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The Master (2012)
The Master is a 2012 American period psychological drama film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams. It tells the story of Freddie Quell (Phoenix), a World War II Navy veteran struggling to adjust to a post-war society, who meets Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman), the leader of a cult known as The Cause. Dodd sees something in Quell and accepts him…
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson · Shot by Mihai Mălaimare · Cut by Leslie Jones · Music by Jonny Greenwood · 138 min
How it was made
- The Master was shot on Panavision System 65 cameras in 65mm, the first fiction feature in that format since Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet in 1996; Anderson and cinematographer Mihai Mălaimare Jr. had planned to shoot only 20 percent of the film that way but ended up shooting 85 percent in 65mm, cropping it from 2.20:1 to 1.85:1 to match the 35mm inserts.
- Anderson bypassed a digital intermediate entirely, having the film colour-graded photochemically instead because he preferred working on film.
- Joaquin Phoenix lost significant weight for the role of Freddie and invented the character's awkward gait himself, staying in character for three months of shooting.
- Anderson built the script from disparate sources: unused scenes cut from early drafts of There Will Be Blood, biographical elements from John Steinbeck and L. Ron Hubbard, material from Thomas Pynchon's novel V., and stories Jason Robards told him on the set of Magnolia about his wartime Navy drinking days, including draining ethanol from a torpedo.
- Filming used Franklin Delano Roosevelt's former presidential yacht, the USS Potomac, for shipboard scenes, and the wing of an old hospital plus an empty admiral's mansion on Mare Island for others.
Elsewhere
More by Paul Thomas Anderson
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