Even if we all agree that were the real Abraham Lincoln to see Daniel Day Lewis' performance in "Lincoln", he would doubt if somebody hadn't walked him into those machines from "Primer" creating a more expressive clone of his, I would reserve special praise and mention for the searing Paul Thomas Anderson's movie- "The Master".
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| The awesome Daniel Day Lewis in the titular role in 'Lincoln' |
Because frankly for all the hullaballoo, I found 'Lincoln' to be quite cold. A lot of reviewers found the movie too informative, too lengthy... too preachy. Some even described it as- "just another piece of political history for the college-going" but I don't understand what else a movie on Lincoln could be. When the film is based on Lincoln, no less, who's the best person to decide what details go in or stay out?
No, my peeve wasn't with the content but with the execution- it was a plain, static, boring movie. And this coming from someone with legendary endurace for crass cinema. I was the one enjoying the movie while the rest of the audience had either slept or left during a screening of 'Fool and Final', a movie that FDA will do good to approve as the ultimate treatment for insomnia.
So when a guy like me watches a movie and feels like lead being injected into his eyelids on atleast two separate occasions, it doesn't generally speak well about the state of things, does it?
On the other hand, somewhere deep inside, I felt a strange kind of resonance with the character Joaquin Phoenix plays in "The Master". Seeing Phoenix baring his soul on screen here, one can't help but wonder if this isn't the closest Cinema could come to portraying... shock.
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| Joaquin Phoenix IS Freddy Quell. Period. |
The kind of shock we get on seeing a naked woman running on a crowded street. With shame and guilt so tearing you apart from the inside that you either bare yourself to clothe her and risk becoming her, or you choose the easy way out of speechlessly looking the other way.
Seeing that character, I could get the soothing sense that soul-scarred freaks could also hope for some kind of closure one day. I had always known Pheonix to be an engaging watch, but the kind of rawness and ambiguity he puts out there as Freddy Quell has not been seen on screen since Stanley Kowalski. And the movie has the flow of Tennyson poetry.
Yes, you have a deliciously scenery-chewing Tommy Lee Jones as a firebrand in 'Lincoln', but not many things can go wrong in your movie if Philip Seymour Hoffman is starring in it and here in the titular role, he is sheer.. magic.
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| Tommy Lee Jones in a slide-splitting act as firebrand, Thaddeus Stevens |
I seriously hope they didn't sabotage "The Master" on purpose, by planting bad reviews and negative press to take it out of the race for Oscar nominations, because Oscar or not, this is one 'master'-ful movie. (Yeah, that was an intentional pun. Deal with it.)
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A movie aptly titled to justify his class, Philip Seymour Hoffman in 'The Master' |