Lessons of Darkness

Looper (2012): A-

Fulfilling the ambitions of his debut Brick, Rian Johnson crafts a scintillating neo-noir gem of existential quandaries and inescapable fatalism with Looper. In 2044, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) works as a Looper – a mob assassin who, because it's too tough to dispose of bodies in the future, kills targets sent back in time by his employers. That vocation becomes complicated when he's tasked with offing himself, a practice known as "closing the loop" that goes awry when his future self (Bruce Willis) escapes, thus putting both men on the run from crime boss Abe (Jeff Daniels), and eventually leading them to the farmhouse of Sara (Emily Blunt), whose son Cid (a terrific Pierce Gagnon) may grow up to become the mysterious underworld kingpin who's determined to close out all Looper contracts. That intricate narrative path is handled with assured and thrilling aplomb by Johnson, who forgoes his prior films' self-conscious cutesiness for a grim, no-nonsense mood of dread and futility. Aided by an editorial structure that keeps various threads in expert balance, his gorgeous and graceful camerawork exhibits a fluidity that's at odds with the increasing literal and moral messiness of Joe's plight. Wearing facial prosthetics to better resemble a young Willis, Gordon-Levitt has a hardboiled weariness that's simultaneously endearing and pitiful, and is juxtaposed with Willis' somber desperation and, amusingly, his frustration and fury at the foolishness of his younger self. With both its urban and rural-cornfield milieus marked by consuming bleakness, Looper harkens back to both Blade Runner and The Killers while nonetheless crafting its own unique spin on noir fatalism. That culminates in an inventive third act that – integrating further sci-fi elements which enhance and complicate its larger ideas about actualization, free will, and sacrifice – determines that, regardless of noble intentions, there's ultimately no changing one's fate.

The Master (2012): A-

A taut, unnerving thematic follow-up to There Will Be Blood as well as the work of Stanley Kubrick, Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master investigates the line between bestiality and civility through the 1950 story of Naval veteran Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) and his burgeoning relationship with new age guru Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). With a hunched, gaunt body, his arms habitually on his hips so that his elbows stick out like jagged wings, and speaking out of the side of his crooked mouth, Quell is a physically and psychologically twisted individual who, returning from war to work as a department store photographer, spends his days snapping shots of happy faces unlike his. Driven by base urges to drink, screw and lash out against the world with violence, Quell is an uncoiled spring. And to Dodd – a man (clearly based on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard) developing a cult facing establishment persecution with whom Quell accidentally hooks up – Quell seems the perfect candidate for "platforming" therapy, which seeks to unlock the original, "perfect" self that's in complete control of itself. Yet as evidenced by his baby-talk paternalistic relationship with the vet, as well as his own penchant for sudden angry outbursts, it also becomes increasingly clear that Dodd subconsciously views this outcast as not just a patient, but as a kindred "animal" spirit.

Anderson's interior spaces (department store, boat cabins, a Pennsylvania house) reflect his characters' circumstances – including Dodd's pent-up true-believer wife Peggy (Amy Adams) – as being circumscribed by both a society that doesn't accept them, and by their own inner fury, misery and discontent. The director visualizes this without look-at-me flair, regularly highlighting the disconnect between foreground and background spaces through varying shallow and deep focus cinematography. Paired with Jonny Greenwood's nerve-jangling clickity-clacking score, his aesthetics have a cool, measured beauty that create an unerring mood of volatile madness, and of a need to escape, as evidenced by those few moments (a sprint across a field; a motorcycle ride through the desert) that find characters fleeing toward some indistinct and unattainable freedom. The Master's primary tension, however, is rooted in the push-pull between Quell and Dodd, two men desperate to find a way toward peace and contentment. It's a process stymied by their underlying rage, epitomized by their shared love of Quell's unique alcoholic concoctions – which are made with paint thinner and, thus, akin to poison – and one that, in Quell's case, Anderson links to There Will Be Blood's Daniel Plainview in an early shot of Quell descending into a deep, dark naval ship chamber where the man actually drinks liquid pouring out of a missile (a haunting vision of imbibing violence).

The Master's critique of Scientology is plain, intermittently jabbing at the organization's belief in aliens, trillion-year-old spirits, and inconsistent philosophy, the last never more pointedly than during a late conversation between Dodd and an acolyte (Laura Dern) about his new book's terminology that concludes with an incensed outburst that exposes Dodd as a charlatan. Nonetheless, that thread is secondary to Anderson's portrait of anger and the ways in which men attempt to control and/or embrace it – a depiction that, in a scene of kicking and screaming ferocity in a jail cell, also associates Quell with Raging Bull's Jake LaMotta. As ironically insinuated by his name, Quell can't quell his sex-alcohol-fight urges, and yet through Quell's work with Dodd, Anderson finds more hope for his protagonist, who at least is honest with himself about his true nature, than for Dodd, a man consumed with perpetrating (to himself and others) a false sense of enlightened poise and restraint. Their rapport is the lifeblood of The Master, and made titanic through the commanding hot-air bluster of Hoffman and the magnetic intensity of Phoenix, the latter of whom embodies Quell with an impulsive wildness that's colored by hints of deep-rooted longing and heartbroken anguish, most centered around a lost love. At once explosive and ramshackle, unpredictable and expertly modulated, it's a magnetic performance that's nothing short of primal, and masterful.