Box office
The Master grossed $242,127 at five theaters during its opening day on September 14, 2012, setting a single-day record for an art house film.[51] Overall the film made $736,311 from five theaters for a per-theater average of $147,262, setting a record for the highest average for a live-action film. During its first week nationwide, the film grossed $4.4 million in 788 theaters.[52]
Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 85% based on 259 reviews, with an average rating of 8.10/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Smart and solidly engrossing, The Master extends Paul Thomas Anderson's winning streak of challenging films for serious audiences."[53] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 86 out of 100, based on 43 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[54]
Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times, in praising Anderson's directing and Phoenix's performance, wrote: "Phoenix, known for immersing himself in Oscar-nominated roles in Gladiator and Walk the Line, makes Quell frighteningly believable." About the film itself, he stated: "The Master takes some getting used to. This is a superbly crafted film that's at times intentionally opaque, as if its creator didn't want us to see all the way into its heart of darkness."[55] Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a perfect "A" grade, stating: "It's also one of the great movies of the year - an ambitious, challenging, and creatively hot-blooded, but cool-toned, project that picks seriously at knotty ideas about American personality, success, rootlessness, master-disciple dynamics, and father-son mutually assured destruction."[56]
Adams was also praised by critics and received her fourth Academy Award nomination for her performance.Peter Rainer of The Christian Science Monitor wrote that "the performances by Phoenix and Hoffman are studies in contrast. Phoenix carries himself with a jagged, lurching, simian-like grace, while Hoffman gives Dodd a calm deliberateness. Both actors have rarely been better in the movies. The real Master class here is about acting – and that includes just about everybody else in the film, especially Adams, whose twinkly girl-next-door quality is used here to fine subversive effect."[57] A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote: "It is a movie about the lure and folly of greatness that comes as close as anything I've seen recently to being a great movie. There will be skeptics, but the cult is already forming. Count me in."[58] Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club, giving the film an "A" grade, wrote: "It's a feisty, contentious, deliberately misshapen film, designed to challenge and frustrate audiences looking for a clean resolution. Just because it's over doesn't mean it's settled."[59] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film four stars out of four, praising Anderson's directing: "The Master, the sixth film from the 42-year-old writer-director, affirms his position as the foremost filmmaking talent of his generation. Anderson is a rock star, the artist who knows no limits." About the film itself, he wrote: "Written, directed, acted, shot, edited, and scored with a bracing vibrancy that restores your faith in film as an art form, The Master is nirvana for movie lovers. Anderson mixes sounds and images into a dark, dazzling music that is all his own." He would later call the film the Best Film of 2012.[60]
Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter praised the score composed by Jonny Greenwood, stating: "In a film overflowing with qualities, but also brimming with puzzlements, two things stand out: the extraordinary command of cinematic technique, which alone is nearly enough to keep a connoisseur on the edge of his seat the entire time, and the tremendous portrayals by Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman of two entirely antithetical men, one an unlettered drifter without a clue, the other an intellectual charlatan who claims to have all the answers. They become greatly important to each other and yet, in the end, have an oddly negligible mutual effect. The magisterial style, eerie mood and forbidding central characters echo Anderson's previous film, There Will Be Blood, a kinship furthered by another bold and discordant score by Jonny Greenwood."[61] Justin Chang of Variety magazine wrote: "The writer-director's typically eccentric sixth feature is a sustained immersion in a series of hypnotic moods and longueurs, an imposing picture that thrillingly and sometimes maddeningly refuses to conform to expectations."[62] James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave the film three stars out of four and praised Phoenix's performance, stating: "Gaunt, sick-looking, with stooped shoulders and a shambling gait, Phoenix buries himself in Freddie's persona and there's never a moment when we disbelieve him." He added: "Yet, for all of The Master's laudable elements, it falls short of greatness for one simple reason: the storytelling is unspectacular."[63]
