This afternoon we trundled out to our local cinema to see The Master, the new Paul Thomas Anderson film starring Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams. Joaquin Phoenix plays Freddie Quell, a shell-shocked, hard-drinking WWII veteran lost after the war, who wanders onto a yacht captained by a charismatic cult leader played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. The film tells the story of the The Cause, as the organization is called, and we can’t help but be reminded of Scientology, but its focus is more on the two key figures in the film. The Master attempts to use his “methods” to help Freddie, but Freddie is not so easy to help. Is the Master a “genuine mystic” as one character suggests or a fraud, as his son tells Freddie, saying Hoffman’s character makes it up as he goes along.

The performances by Phoenix and Hoffman elevate this film. These guys do a fantastic job playing complex and enigmatic characters in a film that provides a glimpse at a cult-like organization in a way that avoids any definitive resolution. It adds up to a top-rate film.