In the search for happiness and contentment, we usually have people telling us and guiding us in a specific direction that they perceive to be the key to achieving happiness. We take some and leave some, and no matter what advice one gives us our way of seeking a form of happiness is in our own specific way. People can guide you all they want, but if it does not conform to your mindset, you will not be happy. In all of Paul Thomas Anderson's works, we see characters trying to achieve happiness in ways that we as the audience might not comprehend or might not agree with. They take measures that, in our own view, might lead one to sadness and displeasure; yet, by the end of some of his films, the characters are happy or at least reached a level of contentment in life. In order to understand this, we will be looking at three of Paul Thomas Anderson's films--The Master, There Will Be Blood, and, Phantom Thread--and see how the main characters in those films find their own form of happiness through their somewhat absurd ways. These will be divided into three parts, each focusing on how each character in each film showcases characters trying to find happiness. In this, we will first focus on The Master.
When we see Joaquin Phoenix's character Freddie Quell at the start of the film, we clearly see a disturbed and broken man. One who seeks sexual pleasure from a figure of a woman he made in the beach. One who when asked about his mental state from a military officer, gets angry and the questionnaire. Freddie is suffering from PTSD from the war and is dealing with the absence of a loved one, Dorris, and these clearly have taken a toll on him. He is not a content and happy man; he is lost in a sea of chaos and confusion; that is until he meets the Master and the Cause.
Upon meeting the Master and the people in the Cause, Freddie is skeptical at first. He sees the way the Master psychoanalyzes people; claiming to have the cure to any form of mental and physical disease and ailment. Freddie does doubt this. However, Freddie coming into the cause is because he is in search of something; whether he knows it or not, he is in search of happiness and to find some meaning in his life after losing Dorris after the war. While Freddie shares many common likes with the Master, that being their love for woman and booze, Freddie needs more than just that; he needs a way to break from his mental pattern of sadness and discontentment. While hesitant at first, Freddie decides to go through a processing therapeutic moment with the Master.
The Master wants Freddie to relieve himself of the suffering and burden he has gone through. He makes him go through this form of processing in order to alleviate him of his past life, to be reborn once again. This processing done by the Master parallels the questioning Freddie goes through in the start of the film with the military officer; however, Freddie's response to both is vastly different. When being asked relatively the same questions at the start of the film with the military officer, we saw the Freddie was acting very antagonistic towards him. Freddie was not willing to talk to, who he thinks is, a low-life officer about his mental problems. With the processing done by the Master however, we see that while Freddie might not have wanted to provide answers at first, slowly through the processing, Freddie’s inner-self opens up and he begins to open up to the Master. We see him tear up and we see the barrier he has had towards other people breaking away. This is the first time in the film that we actually get a flashback to a part of Freddie’s previous life; we see a part of his relationship with Dorris and how much he deeply and truly loved her. It was the last time he was truly happy, when he had someone. Through this opening to his past, it has not only opened up the audience to Freddie, but also opened up Freddie to his journey in finding happiness.
Throughout the film, once a member of the Cause, Freddie follows and obeys almost everything the Master and the Cause says. We see that Freddie is completely determined to stick with and defend the Cause and the Master whenever he can. This defense is less so due to a sort-of theological or logical one, but rather, through an emotional attachment to something. In one incident, when someone questions the Master’s therapeutic techniques, Freddie does not attack back with logic or theology; but rather, by throwing a fruit at him. In another incident, when a family member of the Master’s states that the Master is just making up everything, Freddie physically attacks him. These forms of angry outbursts are the same way Freddie responds whenever Dorris is mentioned. In one part of the film, when Freddie is probed by the Master and from one of his followers, we see the same angry reaction when Dorris is mentioned as when any critique of the Master is mentioned. In the probing scene, the Master tells Freddie that he has to listen to what one of the followers say to Freddie and that Freddie cannot reply or look away. As soon as the follower mentions Dorris, Freddie was ready to attack the man. Throughout the film, whenever Dorris is mentioned, Freddie clearly has an emotional reaction to it. Why does Freddie respond the same way when one criticizes the Master and the Cause as when one mentions Dorris? The reason is because Freddie’s loss of happiness came from his loss of ownership and companionship over Dorris.
This sense of ownership is what the Cause gave Freddie; a feeling that he lost when he went to the war. Freddie was happy when he had someone in his life; he was happy when he felt that he had an ownership to someone/something. This is not a bad ownership; rather, it is one that we all have in a relationship. One says that, for example, this girl is my girlfriend. It is something that one has in their mind; and that girlfriend has that boy as her boyfriend. It is a relationship through a form of ownership. Freddie was happy when he had that sense of ownership, he was happy when he had someone to turn to who understood him. However, that was all destroyed when he went to the war. He lost the one thing he had; thus losing any form of happiness that he also had. However, it was in finding the Cause, that, in Freddie’s mind, is that thing that can replace, in a sense, the feeling of the loss of Dorris. He is shifting his lack of ownership and connectivity to Dorris, with the ownership and connection with the Master and the Cause.
However, Freddie does not stay in the Cause for too long. Freddie’s journey in the Cause was not a permanent solution to his sadness, it was rather a large stepping stone in coming out of the miserable rut that he was in. He was able to combat the lost of his loved one and the PTSD from the war; while he will forever have trauma from these, he was able to combat it to a much greater degree than before. The Cause is like a one hour therapy session; in that one hour, that relief of talking about what is bothering you and getting advice in how to deal with it, is, even in the sadness, an extremely happy feeling. You feel that no only that someone understands you, but that you are worth something. That was the Master and the Cause for Freddie. The Cause gave him the ability to move on from the past, combat it, and find his own happiness. However, an hour long therapy session is only one hour, and for Freddie, the cause was not a permanent solution. Of course, maybe Freddie found that the Cause was all fake, or that he was not happy anymore in there; but the Cause gave him the tools to find happiness and combat the barrier of sadness that was over him. When Freddie chooses to leave the Cause and go on his own, he is where he is most happy. Even though at the start of the film Freddie was not happy out in the open, with the knowledge and tools he received from the Cause, he is actually much happier now. Just like in a therapy session, once you leave, you are thrown back in the same environment you were in, but just in a better place.
We see that Freddie’s search for happiness was through finding something to help him deal with the loss of Dorris. While clearly the effects of the war are lingering on him, I believe that it was the loss of Dorris, not being able to attain her, was the straw that broke the camel's back. When finding the Master and the Cause, Freddie found something to replace that and help him cope and move away from Dorris. The Master, even though his methods might not be scientifically sound, was a way for Freddie to open the door for searching for happiness; it was a way for him to at least move past that which was holding him back. Even though Freddie started out in the same place where he started, he is far happier now than in the position he was before. Freddie cannot stay in a long-term relationship, he cannot stay in the Cause forever. Freddie is a sailor, he moves where the wind takes him. However, it was through the Cause, that he was able to take out the anchor that was holding him back. Freddie is happier not landing on an island, but rather, flowing through the sea.
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