I wanted to revisit The Master (🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟) in light of recently seeing The Brutalist in theaters because the influence from Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2012 masterpiece - yes, this is a masterpiece- on Brady Corbet’s recent work is undeniable. I cannot overstate how impossibly great Philip Seymour Hoffman is in this film, but this review will largely focus on PTA. Please join in me what’s going to be one of my longer reviews. 

Full disclosure, this only the second full viewing of The Master I’ve ever experienced. The only other time I watched this film was in 2018, when I was a prepubescent student of Cinema. By no means am I Roger Ebert, but seeing this film with far more knowledge of movies made this a totally different experience. This movie flew by- nothing about this felt like homework. And I could not look away from the beauty of this movie: every shot is a work of art & every shot is so meticulously thought-out, blocked and staged by Paul Thomas Anderson. This is a work of a perfectionist. 

I wish I was more media-cognizant in 2012 when this released to see how this film was received after There Will Be Blood. In the year 2025, following up There Will Be Blood with The Master seems like maybe the best two-run film from a director in film history. But in 2012, this film was ahead of its time. Whether or not critics were disappointed by this movie after PTA gave us such a brilliant film in 2007 is one thing, but The Academy surely didn’t appreciate this movie at the time. Three acting nominations for Phoenix, Hoffman, & Adams (all deserved) but nothing beyond that? How is that possible? How did PTA not receive a Best Director nomination for this movie? 

The shared link between The Brutalist and The Master is the parallel we see between Lancaster Dodd’s control over Freddie Quell in The Master & the control Guy Pearce’s Harrison Lee Van Buren exerts over Adrien Brody’s László Tóth in The Brutalist. While Tóth doesn’t share much in common with Quell, the flawed, sort of “fake” power facade we see from Dodd & Van Buren is undeniably similar. Their bizarre, manipulative power over so many around them backed by wealth (real or not) puts Dodd & Van Buren in the driver’s seat throughout each of these films, to the detriment of Quell and Tóth. I think Dodd & Van Buren are two brilliantly written characters and are the reason Pearce & Hoffman shine so incredibly bright in each film. Two bullshit artists in positions of power that each eventually face the consequences of the garbage they’re trying to sell. 

Beyond the similarities in the character structure in the stories are similarities in the filmmaking. The Master is not almost four hours & doesn’t come with an intermission, but it’s a grand, epic film about the failure of the American Dream where America itself plays a character. The wide, vast shots of the American landscape, from the Golden Gate Bridge to the countryside of Philadelphia, all clearly influence Corbet’s decision-making throughout The Brutalist. And that’s a good thing. In fact, that’s a great thing. The Brutalist and The Master, as well as There Will Be Blood, are all grand American epics in that sense. 

But where The Brutalist and The Master ultimately split is the fact that The Master is less the story about one man’s life in the way The Brutalist is ultimately the story of Tóth’s life, and is more about the relationship between Quell, Dodd, and post-World War 2 America. That’s why I think I like The Master more than The Brutalist personally. The Master is less-linear in a sense, if that makes sense, and ties together multiple relationships that ultimately conclude together. That’s why The Master by itself is a masterpiece. Meaning PTA somehow, some way, gave us back-to-back masterpieces with There Will Be Blood and The Master. 

PTA is one of the greatest American directors in Cinema history. This is part of the reason why.