The Master (2012) by Paul Thomas Anderson

[sus]

Dylan and Farina racing down Big Sur's Highway One. No baggage, "I'm not a horse I don't carry anyone's weight." Instead you're bipedal, a metalmachine centaur. As fast as you can no limits nothing holding you back no dead weight just you testing the power of your engine

 

[sus]

And maybe a bit of the Major Tom instinct to rocket past everyone, to be above and better than everyone. But then Philip Seymour Hoffman is in outer space it's cold and lonely in fact it's exactly like a desert and he's desperate for a Sancho Panza, a Lefty to his Pancho.

 

[catalog]

I guess I've been thinking about deserts lately as a place for old people but they're also a place for nomads, a pure place a clean slate on which the young and strong can prove themselves and feel their speed their power their energy

Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire (1968), Description of a desert:

Is this at last locus Dei? There are enough cathedrals and temples and altars here for a Hindu pantheon of divinities. . Each time I look up at one of the secretive little side canyons I half expect to see not only the cottonwood tree rising over its tiny spring - the leafy god, the desert's liquid eye - but also a rainbow-coloured corona of blazing light, pure spirit, pure being, pure disembodied intelligence, about to speak my name."

 

[catalog]

Notion of desert as a place where something new can begin?

In the summer, the aurora aka Northern lights were visible from my back garden.

We were watching a film, my wife sees on Facebook that people in our village are posting about it.

She sends me outside. I cannot see it.

It's after midnight, really cold, I'm shit faced.

She comes out, points phone at sky, suddenly it's visible. Take phone away, can see it a bit.

Then the stars seem to come into focus and are terribly bright and meaningful.

Vast swathes of colour, greens and pinks.

Odd that the phone camera is required to see.

And made me think about how it made sense for monotheism to develop in the desert.

Cos you have this landscape of stars, that can be seen in common, that is, different people see the same thing, but it's gradually revealed to them.

So, at first, I can't see the whole plough, but then I can, cos she shows me etc.

So we each separately can feel out objective reality, through talking to one another and showing each other the way.

 

[vershy versh]

Quite an apposite time to bring this one up, what with these two military guys going nuts in the US in the last few days and people discussing suicide and violence stats re: veterans.

Can't remember whether you hear exactly what Phoenix's character was doing during the war or what happened to him, but he's clearly damaged by the whole thing and it continues to ripple through his life. There was that great teaser that had him being grilled by some official.

 

[catalog]

Was it based on some old actors war stories? Donald sutherland?

 

[vershy versh]

Was it based on some old actors war stories? Donald sutherland?

Not sure. I mentioned it being partly based on V. earlier and one of the main characters in that's a navy guy who just wanders around getting into trouble, so I've always assumed that's where it came from.

 

[catalog]

What is impressive about the film, I think, is the drawing together of these disparate threads. And they don't really cohere, but it kind of still works.

Cos the central idea of something new coming from cataclysm is so compelling?

 

[vershy versh]

Have you seen the deleted scenes? PTA often edits them himself into a montage.

 

[catalog]

I've not, no. Will check in due course. I probably should rewatch the film again too.

 

[vershy versh]

But then Philip Seymour Hoffman is in outer space it's cold and lonely in fact it's exactly like a desert and he's desperate for a Sancho Panza, a Lefty to his Pancho.

His character's interesting because you instinctively think of Hubbard as a conman and grifter, but Hoffman's Dodd seems to hold genuine affection for Freddie and you never get a clear indicator as to whether it's all just cynical smoke and mirrors or whether he thinks he's really doing something with his work. You keep waiting for a mask to drop, but by the end you're not sure whether he was ever really wearing one.

 

[catalog]

This is critical re Hubbard, we have this very Netflix documentary negative view of scientology, but it was hugely persuasive to lots of different people. Burroughs was famously well into it at one point.

 

[catalog]

Also remember the bit about illegally making moonshine? Like anything to get out of your head...

 

[sus]

This is critical re Hubbard, we have this very Netflix documentary negative view of scientology, but it was hugely persuasive to lots of different people. Burroughs was famously well into it at one point.

Parsons

 

[sus]

Can't remember whether you hear exactly what Phoenix's character was doing during the war or what happened to him, but he's clearly damaged by the whole thing and it continues to ripple through his life. There was that great teaser that had him being grilled by some official.

The double, the shell, the shadow, Mr Hyde comes out to play

luka said:
deliberately leaving the ego seat and letting the wild cuckoos take occupancy

luka said:
What shell is Stumbling through the night?

luka said:
So you end up with a whole other biography. This other that was steering your skeleton. That you have no memory of or influence over. A dual biography

 

[catalog]

Parsons

Tom Cruise!

 

[sus]

I think this movie is very relevant to the California Tiki / Polynesian Pop stuff because they're both responses to what it's like to be a guy from Iowa who's suddenly stationed in the Pacific for three years and then comes home

And also that it's about the return of American soldiers from the Pacific Front

That Polynesian pop and the early tiki bars like Don The Beachcomber were an antidote for The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, the WW2 vet Don Draper type who spends his days in offices sipping hard liquor cutting deals with execs.

A pressure valve where they can escape into a nostalgia for the Great Adventure of their youth, a fantasy of their own pasts filled with exotic women and music and the campy monstrosity of tiki

 

[sus]

Tom Cruise!

It's great there are like the neanderthal and ape skulls in the glass getting shattered because Hyde is a regression, it's like the reptile brain thing in Ballard or Altered States

 

[sus]

"You're a scoundrel. And as a scientist and a connoisseur, I have no idea the contents of this remarkable potion. What's in it?"

"Secrets."

"Can you make more?"

"Well, not like that. But I can make you something different. Better. Make something special for you, how'dy'a like to feel?"

 

[sus]

I think insofar as this movie is sympathetic to Hoffman/Hubbard/Dodd, it notices that he provides a fantasy a narrative a world an arc for a lot of people. He's tapped into a meaning universe even if he's living in delululand.