Anderson, Master, IV,

[Joseph Tracy]

I was not bowled over by the Master as drama,  but it seems to me to be asking important questions about the origins of religion and particularly American religious figures. It does so with enough depth and sympathy for an unlikeable character to have inspired in many 
serious thought and attention to the story and the theme.  The story has cultural weight. A great many truly powerful leaders in almost every human arena are projectors of a kind of religious truth, depicting their ideas as tools/weapons of liberating warfare against darkness, while profiting handily from the true believers. So the theme is worthy of serious effort. It seems to me that what The Master failed to do was show the magical appeal of the leader or his message.  We know he is a skilled psychological manipulator, but where is the group charisma, how did he make this enterprise work?
   Maybe that is some of the point and we are asked to consider that power structures are key to an enduring religion more than the leader. Joseph Smith was a kind of sci fi writer as much as Hubbard(visiting angels,  magic glasses and invented tribes of the Americas) and the power structure of the Mormons is similar in being layered with serious earthly rewards for the inner circle. Thomas Jefferson connected himself to the myth of the independent , self reliant, self taught yeoman farmer. Don't think about african slaves 
   I think one of the failures of the Master was hanging so much on  Joaquin Phoenix who I think is over-rated in terms of his range as a performer, and who created a character that provided a very limited view of the religion being born.  I feel like the only American who is seriously underwhelmed by Phoenix. I will be very surprised if he really conveys anything of the lively craziness of Doc Sportello in IV. He seems to me utterly wrong for the part. On the other hand I think Anderson is a good choice to make this movie in many ways. I hope it is enjoyable and takes on some of weird paranoia and cultural cross currents proper to the book.  
   I have come to feel that if you think of Lot 49, IV, Vineland, and Bleeding Edge as Pynchon's  contemporary fiction there is a profound consistency of theme and a powerful tracking of the rise of the new right and the ineffectualness despite some real heroism of substantive resistance.  The rest is song and dance. 










   
  

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