Review - The Master

The Master is a spectacular display of filmmaking technique, and in the often arid landscape of contemporary American cinema, that in itself is reason enough to recommend the film unreservedly. But I do have my reservations about Paul Thomas Anderson's sixth feature, even as I recognise that it reconfirms his status as one of the most ambitious and innately gifted directors working today. I appreciated The Master on almost every level – composition, editing, performance – and it contains a number of scenes that look and feel like nothing else. I was fascinated and hugely impressed by the picture, but I can't yet say if it really works as a story or a character study; is The Master really a great film, or is it simply the flawed work of a great director?

Such a question hardly seems worth asking in the film's hypnotic opening hour, which is where Anderson's artistry is most evident. The Master begins with a gorgeous shot of wide-open ocean waves, and it introduces us to a character who is all at sea. Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is serving his last days in the US Navy and preparing to go home, but the deep-rooted psychological scars left by his WWII experiences have not yet healed. This is Phoenix's first acting role since he notoriously attempted to torpedo his own career with I'm Still Here, but if anything his performance here is even more unexpected and strange. Within minutes of the film's start, we see him simulating sex with a woman built out of sand, and when he returns to the US and attempts to rejoin civilised society, we watch each agonising scene just waiting for the time bomb to go off.

Phoenix is all stiff angles and jutting elbows, mumbling lines out of the side of his tightly grimacing mouth. There's something raw and animalistic about him, something he tries to contain but cannot prevent exploding out of him in violent, often moonshine-fuelled outbursts. He seems doomed to drift across America from town to town, job to job, leaving regret and recrimination in his wake, but his decision to hop on board a yacht one night gives him a shot at salvation. The boat belongs to Lancaster Dodd, a man who is developing an idea known as "The Cause" that bears more than a passing similarity to L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology religion, but a critique of that movement is not what Anderson is after here. The Master explores the fractured psychology of post-war America and examines the nature and limits of control, but the real heart of the story is this relationship between Dodd and Quell. Operating on the father-son dynamic that has driven so many of PT Anderson's films, The Master becomes a kind of love story between two very different men who feed something in each other, but whose relationship is ultimately doomed.

The pas de deux that Quell and Dodd engage is spellbinding to behold, with the clashing acting styles of Phoenix and Hoffman creating a riveting tension and chemistry. A "processing" scene that consists entirely of tight close-ups (Mihai Malaimare Jr's 65mm cinematography is most potently used in such shots) is a bravura piece of acting from both men, but as the film progressed I yearned for a shift in focus. Freddie is a static character in many ways, incapable of moving forward or cutting free of the ties that bind him, and watching him can be an incredibly frustrating and exhausting experience. In contrast, I found myself increasingly drawn to Dodd, just as Freddie and the other Cause followers are. Hoffman's performance as this self-appointed visionary oozes charisma and garrulous charm – he's part preacher, part snake-oil salesman – but some of the most telling and intriguing moments in the film come when this mask slips. "He's making it all up as he goes along," Dodd's sceptical son tells Quell, and on the two occasions when Dodd's ideas are challenged or even lightly questioned, he snaps with a blistering fury. I wanted to dig deeper into Dodd, particularly his relationship with his wife (played by Amy Adams in a deceptively bright-eyed performance that's as brilliant and unsettling as anything else in the picture), but Anderson doesn't let us get too close.

Instead, The Master slips away, with the second half of the picture being marked by a series of inscrutable scenes punctuated by ellipses. My love of Paul Thomas Anderson's pictures to this point has largely been down to the unashamed emotional directness of them, especially his stunning late-90s double-bill of Boogie Nights and Magnolia (which, for me, remains his best film). Even the more austere There Will Be Blood managed to hit me on a gut level, but for long stretches of The Master I just felt nothing. The film gets more enigmatic, evasive and wayward with every step, and the momentum of it stalls as Anderson allows it to drift. The level of craft on show never drops, but at some point in the picture Anderson's determination to avoid any easy resolutions or clear answers sees him painting himself into a corner, and leaves the film feeling disjointed and distant.

