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<\/a><\/p>\nHow do you make a provocative movie about the founder of one of the most litigious organizations on the planet?\u00a0 How deeply would you have to disguise your artistic intentions to tell hard truths?\u00a0 In The Master<\/em>, director Paul Thomas Anderson wades into the legends surrounding the birth of Scientology and may earn Oscars rather than lawsuits.\u00a0\u00a0 Now, that is true artistic genius.<\/p>\n L. Ron Hubbard\u2019s ability to turn his cracked personal narrative<\/a> into a mythic origins story is remarkable.\u00a0 Yet, the hagiography on the official L. Ron Hubbard website<\/a> may also unlock the laconic meaning of The Master<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 Many have wondered why The Master<\/em> follows the story of addled, alcoholic Navy vet Freddie Quell rather than the magnetic author\/philosopher, Lancaster Dodd.\u00a0\u00a0 When a movie is called, The Master<\/em>, then you expect to get his origin story, rather than the flailing\u2019s of a shell shocked G.I. trying to reenter American society after serving in the Pacific.\u00a0\u00a0 In Scientology lore, Hubbard was a heroic Navy leader whose post war trauma and treatment in VA hospitals morphed into Dianetics.\u00a0 But he may also have been an undistinguished lieutenant<\/a> who suffered no more than an ulcer but claimed grand battles and a remarkable recovery.<\/p>\n So here is my provocative thesis: \u00a0 Freddie Quell is Lancaster Dodd.\u00a0\u00a0 Not necessarily within the film, but within the larger story that Paul Thomas Anderson is daring to tell.\u00a0\u00a0 Maybe a better way to put it:\u00a0 Freddie Quell plus Lancaster Dodd equals L. Ron Hubbard.\u00a0\u00a0 The dueling characters in The Master<\/em> are actually two sides of the same fractured biography\u2014the life and lies of L. Ron Hubbard.\u00a0\u00a0 The Master<\/em> shows us how, only in America, could a wasted G.I. reinvent himself as a cowboy, commodore, scientist, and mystic.\u00a0\u00a0 As a master charlatan, Hubbard understood the power of imagery, which is why Scientology took root in Southern California.\u00a0 It also suggests why Scientology has been so great at promoting stars and attracting celebrities like Tom Cruise and John Travolta.\u00a0 It is also suggests why Scientology is so paranoid and litigious towards those who seek to peek behind the curtain.<\/p>\n In The Master<\/em>, Paul Thomas Anderson shows us how a cult can arise through extravagant claims, brilliant storytelling, and careful image manipulation.\u00a0 It is a cautionary tale, questioning all manner of grandstanding and absolutism (it could be about politics or science just as easily as religion).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yet, it also celebrates a virtue rooted in a young country, still given to mythologizing.\u00a0\u00a0 Consider The Master<\/em> as Extreme Makeover:\u00a0 American Male Edition.<\/p>\n I have already written about why<\/a> Paul Thomas Anderson might have chosen Scientology as a subject\u2014as a native Angeleno, he is fascinated by all things Los Angeles.\u00a0 \u00a0Scientology is a distinct, homegrown Hollywood creation.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ve also meditated on the struggle that serves as the dramatic thrust of the film\u2014the flesh versus the spirit<\/a>.\u00a0 For all of Lancaster Dodd\u2019s grandstanding about past lives and overcoming our animalistic instincts, he seems closer and closer to falling into rage and addiction by the end of The Master<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 And Freddie, despite all of his violent outbursts and unchecked sexual urges, seems almost healed, capable of living and loving again.\u00a0\u00a0 We think the film is about Freddie mastering his demons, but perhaps it is also about the paranoia just starting to unravel Lancaster Dodd, his wife, Peggy, and the Cause.\u00a0\u00a0 Or maybe The Master<\/em> is about how frail, fallen Freddie Quell recovers enough to start one of the more imaginative (and diabolical) cults of the 20th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n It is also easy to see The Master<\/em> as a father\/son story.\u00a0\u00a0 A surrogate Dad helps an orphaned vet master his addictions.\u00a0\u00a0 But it is also the pull of alcohol, particularly the most vile and overwhelming concoctions made from torpedo fuel, photographic chemicals, and paint thinner, that binds Freddie and Dodd together.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Freddie serves as Lancaster\u2019s secret mixologist.\u00a0\u00a0 He is also his enforcer, the muscle that takes down all dissenters with his fists.\u00a0\u00a0 Yet, Freddie\u2019s hidden talent, just hinted at in the film, is as a photographer. \u00a0He takes pictures.\u00a0 And Lancaster is definitely a man in search of a biographer.\u00a0 He needs someone to burnish the legend, to serve as a publicist and imagemaker.<\/p>\n The Master<\/em> is awash in iconic images of American manhood, especially in and around World War II. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Paul Thomas Anderson has gone to great lengths to recreate the era\u2014in sight and sound.\u00a0 By shooting The Master<\/em> in 65mm, he has snapped audiences back to the warm glow of celluloid, to the days of John Wayne and LIFE magazine.\u00a0\u00a0 From the soldier in the trenches brandishing a cigarette to the sailor on the high seas, through the cowboy taming the Wild West to the Wild One riding a motorcycle across open plains, PTA and his ace cinematographer, Mihai Malaimare, Jr., juxtapose idealized portraits against hard realities.