Parents' Guide to The Master

The Master is masterful, indeed. What's it like to be a lost soul who finds someone who says you can be saved, only to discover that he may not hold the answer, after all (and maybe never did) -- and that even if he did, you don't have the blind faith, for better or worse, to believe that he can? It's these wrenching depths that the film plumbs, and we're left bereft, befuddled, and, like Quell, enraged. What to do? Who to become? It's precisely because viewers will leave the film with weighty, even troubling, questions like these that The Master is a must-see.

The details of Dodd's cult fascinate (especially given its rumored resemblance to Scientology), and director Paul Thomas Anderson feeds us substantial scenes showing the Cause's central practice: lengthy sessions called "processing" in which the same questions are asked over and over until they no longer elicit emotional reactions, and memories are deliberated until they no longer have power. We see the lure of the Cause -- the expiation of emotions that comes with profuse confessions, the community of belonging, the yearning to be, finally, unencumbered. The movie's two leads -- Hoffman, especially, and Phoenix, whose face is etched with Quell's pain -- are perfectly modulated, as is the strong supporting cast, and the direction stays controlled even as the film explodes. Though we never quite understand why Dodd is so compelled by Quell, why he feels the need to "save" him -- which may be the movie's biggest flaw -- we're transfixed and disturbed. Even the stillness is absorbing.