And yet, as unsatisfying as my initial viewing was, I'm already desperate to see The Master again. There are nagging questions I need to find the answer to (How much of the film is viewed from Freddie's addled perspective? What's the story with that dream he has before leaving for England?) and frustrating gaps that I want to fill. Right now, The Master feels like a confused misstep from a brilliant filmmaker, but when I think of my initial adverse reaction to Punch-Drunk Love – a film I now adore – I can't write off a PT Anderson film just yet. The Master is a film that invites multiple viewings; its greatness will be defined by how fully it rewards them. I want to embrace this film as a vital and distinctive work of modern American cinema, but for the moment The Master keeps slipping through my fingers, like so much sand.

Review - The Shining

"What's basically wrong with Kubrick's version of The Shining is that it's a film by a man who thinks too much and feels too little; and that's why, for all its virtuoso effects, it never gets you by the throat and hangs on the way real horror should." – Stephen King

Stephen King has been very outspoken on his dissatisfaction with Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining, but over the past three decades, few cinephiles have shared his view on the flaws in Kubrick's approach. In 1997, King even attempted to rectify those perceived wrongs by writing a TV miniseries that stuck rigidly to the content of his novel, but while that effort was quickly forgotten, the 1980 film has endured. When people hear the name The Shining now, they immediately think of Jack Nicholson losing his mind, Shelley Duvall whimpering with fear, Danny Lloyd cycling endlessly around those long corridors, and the elevators opening to release a torrent of blood. Despite King's protestations, it's Stanley Kubrick's The Shining that refuses to let go.

In some respects, perhaps King was right in his assessment of Kubrick. The director didn't come close to making a horror film in the form that we have come to expect of such a picture. He didn't try to make the audience jump with cheap scare tactics. Instead, Kubrick's film is quieter, slower and more enigmatic, but this is how it slowly sucks us into its brilliantly constructed environment and gets under our skin in a deeper way than the average genre picture. It is a ghost story, but it's also a portrait of a man going mad and a family falling apart, and the film is so evidently the work of a master filmmaker, it hypnotises even if you struggle to grasp what exactly the film is about.

That vexing question of The Shining's meaning is one that has prompted debate ever since its initial release, and in the recent documentary Room 237, a group of theorists put forward their own ideas about Kubrick's intentions. As far-fetched as these suggestions may often be, however, The Shining is a film that can seemingly support any reading ; it is so richly ambiguous and teasingly symbolic. The basic narrative of the film is simple enough. Aspiring writer Jack Torrance (Nicholson) takes the role of winter caretaker in the Overlook Hotel, where hopes to find the peace and isolation required to complete his novel. His wife Wendy (Duvall) joins him with their son Danny (Lloyd), and Danny brings his imaginary friend Tony, whom he speaks to while his parents indulge this childish fantasy. But the kindly chef Dick Halloran (Scatman Crothers) sees something more in Danny; a kindred spirit, another who possess that extra-sensory perception that his grandmother called "the shining".

As Jack starts to go crazy – "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" – and his wife cowers in fear, Kubrick draws two extraordinary performances from Nicholson and Duvall. The making-of documentary filmed on set by the director's daughter shows how he worked with his two stars, indulging Nicholson while pushing Duvall ever closer to her emotional breaking point. When the film reaches its apex with an axe-wielding Jack chasing his wife around the hotel, both the husband's insanity and the wife's quivering fear feel entirely real. From Danny Lloyd too, Kubrick coaxes one of the great screen child performances, as the young actor displays a stillness that is so unsettling in one so young. Kubrick was often accused of being a cold formalist, disinterested in the human factor of his films, but amid the fastidiously controlled mise-en-scène, he churns up a tumultuous emotional undertow that keeps it from feeling like too much of a deliberate exercise in craft.

