By Peter Covino

Lifestyles Editor

Joaquin Phoenix is alive and well and just as crazy (almost) as you remember him in The Master.

Phoenix looked like he sabotaged his career with a bout of craziness that was later revealed to be an elaborate stunt (see Casey Affleck’s I’m Still Here).

He is still crazy (well, you might not want to have him along on a cross-country driving trip) in The Master, but at least we know (hopefully) he is acting.

The Master is one of those films that is hard to just come out and recommend. It is directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, Boogie Nights, Magnolia) so it has a solid pedigree. But that doesn’t mean it is easily watchable.

Phoenix plays Freddie Quell, a tortured soul that we first meet up with on the shores of a Pacific island at the very end of World War II. He is already is deeply disturbed.

He is also, a suitably perfect subject/disciple for Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the crackpot head of a cult-religion called The Cause. Anderson has said, not surprisingly, that L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology was the inspiration for the center focus of the film.

Both men have riveting roles, even though they are not very likeable. It is hard to imagine both not receiving Academy Award nominations and both are deserving of leading role nominees, not supporting roles.

Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd has one of those names that is seemingly destined for fiction immortality like Charles Foster Kane, Willie Stark or Willy Loman.

On the surface at least, he is charismatic and likeable, so it doesn’t take long for the lost Quell to become one of his flock, and even more so, as the pair soon take on something more akin to a father/son relationship. Quell becomes so entrenched following the methodology of his master, he probably would even kill for him. Dodd even calls him an animal, a well-trained animal.

But The Master is not a straight-forward story, easily understood nor is it meant to be. It is not always told chronologically and there is no real resolution, particularly for the hopelessly lost  Freddie Quell.

If you like your cinema dark and murky, without any answers, you probably won’t be satisfied seeing The Master just once, because you will go back a second time seeking answers. But you probably still won’t find any answers.

Critic's rating: B+

Rated R