A Review

At Taken 2 last night, I saw a big card board review of "The Master" from A.O. Scott.  The words "camera movements that elicit an involuntary gasp, passages in Jonny Greenwood’s score that raise the hair on the back of your neck, feats of acting that defy comprehension" were bolded and highlighted.

"Poseur" was my involuntary reaction to this review.  And what a shameful melding of movie review and movie marketing -- a wholly disingenuous game of both Mr. Scott and PTA's complicity in it.  One of our most talented filmmakers making movies for the reviews.  Ugh.

I just read the actual review this morning and it isn't as I imagined.  He ends with a solid point:

All of this striving — absurd, tragic, grotesque and beautiful — can feel like too much. “The Master” is wild and enormous, its scale almost commensurate with Lancaster Dodd’s hubris and its soul nearly as restless as Freddie Quell’s. It is a movie about the lure and folly of greatness that comes as close as anything I’ve seen recently to being a great movie. There will be skeptics, but the cult is already forming. Count me in.

He fails to mention the lacking narrative, but makes the most important point:  to enjoy this film, one must consent to the logic of cult - and blindly, faithfully, believe there is something at the core of what PTA is trying to accomplish.  AO is in and I am, thank god, out.