\u00a0\u00a0 Freddie\u2019s first post war job is to create gauzy, suburban portraits of parents and kids in prosperous, post World War II America.\u00a0 Shut out from such peace and prosperity, Freddie snaps under the glare of studio lights.<\/p>\n He retreats to a farm, working amongst Filipinos, pursuing the American Dream.\u00a0 The images in this section draw upon the Depression era photos of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans.\u00a0\u00a0 The setting is dark, grainy, rooted in the land.\u00a0\u00a0 When Freddie hooch proves deadly, he must fly the scene of his crime.\u00a0\u00a0 This is the American soldier, on the run, an image we have almost never seen.<\/p>\n Freddie\u2019s camera vanishes for most of the middle of the movie.\u00a0 He\u2019s engaged in daily struggles to keep his rage under control.\u00a0\u00a0 Only when he\u2019s gotten to the far side of \u2018processing,\u2019 does he pull out his camera at the Cause\u2019s meeting in Arizona.\u00a0 Freddie captures Dodd as a cowboy, at home on the range.\u00a0 Note the similarities to how L. Ron Hubbard presents himself comfortably wearing the hat.<\/p>\n Freddie also photographs the master at his desk, striking the authoritarian pose of author\/thinker\/scholar.\u00a0\u00a0 Dodd may or may not be an intellectual, but he certainly knows how to dress for the part.\u00a0\u00a0 He exudes confidence.\u00a0 Through taking pictures, Freddie is slowly discovering his calling, his gift.\u00a0\u00a0 Beyond his fists and his fixes, Freddie might have a gift for telling stories, fictional stories, through film.\u00a0\u00a0 For me, it is Freddie as photographer that finally started to unlock the secret spine in Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s vexing story.<\/p>\n The Master<\/em> had always been announced as a meditation on the life of L. Ron Hubbard. Yet, the finished film gives us almost no background on Hubbard or how he came to be a pulp fiction writer, best selling psychologist, and ultimately, founder of a New Religious Movement.\u00a0\u00a0 For some Paul Thomas Anderson fans, The Master<\/em> has arrived as a let down.\u00a0 For voracious critics of Scientology, The Master<\/em> failed to deliver a knock out blow to an insidious cult.\u00a0\u00a0 But if filmgoers will simply consider the imagery driving the story and burrowing into our brains, we will see PTA\u2019s true intentions.<\/p>\n Did you know that L. Ron Hubbard considered himself a photographer?\u00a0\u00a0 Check out the website<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 The photographs of and by L. Ron Hubbard demonstrate how Freddie, the scattered seaman, could refashion himself as Dodd, the grandiose leader.\u00a0\u00a0 And look at how lighting and costume design come together to create a glowing image of Hubbard in his prime.\u00a0\u00a0 This is an enlightened man who deserves a huge following.<\/p>\n Did you also realize that L. Ron Hubbard also considered himself a seaman, maybe even a master mariner<\/a>?\u00a0 He served in the Navy during World War II.\u00a0\u00a0 In his self-mythologizing, Hubbard reimagined himself as a Commodore.\u00a0\u00a0 Scientology maintained an active fleet of vessels known as the Sea Org<\/a>. \u00a0\u00a0On the ocean, away from distractions, Scientologists engage in higher levels of training, known as Operating Thetan.\u00a0\u00a0 They even maintain naval codes of conduct and uniforms.<\/p>\n The Master<\/em> contains so many shots of Freddie at sea, of the wake generated by a boat.\u00a0\u00a0 It is the key image anchoring the film together.\u00a0\u00a0 Look at L. Ron Hubbard\u2019s official portraits, drawing upon the sea as a boundless horizon.<\/p>\n It is easy to watch The Master<\/em> and equate Lancaster Dodd with L. Ron Hubbard.\u00a0\u00a0 But the imagery suggests quite clearly that Freddie Quell is L. Ron Hubbard.\u00a0\u00a0 Despite teaching his followers to abstain from all many of drink and drugs, Hubbard remained an active experimenter in countless pills and hallucinogens throughout his colorful life.\u00a0\u00a0 Like Dodd, he had quite an appetite for Freddie\u2019s mind-altering substances.<\/p>\n I will now turn to the third act of The Master<\/em> to explain why this interpretation (Freddie + Lancaster=Hubbard) makes sense.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Dodd poses a dramatic question that hovers over the entire movie, \u201cWhere have we met before?\u201d\u00a0 The Cause (and Scientologist) is all about exploring past lives.\u00a0\u00a0 It is about discovering who were in earlier eras and healing those painful memories.\u00a0\u00a0 When does Freddie start to master his past or at least control his emotions?\u00a0\u00a0 When he breaks free from Dodd and The Cause on a motorcycle.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0It is the cinematic moment when the disciple takes the master\u2019s teaching to its logical extreme.\u00a0 Dodd looks awkward on a motorcycle, wearing rolled up blue jeans.\u00a0 But the wiry Freddie fits comfortably into the role of Marlon Brando or James Dean\u2013rebels for the Cause.\u00a0 Freddie picks a point and vanishes, just like the master taught him.\u00a0 From that moment on (the end of the second act), Freddie is changed person\u2014more aware, more under control, ready to revisit his hometown, able to resist Dodd\u2019s ovations.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n