10 Great Movies With Plots That Make Your Head Hurt

4. The Master

To point out that The Master, Paul Thomas Anderson's movie loosely based on the founding father of Scientology L. Ron Hubbard, is a challenging film intended for serious-minded audiences is understating things considerably - it is about as far removed from a conventional Hollywood biopic as you can possibly get, and all the better for it. Joaquin Phoenix stars as Freddie Quell, a drifting loner fresh out of the navy, obsessed with sex and floundering in post-war America. He meets Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) while wandering San Francisco and a strange relationship is borne in which Quell becomes increasingly tied up with Dodd's "Cause". Picking apart America's relationship with patriarchy, alienation and the cult of personality, The Master features some of the greatest performances seen in recent years. What makes The Master so impressive is Anderson's point blank refusal to offer the viewer any solid conclusions, preferring instead to focus on the ambiguity of psychological impulses which challenges you to form your own opinions. Whether you conclude that it is a masterpiece or merely pretentiousness dressed up in an enigma is up to the individual to decide.