When The Shining was released in 1980 it received mixed reviews from American critics and many complaints centred on the film's length and pacing. In response, Kubrick re-edited the film for its European release, shaving off over twenty minutes and endorsing the shorter cut as his official version. The release of the longer American version of The Shining in the UK is something of a mixed blessing. Some scenes appear entirely superfluous – such as a couple ineffectually extending Halloran's journey to the snowbound hotel – while others feel weirdly out of place, notably a startlingly odd shot of skeletons that occurs late in the film. But there are more glimpses of the director's brilliance here too, the slower pace often feels more chillingly exact, and there are valuable new scenes with Wendy and Danny. Either way, an opportunity to see The Shining, in any form, on the big screen is one not to be passed up. It remains a milestone, not just of horror but of cinema; a film that completely envelops us in its world and defies any rational explanation. Seeing The Shining in a cinema allows us to scan the screen for clues, appreciate the insidious sound design, marvel at Kubrick's compositional acuity and – above all – to lose ourselves in this endlessly fascinating maze.

Review - Tempest

When staging a production of a William Shakespeare play, the question often arises of its relevance to a modern audience. Many film and stage productions have provided modernised versions to the Bard's work to spark contemporary curiosity, with the innate power of these plays successfully enduring under the most unlikely presentations, as the success of The Globe's international Shakespeare season earlier this year will attest. But what about the players bringing this material to life? How do they relate to the Kings, Emperors and other characters who were created centuries ago? The new documentary Tempest attempts to tackle that problem by bringing Shakespeare to a group of people hungry for something far removed from their immediate surroundings.

Tempest opens with footage of last year's London riots, playing under soundbites from inner-city teens that reiterate their sense of the persecution and lack of opportunities that blight their lives. Directors Rob Curry and Anthony Fletcher clearly intend to alter our perception of such youngsters, and their film follows 17 amateur thespians as they take their first faltering steps into the world of Shakespeare, with a performance of The Tempest. This play formed part of Danny Boyle's Olympic Games opening ceremony (a night that felt like an act of healing for the capital, coming a year after the aforementioned riots) and it's a good choice for this group to tackle, offering broad comedy, romance and drama, and themes that they can understand within the context of their own experiences.

The manner in which these teenagers reconfigure Shakespeare's play to better understand it is one of the most interesting aspects of Tempest. Early rehearsals show them struggling with the archaic language, but they successfully break the play down into simple terms, playing scenes with their own words, and gradually get to grips with the emotional truths at the heart of the play. In interview sequences, they speak intelligently and thoughtfully about their characters and motivations, and one of the most striking ideas is their decision to have seven different actresses playing Ariel simultaneously, as they can't conceive of Prospero's imprisoned spirit as a single role. Through such choices, they make The Tempest their own.

There's a lot to enjoy in watching this unfold, particularly the infectious enthusiasm and growing confidence that the cast exhibits. They are young men and women who are embracing an opportunity to express themselves and taste something new, but the rarity of such opportunities is a problem the film only hints at. Tempest attempts comment on deficiencies in the education system and community programmes that are failing youngsters from disadvantaged areas, but in the film's slight and occasionally choppy structure it's only a fleeting aside, with the filmmakers failing to lend it any weight. Nevertheless, the blossoming of these young actors in Shakespeare's world is in itself a powerful argument for the continued relevance of his works, and the vital importance of a proper arts education for today's youth.

LFF Review - Post Tenebras Lux

Carlos Reygadas' 2007 feature Silent Light was simultaneously the Mexican director's most accessible and most widely admired film yet, with many suggesting that he was showing signs of filmmaking maturity after starting his career with two portentous and provocative pictures. As if intentionally rebuking such claims, Reygadas' Post Tenebras Lux is his most obtuse and challenging work yet; a film that defies interpretation and will surely infuriate many viewers who were drawn to the director's previous effort. This non-linear, surrealist exploration of loosely connected incidents in the life of a Mexican family has been described by the director as "an expressionist painting" and your appreciation of the film may depend in large part on how much you get from the images he conjures. More often than not, I got very little aesthetic joy from this perplexing picture, which is a terrible shame, as the opening sequence is simply astonishing.

