It's been five years since There Will Be Blood. In that amount of time, we haven't seen a film from this master of filmatism. Five years. In the same time frame, during which Anderson made zero movies, no fewer than three – three – Transfomers passed through the cinema's digestive tract. This fact remains disturbing, but at least now we can comfort ourselves with another movie from the guy behind Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Hard Eight, and Punch-Drunk Love.
The Master takes place in the 1950s, and follows Freddie Sutton, an emotionally unstable veteran shaken by his experience as a soldier during the second World War. He falls in with Lancaster Dodd, a charismatic intellectual and the head of a religious movement of his own invention. When the religion – which the production has gone out of its way to say isn't Scientology but which also sounds an awful lot like Scientology – gains momentum, Sutton becomes ever-closer to Dodd, even as he questions his commitment to the man and religion.
The poster is here thanks to The Huffington Post.
In May and June, we saw two riveting, unconventional teaser trailers for The Master, and you can view them here and here.
Joaquin Phoenix returns from the prank/experiment/fictitious burnout I'm Still Here playing Freddie, while Lancaster and his wife Mary Sue are played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. All three are Oscar-caliber actors, and Hoffman has the added benefit of having appeared in every previous Anderson joint, with the exception of There Will Be Blood. They're joined by the likes of Rami Malek, Kevin J. O'Connor, and Jesse Plemons of Friday Night Lights.
The Master starts out in limited release on October 12th.
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