# The Master (2012 film)

The Master is a 2012 film about a Naval veteran who arrives home from war unsettled and uncertain of his future - until he is tantalized by the Cause and its charismatic leader.
    Directed and written by Paul Thomas Anderson.

## Lancaster Dodd

* My daughter's getting married, come join us! Leave your worries for awhile, they will still be there you get back, and your memories aren't invited.
* Marriage, previous to The Cause, was awful. Awful. There's a cycle, like life. Birth, excitement, growth, decay. Death. Now... now. How about this? Here comes, a large dragon. Teeth! Blood dripping! Red eyes! What do I got? A lasso. And I whip it up, I wrap it around its neck, and I wrestle! Wrestle! Wrestle him to the ground. I snap up, I say "Sit, dragon!" Dragon sits. I say "Stay!", dragon stays. Now it's got a leash on. Take it for a walk. And that's what-where we're at with it now. It stays on command. Next we're gonna teach it to roll over and play dead.
* Free winds and no tyranny for you, Freddie, sailor of the seas. You pay no rent, free to go where you please. Then go, go to that landless latitude and good luck. If you figure a way to live without serving a master, any master, then let the rest of us know, will you? For you'd be the first person in the history of the world.
* Man is not an animal. We are not a part of the animal kingdom. We sit far above that crown, perched as spirits, not beasts. I have unlocked and discovered a secret to living in these bodies that we hold.
* If you leave me now, in the next life you will be my sworn enemy. And I will show you no mercy.
* What a horrible young man you are. This is acting like an animal. A dirty animal that eats Its own feces when hungry.
* When we're in love we experience pleasure, and extreme pain.
* If you figure a way to live without serving a master, any master, then let the rest of us know, will you? For you’d be the first person in the history of the world

## Freddie Quell

* [to Clark] I was on a ship that got 13 battle stars and won the war. What'd you do, dummy?

## Peggy Dodd

* And this is where we are at. At the lowest level. To have to explain ourselves, for what? For what we do, we have to grovel? The only way to defend ourselves is to attack. If we don't do that we will lose every battle that we are engaged in. We will never dominate our environment the way we should unless we attack! And the city, city's just noise. I know the city. I know its rotten secrets, its filthy lies and secrets. They... invited us here and welcomed us. Only to throw us down. And kick us out. It's a grim joke.
* This is something you do for a billion years or not at all. This isn't fashion.

## Val Dodd

* [about Lancaster Dodd] He's making all of this up as he goes along. You don't see that?