Shooting in Academy ratio, Reygadas opens his film with his own daughter Rut, following her has she runs happily through a muddy field, shouting the names of the cows and dogs that wander around her, and occasionally calling for her mother. It's a striking image of innocence and freedom, one that recalled the gloriously unlocked childhood images of last year's The Tree of Life, but as the scene progresses, night falls, and the toddler ends the scene shrouded in darkness as lightning flashes on the horizon. Throughout this attention-grabbing sequence, Reygadas utilises an unusual camera effect, which causes the edges of the frame to blur around a sharp central iris. Is this effect supposed to indicate a dream? A memory? A point of view? I continued to try and work out what lay behind this visual choice throughout Post Tenebras Lux, but never got close to an answer.

Answers are unforthcoming on a number of levels here. The camerawork, the motivations of the characters and the order of scenes all confound, even as the director's evident mastery occasionally breaks through to beguiling effect. The confrontational urge that defined Reygadas' first two films is on display in a horrible scene of violence committed against a dog and a long sequence set in a French (?) sauna frequented by glum-looking swingers, but these solemn moments sit side-by-side with a number of unexpectedly goofy touches. What are we to make of the horned red devil who wanders into a house carrying a toolbox? Or the man who commits suicide in the most ridiculous way imaginable? Or the two inexplicable scenes set during an English school rugby match? I would say that they feel out of place, but the film is so impenetrable in its structure I can't confidently argue against any of it. In a picture like Post Tenebras Lux, I guess anything goes.

Such complaints about logic and cohesion aren't necessarily enough to kill a movie for me. I've seen and loved enough films that don't entirely make sense, movies that operate on a dream logic rather than being tethered to conventional narrative, but something else about Post Tenebras Lux did get in the way. That out-of-focus border employed in the film's outdoor photography – a trick utilised in an apparently arbitrary manner – spoiled my enjoyment of the director's undeniable visual sense. The images captured by Alexis Zabe boast extraordinary clarity and richness of colour, but they feel hemmed in by the boxy aspect ratio and the self-defeating affectation that the director has imposed upon them. Reygadas is a director with considerable talent, but Post Tenebras Lux is an opaque, frustrating drag. The title translates as "After Darkness, Light," but following the glories of Reygadas' Silent Light, this film feels like a step in the opposite direction.

Commentary Tracks - Dog Day Afternoon

Dog Day Afternoon (1975) with director Sidney Lumet

Comments on the Film

On the opening credits

These opening shots are simply to set an atmosphere of a dog day afternoon – a hot, miserable day when nothing is happening in New York – and that of course singing is the wonderful Elton John. When I shot this footage I stole all the shooting, none of it is staged, and the picture was edited by the magnificent Dede Allen, one of the great editors we've had in the movies. In order to bridge this footage for us, which was silent when I shot it, Dede put the Elton John record in just to give us a sound for it. I decided finally that there would not be a score for the movie, there is no music in it and I'll talk about the reason for that later, but when we took the music out we had become so used to it from hearing it in the cutting room I missed it! So we put it back in and decided to motivate it by simply making it part of what was coming through the radio of our leading characters, whom we're about to meet, seated in front of the bank.

On rehearsal

About the third day of rehearsal I said, "Look, no characterisations here, use yourselves. In fact, we're not even going to dress you, I want you to use your own clothes as costumes, and let's just use our own real names so we develop the habit of dealing with each other as we really are." At that point, one of the actors, I don't remember which one, said "What about language? Can we use our own language, our own words?" Now, Frank Pierson had written a magnificent script that I accepted, Al accepted, and we were all thrilled to be working on, and in general I don't like actors to improvise. They are not going to come up with something that's better than a really talented writer who has done months of work on something. So with Frank present at rehearsal, the solution I came up with was as follows: if they wanted to improvise a scene, to find out the truth of it, they'd be perfectly welcome to do that, but we started to record the rehearsals. At night, Frank and I would go through the transcripts – we'd have secretaries type them up for us quickly – and we would compose the script in large part out of these improvisations. Frank was a willing participant in this, he saw the reason for it, and it's to his everlasting credit, and it shows you his healthy ego, that he didn't believe every word of it had to be his. Structurally, we never deviated from what he wrote, we didn't mess around with his script, and all we did was allow the actors some freedom. Even if they began as improvisations, by the time we got to shooting a complete text existed and we were working off a fixed script based on many improvisations.

