What shall we do with the drunken sailor?

Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master is his first film since There Will Be Blood and although it stars Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who give two of the most blistering performances you will see for an unspecified time period — usually, the form is to say ‘this year’, but how do I know? I’m not psychic! — it is all so enigmatic and underwritten I felt rather shut out. A ‘challenging’ film is one thing, but one that actually slams the door in your face is quite another, as well as rude. Heck, I’m mother to a teenager and can stay at home if I want to be shut out and have doors slammed in my face. It’s a pity, though. Generally, I’m a fan of Mr Anderson, and his disturbing studies of souls in extremis, but this is a disappointment. I expect I’ll get over it, in time, but if you wish to send flowers and a card, then by all means please feel free to do so.

This is set in America, post-second world war, a time when people were reaching out for meaning and substance in their lives. (I read that in the bumf; I wasn’t there. And I’m not a time-traveller!) Phoenix plays Freddie Quell, a former Navy man who is a troubled loner and the sort of drunk who, when regular alcohol isn’t available, will knock back paint-thinner, photo-processing chemicals, meths, whatever he can lay his hands on. What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor? could have been an alternative title, but was I asked? No. Again. (Who do you have to sleep with round here if you want to title movies?)

Freddie tries paid employment as a portrait photographer in a department store, and picking cabbages, but both stints end badly in booze-fuelled violence and the sack.