To understand this movie a little history is necessary. It's about a writer of the 1940's and 50's by the name of L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard was an American pulp fiction author and the founder of the Church of Scientology. After establishing a career as a writer, becoming best known for his science fiction and fantasy stories, he developed a self-help system called Dianetics which was first published in May 1950. He subsequently developed his ideas into a wide-ranging set of doctrines and rituals as part of a new religious movement that he called Scientology.
The movie depicts some of the early group "Dianetic" therapy sessions but mostly deals with (The Master's, Philip Seymour Hoffman ) obsession with proving that his self-help system (patterned after the Freudian concept of eliminating repressed feelings) would work on a psychotic man (Joaquin Phonenix). This was the time before drug therapy was used to treat mental Illness. (As an aside, my brother, who was a science fiction fan, read Dianetics and tried to treat my friend Paul, in about 1950. Paul and I were 17 and my brother 20 years old at the time).
OK, WHAT ABOUT THE MOVIE. Very good acting, but somewhat slow. Unfortunately, the script failed because it never explained (up front) the motivations of The Master (Hubbard) and and how this connected to the continued psychotic episodes of the actor Joaquin Phonenix.
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