On Charles Durning

Here of course is the wonderful Charles Durning, a magnificent actor. It was the first time we had worked together but he was really quite amazing. I did something with Charlie on this that I never would ordinarily have done. Believe it or not, Charles was actually doing another picture in California at the same time that he was shooting this, and there is only one other director I would have trusted to be as efficient as I was in keeping to schedule. That other picture was being directed by Robert Wise. I spoke with Bob and we trusted each other, so when Bob told me "Charlie will be free on Wednesday so you can have him on Thursday" – and vice versa – we trusted each other and Charlie was commuting between Los Angeles and New York, playing one part for Bob and this part for me. We were both lucky.

On Attica

We're coming up on Attica. Here comes a scene which I'm thrilled to say has become sort of a classic in movies. Totally improvised, it's Al going bananas. He lost all sense of text and, as happened with the real character, got very excited by the crowd's reaction to him. That started to feed him and he started going crazy with it, and the crowd started joining in and they were feeding each other. It became totally hysterical. Attica, for those of you too young to remember, had been an infamous moment in New York correctional institute history. A prison riot broke out, and after many days of tense negotiation, Governor Rockefeller ordered National Guard troops in, and I think 19 prisoners were shot and killed, with no officers injured. One of the horrors was the fact that I think almost all of the prisoners who died had been shot in the back, and it became infamous, the Attica prison riots, a great black mark on the part of correctional officers. Al is just sailing now, and this shot I love more than anything, a camera in a helicopter shooting a helicopter over a scene.

On Al Pacino

One of the most interesting things, and one of the reasons I'll always admire and love Pacino, is the risk he was taking. He was now a big star. Godfather 1 and 2 had happened, and after those performances – the macho, controlled, ice-cold person in those movies – to suddenly play a homosexual in love with another man, and for whom this whole wild experience is something that's so alien to most of our lives, to take that risk was enormous. He was nervous at the beginning of it and a great many actors find some source of security in makeup, it's as if they can hide behind something. In the beginning, Al – being nervous and being aware of the risk he was taking – was quite worried, so he thought maybe he could use a moustache. On the first day of shooting he turned up with a moustache, and I understood what was bothering him. I wasn't crazy about it but if he got some comfort and solace from it, and if it released him emotionally, that was fine with me because there was a bigger purpose at work here. He looked at himself at rushes the next day, and he looked at me and said, "It's wrong, isn't it?" and I said, "It's wrong, Al," so he got rid of it and we re-shot the first day's work. But that's so much a part of his devotion to his work, he is a consummate artist.

On "Wyoming"

My favourite line in the movie. If you notice that stunned look on Al's face, it's because John was not supposed to respond to that at all. In the script, when he's asked if there's any place he wanted to go, he wasn't supposed to say anything but on the take John said "Wyoming." I almost ruined the take because I started to laugh so hard and I didn't want my laughter to get on the soundtrack. It was a brilliant, brilliant ad-lib.

On extras

The crowd was also a fascinating group. One of the reasons I liked to shoot in New York is that our extras are actors who belong to Screen Actors Guild. In California, they have something called the Screen Extras Guild, and there are people who are not actors, they spend their lives as extras and they have no ambitions to be more than just an extra. That in turn means they cannot respond to a situation realistically; in fact, in California the director is not allowed to address the extras directly. If he does they are called what is known as 'special bits' and their salary goes up for the day. In New York all of the extras are just normal actors, a lot of them working off-Broadway, so I could talk to them as actors and treat them as actors. We had 300 actors doing the parts of the extras, and they were magnificent. Burtt Harris was the assistant director, and Burtt or I would address them about what was happening in the scene and what their reactions should be. Of course, because we were shooting on a public street we had it zoned off for ourselves in terms of traffic, but I knew that after three o'clock, when school broke, the normal civilians who lived in the neighbourhood would be coming around and there was no way of keeping them out. Burtt and I talked to the actors about how to involve the local civilians. We didn't want to exploit them, we paid them, and our nucleus of 300 actors were absolutely marvellous. They involved them, they talked to them on the level of the reality of it, not "Hey folks, you're making a movie" but "Hey folks, what do you think is going on inside that bank?" and as a result we would sometimes have 500 or 700 people out in the street. I never lost a take because of a fake reaction on the part of the crowd, and that I owe completely to the 300 extras who were really fine New York actors and coached the crowd along.

