Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman form a unique bond in Paul Thomas Anderson’s THE MASTER
THE MASTER (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, May 24, 7:00, and Saturday, May 25, 2:00, free with museum admission
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
www.themasterfilm.com
One of America’s most daring and adventurous filmmakers, California native Paul Thomas Anderson, who has dazzled, amazed, challenged, and confused audiences with such previous gems as Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, and There Will Be Blood, has done it again with his latest, The Master. The film is built around the fascinating relationship between Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), a WWII vet struggling to fit into the real world after seeing so much violence and death overseas, and the Master (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the leader of a cultlike organization known as the Cause that believes in past-life regression and invasive questioning known as Processing to help people deal with personal trauma. The Master essentially adopts Quell, intrigued by his distorted outlook on life, making him a member of the family, which also includes his wife, Peggy (Amy Adams), his son, Val (Jesse Plemons), and his daughter, Elizabeth (Ambyr Childers). Inspired by the real-life tale of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology — and incorporating war stories he was told by Jason Robards on the set of Magnolia, elements from the life of John Steinbeck, and discarded scenes from the script for There Will Be Blood — Anderson crafts a, dare we say, masterful cinematic experience built around a pair of extraordinary performances. Phoenix absolutely inhabits the role of Quell, staggering about with an awkward gait, with impossibly deep lines on his face and eyes that seem to be able to look through lead. Hoffman is his equal as the much cooler and calmer spiritual leader, until he is faced with sudden turmoil. The scenes in which the two men sit across from each other, going through a Processing session, are mesmerizing, the most powerful moments to be found onscreen last year. (Both Phoenix and Hoffman received Oscar nods, along with Adams.) But despite the title, the focus remains on Quell, a lost soul searching for somewhere to belong in a changing postwar America. Anderson’s first film in four years, The Master is a bold, audacious work that is as unsettling as it is exhilarating. The Master is screening May 24 at 7:00 and May 25 at 2:00 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image series “See It Big!,” which continues into June with such other great films as Akira Kurosawa’s Ran, Roberto Rossellini’s Journey to Italy, and Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life.
Some of the Big Apple’s best basketball doesn’t take place inside Madison Square Garden or the Barclays Center. Over the course of two summers, journalist, announcer, and native New Yorker Bobbito “Kool Bob Love” Garcia and French photographer and video director Kevin Couliau biked to 180 outdoor courts throughout the five boroughs, detailing the history of the social and cultural phenomenon of street hoops in the fast-paced, celebratory documentary Doin’ It in the Park: Pick-up Basketball, New York City. Garcia (Where’d You Get Those Shoes? NYC’s Sneaker Culture: 1960-1987) and Couliau (“Heart & Soul of New York City”) meet with many of the playground’s biggest stars, from those who made it to the NBA (Julius “Dr. J” Erving, Kenny “the Jet” Smith, Geoff Huston) to those whose legends remain on the street (James “Fly” Williams, Corey “Homicide” Williams, Niki “Lil’ Ratchet” Avery, Ed “the Sundance Kid” Davis, Andre “the Latin Assassin” Ortiz). Featuring a soundtrack that combines original music by Eddie Palmieri with songs by Donald Byrd & the Blackbyrds, Quantic, the Budos Band, Jurassic 5, and others, the film captures the rhythm and beat of street hoops, from three-on-three, half court, and full court to Horse and 21, with guys even shooting into garbage cans, milk crates, and monkey bars if no courts were available.
Pema Tseden’s Old Dog is a beautifully told, slowly paced meditation on Buddhism’s four Noble Truths — “Life means suffering”; The origin of suffering is attachment”; “The cessation of suffering is attainable”; and “There is a path to the cessation of suffering” — that ends with a shocking, manipulative finale that nearly destroys everything that came before it. In order to get a little money and to save the family’s sheep-herding dog from being stolen, Gonpo (Drolma Kyab) sells their Tibetan nomad mastiff to Lao Wang (Yanbum Gyal), a dealer who resells the prized breed to stores in China, where they’re used for protection. When Gonpa’s father (Lochey) finds out what his son has done, he goes back to Lao Wang and demands the return of the dog he’s taken care of for thirteen years. “I’d sell myself before the dog,” he tells his son. And so begins a gentle tale of parents and children, set in a modern-day Tibet that is ruled by China’s heavy hand. Gonpa’s father doesn’t understand why his son, a lazy man who rides around on a motorized bike and never seems to do much of anything, doesn’t yet have any children of his own, so he pays for Gonpa and his wife Rikso, (Tamdrin Tso), to go to the doctor to see what’s wrong. Meanwhile, the old man keeps a close watch on his dog, wary that Lao Wang will to try to steal it again. Writer-director Pema Tseden (The Silent Holy Stones, The Search) explores such themes as materialism, family, and attachment in a lovely little film that sadly is nearly ruined by its extreme final scene. If you missed Old Dog last week as part of the MoMA series “Chinese Realities/Documentary Visions,” you have another chance to catch it, as it’s being shown nightly May 21-27 at 7:00 at IndieScreen in Williamsburg.