Even less enthusiastic was Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of a possible four. He wrote that it was "fabulously well-acted and crafted, but when I reach for it, my hand closes on air. It has rich material and isn't clear what it thinks about it. It has two performances of Oscar caliber, but do they connect?"[64] However, Ebert later included The Master as an honorable mention on his list of the best films of 2012, naming it alongside nine other titles he granted his Grand Jury Prize that year.[65] Calum Marsh of Slant Magazine gave the film two stars out of four, stating: "The Master is Paul Thomas Anderson with the edges sanded off, the best bits shorn down to nubs."[66] Rex Reed of the New York Observer gave the film a negative review, writing: "Call The Master whatever you want, but lobotomized catatonia from what I call the New Hacks can never take the place of well-made narrative films about real people that tell profound stories for a broader and more sophisticated audience. Fads come and go, but, as Walter Kerr used to say, 'I'll yell tripe whenever tripe is served.'" Reed also made mention of how Phoenix's performance and the supporting characters' lack of development further hurt the film.[67]
On Phoenix's performance, Kent Jones of Film Comment noted, "Freddie is not so much played as nuzzled, and jerked into being by Joaquin Phoenix. I'm Still Here aside, Phoenix's Freddie seems like genuinely damaged goods. He and his director feel their way into this man-in-a-bind from the inside out, and they establish his estrangement from others in those opening scenes through awkward smiles and out-of-sync body language alone".[68] "As always with Anderson," Jones continued, "the character opposition borders on the schematic, and the structure threatens to come apart at the seams. But the courting of danger is exactly what makes his films so exciting, this new film most of all. I don't think he has ever done a better job of resolving his story, perhaps because he has come to terms with the irresolution within and between his characters."[68] Scott, of The New York Times, pointed out that Phoenix used "sly, manic ferocity" to portray Freddie as "an alcoholic wreck".[58]
Emma Dibdin of Total Film gave The Master 5 stars out of 5, concluding that it "is a breath-taking, singular, technically audacious film, white-hot with emotion, and boasting a few scenes so individually powerful that they'll stay with you like a physical presence for days".[69]
The Master was placed #1 in both the critics poll of the best films of 2012 by Sight and Sound,[70] and by The Village Voice on its annual film poll.[71] The film also ranked second by both Film Comment[72] and Indiewire[73] on their year-end film critics polls, following Holy Motors.
The Master was later placed #1 on The A.V. Club's list of the best films of the 2010s up until April 2015,[74] and was named as one of the top 50 films of the decade so far by The Guardian.[75]
Anderson considers it his favorite of the films he has made; in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, he said:
For sure. I think that won't change. The amount of emotion I put into it and they put into it—they being Phil [Seymour Hoffman], Joaquin [Phoenix], and Amy [Adams]. I'm not sure it's entirely successful. But that's fine with me. It feels right. It feels unique to me. I really hope it will be something people can revisit and enjoy in a way that equals my pride in it. And pride can be a dangerous thing, and I'm not being very quiet about my pride in saying all this. But I just feel really proud of it. And of course, there's a particular sentimentality attached to it for a number of personal reasons. It's all wrapped up.[76]
Accolades
The film won the Silver Lion for Best Director (Paul Thomas Anderson) and the Volpi Cup for Best Actor (given to both Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman) at the 69th Venice International Film Festival. However, the festival's jury originally intended to give the film the top Golden Lion prize for Best Film; the prize was removed and awarded to Pietà instead, owing to a new rule that prohibited the award of acting and directing honors to the same film that won the Golden Lion prize. A similar incident was rumored to have occurred at the festival in 2008, when Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler was to be awarded both the Golden Lion and the Volpi Cup for Mickey Rourke's performance. The film received the former, with the latter being awarded to Silvio Orlando for his work in Giovanna's Father. When asked about the last-minute shake-up over the award, Anderson replied: "I'm thrilled with whatever they want to hand over. I heard some of the scuttlebutt recently, but I'm just thrilled with what they hand over. And that's all."[77][78][79][80]
