The two central players of The Master are a World War II vet and an L. Ron Hubbard-esque cult leader, and yet while Paul Thomas Anderson's 2012 film certainly provides an insight into the second lost generation and the indoctrination of Scientology, its themes are much more universal and current than its story would suggest. Even more heavily character-based than the incredibly successful There Will Be Blood, The Master sees Anderson on equally assured form, once giving us a movie that is through and through 'him'. Although that doesn't mean the perfect cast don't leave their mark. Joaquin Phoenix and Phillip Seymour Hoffman are as great as you expect, although the real surprise is Amy Adams; seeing her slowly unmask from simple trophy wife to central motivator, the real master of the title, proved to be one of the past demi-decades most unnerving, and subtle, twists. Coming out in 2012, a year that had already seen the traditional masculinity archetypes Batman and James Bond deconstructed in The Dark Knight Rises and Skyfall, The Master felt like the culmination of cinema's bringing down of perceived machismo, with an cracking ending that, like Llewyn Davis, leaves the character right back where they started (here it's more symbolic, but the sentiment is the same).
