'THE MASTER' AND THE MOTORCYCLE

Joaquin Phoenix as Freddie Quell, riding what looks like a Norton 16H across a dry lake bed

Months ago the New York Times ran a story on Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film (starring Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman), 'The Master', a meditation on L Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology.  The principal events of the story were carefully based on Hubbard's life, from the borrowed yacht on which he escapes his troubles, to the threats and intimidation used to silence critics, the school set up in England, and...a lust for motorcycles.

L Ron Hubbard aboard a BSA C15 in West Sussex, England, ca 1960

'The Master' is a difficult and beautiful film, with a pair of intense and fascinating characters who seem strangely bound to each other, exploring each man's nature while leaving open the question of their troubled bond.  Gorgeously shot, whether in a landscape, at sea, or in full-frame closeup,  PT Anderson is a renegade from digital film, using extraordinarily expensive 65mm stock, the reward for which is an old-fashioned look you didn't know you missed until you see it.  Cinematography by Mihai Malaimare Jr is achingly lush; he brings Dorothea Lange's dustbowl photographs to full-color motion in Salinas cabbage fields and in farmworker housing; when the camera's gaze rests for long periods on Joaquin Phoenix's face (playing Freddie Quell, ne'er do well), it revives the mesmerizing glamour of 50s Cinemascope close-ups.

Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd, riding hard over the dry mud pan

In tackling the notoriously litigious Scientology founder's story, Anderson has, of course, used no 'real' names, but the parallels are abundantly clear to anyone who's swallowed the church's teachings, or read the numerous debunking websites highlighting the chasm between Hubbard's extravagantly self-promoting fantasies, and the truth of his back story.  'The Master' lands an axe into that chasm, and splits Hubbard in two; Freddie Quell, nearly an animal in his passions, a creature of id in his lusts, his alcoholism, his pain.  Freddie is the nobody seaman 'Elron' was in reality during WW2, while Lancaster Dodd (the brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffman), on whose yacht Freddie stows away at a dark moment, is the charismatic charlatan, spinning tales of 'trillions of years' with megalomaniac drama, creating 'the Cause' and its pseudo-scientific techniques for 'making you better', mostly by Dodd's 'making it up as he goes along', according to his son (who in real life was excommunicated from Scientology for being gay).

L Ron Hubbard uses his e-meter on a tomato

The two halves of Hubbard meet in a Venn diagram of common masculinity; drunkenness, lust, and violence.  Each man does his best to deny his basest motivations (Quell with lies, Dodd with spiritual/sci-fi hokum), but as Dodd's darkness is revealed in harsh bursts, the film finds the common ground of the two characters, halves of the same man who have forgotten themselves.  Dodd is fascinated with Quell, and vexed with 'Where have we met before?', never comprehending Freddie is his shadow, but attempting to control him as 'guinea pig and protegé'.  But the Shadow is uncontrollable, and in a pivotal scene involving, finally, a motorcycle, we see Freddie escape to face his own demons and truths, while Dodd finds the financial hookup he needs to create an unquestioning empire, with his Lady Macbeth (a ferocious Amy Adams) at his side.

Joaquin Phoenix and the 'Norton'

The dry lakebed scene with Quell and Dodd and a Norton 16H lookalike (apparently a BSA M20 with a Norton tank and fake check-springs on the forks!) is equal parts thrilling, dangerous, and liberating, stunningly shot with both Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix actually riding the bumpy and alligatored dry mudflat at a fast clip, the old Norton bouncing and clattering, the actors up on the pegs and giving it some stick, genuinely exhilarated.  The scene references Rollie Free's 1940s Bonneville runs, with a small entourage in perfect period gear and support car. Hoffman as Dodd is real rider, but a genteel fellow out for a moment of controlled thrill, needing the context of a 'process' to justify cutting loose on a bike, while Phoenix's Freddie at last looks natural and at ease and completely appropriate in cuffed jeans and boots.  Previously a shambling, nearly hunchback mumbler, he kicks the beast to life with skill, circling on the mud pan and accelerating over the dirt, until he's going 'really fast', by which point Dodd realizes he's lost the man, who has found himself, and freedom.

Saint Hill Manor in West Sussex, near East Grinstead, the Church's UK headquarters

In real life, 'Elron' indeed liked motorcycles, although I've only dredged up one evidentiary photo, from his days in Sussex, where he famously gave Scientology its first fixed address in an old school.  As part of his civic-minded participation local culture, Elron rode a BSA C15 in a sheriff costume (he was often photographed in Western gear) in a Sussex parade.  A few of Hubbard's excoriating biographers mention a Harley or two during the 1950s...but after digging through the the Church's muck online after that first NYT article, its a rabbit hole I'm happy to stay clear of.

L Ron Hubbard in his 'sheriff' costume...

The bike?  Somehow, the film's prop master (Justin at Glory - he seems to have all the moto-film-fun these days) made a BSA M20 look like a Norton 16H, making that still-humble machine look sleek, cool, and dangerous...no small feat!  For those who can't stomach an extended ramble into one man's darkness, I reckon 'that scene' will appear on Youtube sooner or later...

Posted in: Motorcycles In Film, NORTON