#and I’ve always kind of resented the Scientology stuff that surrounds it

[shugthedug]

obsessed with your tags under the @marisatomay 's magnolia ask. please, for the love of god, bring the master into this

Quite a widely held belief, and certainly predominant amongst press at the time of its release, is that the master was PTA ‘taking on’ Scientology, creating headlines of a rift in his relationship with Tom Cruise. He notably got less patient in his responses to these questions as the promotion for the film went on, and understandably so. Firstly, to read the master as a film about Scientology in the way that consensus would want there to be such a film (critical, ridiculing, bizarre) is a very reductive way of approaching it. The master uses aspects of Scientology, particularly dianetics, to delve into the romantic wistfulness of a post world war II America that found itself in an intensely unsettled and anxious state where the culture leaned towards dreaming and longing, for other times and other places. Dianetics basic concept of transportive power, of past lives and earned wisdom and second chances, is employed powerfully in the film to create an almost transcendent bond between Freddie and Dodds that is thematically in keeping with a certain post war psyche, a bond that is ever moving and multiplicitous: the fulfilment of an absent father figure, the purposeful and inevitable entanglement of souls, wrestling between pressure and power, vulnerability and manipulation, cruelty and healing, love and harm. Its inclusion was a device within which a story could unfold. Questions searching for the journalistic TNT of ‘PTA wants to expose Scientology!’ betrayed that the questioner had probably not understood the film.

But also: The Master is a work of great empathy. In that way, it aligns beautifully with magnolia. It’s not the fanged, critical expose of a cult that many hoped it would be. Instead, it demonstrates a compassion and respect towards both Freddie and Dodds, but particularly Freddie, that derails the tabloid friendly notion of PTA creating something with intent to shame, embarrass, mock or belittle, especially someone he knew personally and had shared a notably brilliant creative experience with. Freddie is taken quite seriously as someone exposed to brutality who reverts to states of animalism, someone who can neither function within nor be tolerated by society. His volatility exiles him from the peace he went to war for, his vulnerability to an external promise of freedom and purpose is clear as a bell. How the cause ingratiates itself to him, the resultant play of power between his need for Dodds attention and Dodds need for Freddie’s independent will, and the genuine bond they develop within Dodds unconscionably harmful structure built to maintain his own power and influence, displays a nuanced and careful understanding as to why people may become victim to cults, why they may perpetrate that harm upon others, and why they may fail to see it as harmful upon themselves. Ultimately, people will contort themselves into painful and twisted shapes in an effort to avoid suffering. It’s a human reflex. The film is full of that humanity, without the moral condemnation many would have sought from it. It’s not really about the structure of the cult, but the way two men find each other within it.

The response to the master, the general willingness for it to have been a direct hit against the ghost of L Ron Hubbard and the papers favourite cult freak tom ‘it’s illegal to look him in the eye’ cruise, is revealing, I think, of a tendency to other those within cults in a way that undermines their intelligence, morality, and personhood instead of recognising that all of these things can be suppressed if a person is vulnerable enough in a way that a cult can target, manipulate, and exploit. It also smacks of not caring about what PTA wanted to say, preferring instead to fabricate ill feeling and contention that likely never existed. I don’t know how you can watch Magnolia - which reminds you if nothing else that Cruise and PTA have a very human relationship to pain and trauma - then the master, with its incredible understanding of pain and trauma, and go for the read that so many people wanted to make that the master was a stealth attack. When applied against the film PTA made, it’s ridiculously off the mark.