## Dialogue

    Freddie Quell: I don't know what I told you but if you have work for me to do I can do it.
    Lancaster Dodd: You seem so familiar to me.
    Freddie Quell: Yeah. What do you do?
    Lancaster Dodd: I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist and a theoretical philosopher. But above all, I am a man, a hopelessly inquisitive man, just like you.
    Lancaster Dodd: Why aren't you with her?
    Freddie Quell: I'm an idiot.
    Lancaster Dodd: Why aren't you with the lovely girl?
    Freddie Quell: I got no reason. I'm a fool.
    Lancaster Dodd: Do you love Doris?
    Freddie Quell: Yes.
    Lancaster Dodd: Is she the love of your life?
    Freddie Quell: Yes, sir.
    Lancaster Dodd: Then why aren't you with her?
    Freddie Quell: I don't know.
    Lancaster Dodd: Yes you do. Tell me why you are not with her if you love her so much.
    Freddie Quell: I told her I'd come back and I never went back and now I just... I gotta get back to her.
    Lancaster Dodd: Why don't you go back?
    Freddie Quell: I don't know.
    Lancaster Dodd: Why don't you--
    Freddie Quell: I DON'T KNOW!
    Lancaster Dodd: Close your eyes.
    John More: Some of this sounds quite like hypnosis. Is it not?
    Lancaster Dodd: This is a process of dehypnotization, if you will. Man is asleep; this process wakes him from his slumber.
    John More: I still find it difficult to see the proof with regards to past lives that your movement claims.
    Lancaster Dodd: Would you care to submit yourself to processing? You'd look through the telescope, as my friend said.
    John More: Perhaps another time. You've also said that these methods, Cause methods, can cure leukemia. According to your book...
    Lancaster Dodd: Some forms of leukemia. In being able to access past lives we are able to treat illnesses that may have started back thousands, even trillions of years.
    John More: Trillions?
    Lancaster Dodd: With a T, sir.
    John More: [chuckles] Earth is not understood to be more than a few billion years old.
    Lancaster Dodd: Well even the smartest of our current scientists can be fooled, yes?
    John More: You can understand skepticism, can you not?
    Lancaster Dodd: Yes, oh yes yes. For without it we'd be positives and no negatives, therefore zero charge. We must have it.
    John More: Good science by definition allows for more than one opinion, doesn't it?
    Lancaster Dodd: Which is why our gathering of data is so far-reaching.
    John More: Otherwise you merely have the will of one man. Which is the basis of cult. Is it not?
    Lancaster Dodd: 'Tis, 'tis. And thankfully we are, all of us, working at breakneck speeds, in the unison towards capturing the mind's fatal flaws and correcting it back to its inherent state of perfect. While righting civilization and eliminating war and poverty and therefore the atomic threat.
    John More: I belong to no club, and if you're unwilling to allow any discussion...
    Lancaster Dodd: No, this isn't a discussion, it's a grilling! There's nothing I can do for you, if your mind has been made up. You seem to know the answers to your questions, why do you ask?
    John More: I'm sorry you're unwilling to defend your beliefs in any kind of rational...
    Lancaster Dodd: If, if you already know the answers to your questions, then why ask PIG FUCK? [beat] We are not helpless. And we are on a journey that risks the dark. If you don't mind, a good night to you.
    Lancaster Dodd: [Lancaster and Freddie have been imprisoned in two separate cells, sharing a wall] Your fear of capture and imprisonment is an implant from millions of years ago. This battle has been with you from before you know. This is not you.
    Freddie Quell: SHUT THE FUCK UP!
    Lancaster Dodd: It's not you.
    Freddie Quell: SHUT. THE FUCK. UP!
    Lancaster Dodd: It's not you. You are asleep. Your spirit was free. Moving from body, to the next body. Free. Free for a moment. Then it was captured by an invader force, bent on turning you to the darkest way, you've been implanted with a push-pull mechanism that keeps you fearful of authority and destructive. We are in the middle of a battle that's a trillion years in the making and it's bigger than the both of us!
    Freddie Quell: You're making this shit up! You make this shit up! You don't know what you're talking about!
    Lancaster Dodd: I don't know what I'm talking about?
    Freddie Quell: No, you don't.
    Lancaster Dodd: I give you facts.
    Freddie Quell: You don't give me facts!
    Lancaster Dodd: They are not opinions.
    Freddie Quell: What facts?! What facts?!
    Lancaster Dodd: They are fucking facts!
    Freddie Quell: What facts?! What facts?!
    Lancaster Dodd: Fuck you!
    Freddie Quell: Fuck you! Fuck you!
    Lancaster Dodd: Fuck you! Fuck you! Why don't you kick the bed some more?!
    Freddie Quell: Fuck you!
    Lancaster Dodd: Fuck you, you lazy ass piece of shit!
    Freddie Quell: Fuck you! Fuck you! I'm not lazy!
    Lancaster Dodd: I'm done! You're fucking lazy!
    Freddie Quell: Oh, you make shit up!
    Lancaster Dodd: You're fuckin' lazy!
    Freddie Quell: Your fucking family hates you! Your son hates you!
    Lancaster Dodd: Oh, they do?!
    Freddie Quell: Yeah! Your son hates you!
    Lancaster Dodd: Who fucking likes you except for me?!
    Freddie Quell: Nobody!
    Lancaster Dodd: Except for me!
    Freddie Quell: No, you don't fucking like me!
    Lancaster Dodd: Who likes you except for me?!
    [Freddie aggressively kicks the prison cell]
    Prisoner: [sitting in a cell behind, to Freddie and Lancaster] Shut up!
    Lancaster Dodd: [to Freddie] Except for me?!
    Freddie Quell: [to the prisoner] You, shut up!
    Lancaster Dodd: I'm the only one who likes you.
    Freddie Quell: [to the prisoner] Fuck you!
    Prisoner: Fuck you!
    Freddie Quell: Yeah, fuck you, too!
    Prisoner: Fuck you!
    Freddie Quell: [to Lancaster] Fuck you!
    Lancaster Dodd: Just me, Freddie.
    Freddie Quell: Just you?!
    Lancaster Dodd: I'm the only one that likes you. [pause] The only one. [pause] You're a fucking drunk. And I'm done with you. Fucking...

## Cast

* Joaquin Phoenix - Freddie Quell
* Philip Seymour Hoffman - Lancaster Dodd
* Amy Adams - Peggy Dodd
* Ambyr Childers - Elizabeth Dodd, Lancaster's daughter
* Jesse Plemons - Val Dodd, Lancaster's son
* Rami Malek - Clark, son-in-law of Lancaster Dodd
* Laura Dern - Helen Sullivan
* Christopher Evan Welch - John More
* Madisen Beaty - Doris Solstad
* Lena Endre - Mrs. Solstad
* Kevin J. O'Connor - Bill William
* Amy Ferguson - Martha the Salesgirl
* Joshua Close - Wayne Gregory
* Jillian Bell - Susan Gregory
* Patty McCormack - Mildred Drummond
* Fiona Dourif - Dancer
* David Warshofsky - Philadelphia Police
* Steven Wiig - Philadelphia Follower
* W. Earl Brown - Fighting Businessman

## External links

* The Master quotes at the Internet Movie Database
* The Master at Rotten Tomatoes
* Official site