THE MASTER: The Frida Cinema

305 East 4th Street,Santa Ana CA 92701

22 November, 2021

Description

Paul Thomas Anderson’s bewitching postwar drama THE MASTER continues our Magnificent Anderson series. Nominated for three Academy Awards for Best Performance, Paul Thomas Anderson’s bewitching postwar drama The Master continues our Magnificent Andersons series. Joaquin Phoenix stars in this striking, azure portrait of Navy veteran Freddie Quell, who returns home from World War II just as damaged as when he left it. Unable to conform to civilian life, Freddie drifts from place to place until he meets the charismatic writer Lancaster Dodd (played by Anderson’s friend and collaborator Phillip Seymour Hoffman), who employs Freddie in his pseudo-scientific hypnotherapy organization known as The Cause. Freddie finds profound meaning in his burgeoning friendship with Lancaster, until the release of Dodd’s much anticipated second book draws the ire of skeptics everywhere. Shot on glorious Panavision 65mm film stocks, Anderson’s dreamy vision of past lives in the Atomic Age is, at once, his most terse and most elegant. Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s performance as Lancaster Dodd rings out as one of the finest character performances of both his and Anderson’s filmography. “Working with the Romanian-born cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr., Anderson opted to shoot the majority of the film on 65 mm, a format usually used to accommodate the sprawl of massive outdoor locations. . . The enlarged format, combined with short lenses ensuring a narrow, stylized depth of field, has the effect of transforming even probing close-ups into panoramas, suggesting entire universes lying behind the characters’ eyes.” – Adam Nayman, The Ringer “Anderson’s sixth feature is both magisterial, in the sense of having a kind of authoritative dignity, and masterful, in the sense of being surely and expertly crafted.” – Dana Stevens, Slate “Anderson’s scripts have long delighted in the possibilities of language, particularly in period settings, and for long stretches, the scribe seems at once intoxicated and repulsed by the florid, fanciful, seductively high-minded diction Dodd uses to win and manipulate his converts. Hoffman, in his fifth collaboration with the director, simply mesmerizes here, his speech balancing the mellifluous with the ridiculous, his smiling eyes full of wonder and possibility even as his will and words maintain a grip of unyielding authority.” – Justin Chang, Variety The Frida Cinema is a non-profit organization dedicated to enriching, connecting, and educating communities through the art of cinema.  Founded in 2014, it is Orange County's sole non-profit, independent cinema.OC's year-round film festival.