Not what
I was expecting at all!
To be
fair I knew very little about this film. I knew it starred Joaquin Phoenix
(Gladiator, Walk the Line) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote), I knew it was
about a charismatic leader of a cult not so dissimilar to scientology. That’s
about it. I imagined it largely to be about this leader, and the transition
from having a couple of followers to a reasonably sizeable cult.
It’s not
about him. Not directly. It’s about Phoenix
I’ll be
honest, I didn’t really get it. Freddie stumbles drunk onto The Master’s
daughter’s wedding boat whilst drunk one night and rather than lock him up they
make friends with him, celebrate his concoction of paint-thinner alcohol, and attempt
affairs with him. Why? He’s repulsive, and rude, and thuggish, and a thief!
Over time
we see more of the cult and its weird culty happenings. It’s the kind of cult
that involves regression into pre-birth memories and past lives. It involves
‘processing’ (where have we seen that before?), and also has no interest in
discussion of its beliefs or practices, but rather squashes opponents in a much
more brutish fashion.
I didn’t
care. I tried, and on hearing good things about this film tried for quite a bit
longer than I would have done with most other films but I didn’t finish it. I
was tired and wanted to go to bed instead.
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