling" enough like the book ... and it really all comes down to the long conversations. I expected more camera movement. There were visual opportunities to follow Doc down hallways, along the LA freeways (the freeway references are copious in the book), down the beach, around the Gordita beach neighbourhoods ,etc., and PTA just didn't capture this IMO. It's something in the book that just isn't in the film, so in this sense, I never walk away from the film getting what I get from the book. I still really like the film, but thought he should've done it differently. I know everyone says it's a faithful adaptation, and it does stay true to the plot of the source material (albeit it puts more emphasis on Doc and Shasta's relationship), but I ultimately don't think it totally captures the sprawling, twisting, loose feel of a Pynchon novel that I love so much, because much of what we see on screen is so static (i.e., people sitting and talking, sometimes with very slow push-ins which aren't really enough). Honestly, if he had done things visually and movement-wise like Boogie Nights or Magnolia, it would've been amazing. Ironically, the director best fit to bring that visual splendor to the film moved away from it and gave us something very different.
PTA says that he finds actors to be the most interesting thing about a film, and he loves just filming good acting (and that he also remembers the mood of a film but not the plot). Over the last year or so, I've come to open up more to appreciating this perspective and how this plays out in films. But I kind wish he'd focus just
a little more on plot and story lately. Just personal taste, I guess.