On Dede Allen

One of the things that you hope for in a movie is a good relationship with an editor, and most of the time you do have it. However, there are certain editors who come onto a picture with the attitude of "Now that you're finished shooting we'll save this piece of crap." All these clichés say movies are made in the cutting room, but they're not made in the cutting room, movies are made when they're made. No editor ever put something up on the screen that wasn't there, that hadn't been shot. When you work with Dede Allen, you work with a consummate artist. I remember reading once, on a picture she had edited, a very fancy critic writing about how she could recognise the Dede Allen touch in the editing of the movie. The person who would have been absolutely horrified to read that would have been Dede, because the thing that she prided herself on was her service, as she called it, to the director. Her editing style was whatever the director had given her and whatever the director's intention was. The results that she had with me, the results that she had with George Roy Hill, who used her all the time, and the results that she had with Warren Beatty, who wouldn't do a picture without her, are completely different in the editing, because we are three very different kinds of directors. The idea that she would have a style over and above what the director wanted out of a movie would have made her laugh. She was much too good an artist for that kind of approach.

Bits and Pieces

The reason for no music is that, as you'll see from the story that develops here, this truly happened. It was so important to me that the audience believe it really happened because what happened was so outrageous, and I could not reconcile trying to convince an audience that this really happened – which I felt was the first obligation of the movie – with putting a music score in. How would it have felt if suddenly in the midst of a sequence you heard an orchestra?

One of the things I find so enchanting about Pacino, who is very possibly a great American actor, is his ability to combine drama with comedy. Always being totally honest, always playing the situation in complete truth, and some of it so hilariously funny it's a miracle, as you'll see in just a moment. That incident with the box and the gun not getting completely clear was absolutely in the moment. It was totally improvised, it happened and Al used it, and of course it's one of the first totally ridiculous things that happens.

You'll notice that a lot of the staging is very casual, people in the foreground, nothing rigid, nothing formal in the staging in relation to camera. Normally for instance you would ask the guy on the right, "Step back a little, you're blocking Jimmy a bit," but not in this picture. If you block him a little bit, just fine.

The way some of the detectives are dressed is part of the genius of Anna Hill Johnstone, who did the costumes. I don't know if you saw that quick shot of a detective with checked pants, a brown jacket and black shoes, but it is so typical of the way police dress. It started on this picture, and I don't know why I noticed, it, but a lot of cops wear white socks all the time and to this day I always wear white socks.

Penny Allen, who is playing the chief bank teller, and her husband Charlie practically raised Al when he left home at a very young age to become an actor. Penny and Charlie took him in, and Al lived with them until he was in his early 20s.

Burtt went up to photograph the helicopter stuff because I am a complete coward and hate heights.

One of the great pleasures of my life is doing the sweat myself. I never leave it to the makeup people to do it because they always do it either too much, too little or too fake. From Twelve Angry Men I learned how to do the sweat myself. It's a combination of glycerine and water, so it lasts a long time and you don't have to do it on every shot. It looks real, it doesn't run the way some of them do when they just use water, and I can keep the continuity correct.

Final Thoughts

I don't know if the movie would have the same impact today. First of all, gay life is now so much more familiar to us. At the time it really had a shock value, and because it was the first of its kind there was an extra level of discovery to it, which I don't know if it would hold true today. However, it is a profoundly human experience despite the strangeness of the people involved, including the Judith Malina character, all of them are very odd people. So perhaps it would work, I don't know.