-Lancaster Dodd

Freddie Quell is a wanderer, going to and fro across the face of the earth; he’s a “dirty animal”, a “scoundrel” and a “silly boy”, as his would-be master, Lancaster Dodd, labels him. Drinking, brawling, full of lies and lasciviousness is Freddie Quell searching for his way back into the world after the war. He finds someone who seems to have what he wants, a wife and family and, most importantly, a Cause.

Paul Thomas Anderson, director of 2007′s There Will Be Blood, continues his run of films on the development of America in microcosm. There Will Be Blood recapitulated the American origin through the oil revolution taking her up to the second world war. The Master picks up just after the war and continues up to the cusp of the sixties. His next project, Inherent Vice, will bridge the gap between his earlier films Boogie Nights (80s), Magnolia (90s) and Punchdrunk Love (00s). The Master takes up America’s troubled history with cults, but only to tell a far more interesting story on faith, the future and love.

Lancaster Dodd sees his former self in Freddie. Dodd’s cool demeanor cracks throughout the film: angry outbursts, threats, a penchant for boozing; and just as he has “mastered” himself so too he seeks to master Freddie. But more than that he sees something he isn’t in Freddie Quell. He see’s someone free, beholden to none. Contrary to his title, Lancaster Dodd is not the master. His cause is supported by a number of prominent women, who are systematically lost, and who (like his ex-wives) become virulent critics thereafter. Moreso is Dodd mastered by his wife Peggy. She leads the movement’s strategy, drives her husband to write, and manipulates him (in the etymological sense, even).

In Freddie he sees unpredictability and a “new way”. In their first scene together, Freddie disrupts his “processing” by loudly breaking wind and collapses into giggles. Lancaster begrudgingly allows himself a chuckle, adding “Yes, it is good to laugh.” Yet as he spends time with Freddie this approach to life masters him and he later reveals “a new way” that is laughter. As Peggy sees her husband pulled under the influence of Freddie she begins demarcating her territory, first trying to put Freddie beneath her thumb, then, failing that, driving him away. In the penultimate scene, she is the one who closes the door to Freddie rejoining the movement.

The other thing that Freddie has that Dodd doesn’t is sleep. There is no rest for Dodd, he is pulled from one side of the country to the other and back. He is never shown sleeping, neither is he shown lying down, whereas Freddie is constantly sleeping, dissolute and drunken though it is. But even though Freddie sleeps he gets no rest. Cinematically this is echoed in the exercise of Freddie crossing the room, from wall to window, but more subtly in the backwards/ forwards of the opening act and the there and back of not only the geography, but also Freddie’s return to Doris’ home. When Freddie finally breaks away from Dodd it is on a motorcycle. Rather than returning back to the beginning, as Dodd had, Freddie keep driving, finally moving on, moving forward.

In the final scene Freddie is coupled with Winn Manchester (whose name is significant) finally finding rest. Some have taken the final scene as Freddie trying to become a cult leader himself, mimicking the process with Winn, but with the return to the beach, to the sand lady, the tenderness of Freddie signals that he has finally found rest. His anguish had finally been quelled.

[Click here to read my review of There Will Be Blood]

3. Marry Poppins as Horror Movie

2. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as Indie Film

1. The Shining as Romantic Comedy

-Jesse Ball, from The Way Through Doors, paragraph 1775

Jisas, yu canda yira huu-huu-huu
hinte querri hissa huu-huu-huu
Fracissas ni canda hirla huu-huu-huu
hinte querri hissa

Bolwa yu candai quero yu
for sethe santayu for ya-for sis for mi
Wosre yu rere hi for her
rara efisuah en gus rasor

Jisas, yu canda yira huu-huu-huu
hinte querri hissa huu-huu-huu
fracissas ni canda hirla huu-huu-huu
hinte querri hissa

Jesus is watching over me;
Wherever I may go he is right beside me;
Jesus is watching over me;
No matter what I do his love will never cease;
My saviour and my keeper beside me;
All the blessings he has provided me;
He is there to comfort and guide me;
And his love will never cease.

The text contains a semiotic argument, in the form of questions and answers, which explain that it is not a glass of water, but “a full-grown oak tree,” created “without altering the accidents of the glass of water.” The text defines accidents as “The colour, feel, weight, size…”. The text includes the statement “It’s not a symbol. I have changed the physical substance of the glass of water into that of an oak tree. I didn’t change its appearance. The actual oak tree is physically present, but in the form of a glass of water.” and “It would no longer be accurate to call it a glass of water. One could call it anything one wished but that would not alter the fact that it is an oak tree.”

The work makes the same claim as the Roman Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation and the Real Presence.

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Anselm Hollo
1934-2013

the way
the blue room
(remembered)
lights up

as you turn to
be held
and to hold me

your
beholder

Stephen Stepanchev : For Jane

Adam Kirsch is quite smug and condescending to his subjects in his recent poems, but at least the Revolutionaries, 1929 probably deserved it.

A powerful poem on betrayal by Gwyneth Lewis : Fooled Me for Years with the Wrong Pronouns

Jane Hirshfield : A Chair in Snow

Randall Mann : Nothing

Two poems by Dean Young that are full of treasures : Everyday Escapees and Emerald Spider Between Rose Thorns

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