The rate of releases of Amazon Prime Video is lower than that of Netflix, but this Friday, March 18, it has prepared a double session of movies that we can only see on that streaming platform. One of them is ‘Deep Waters’, the erotic thriller with Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas that I told you about a few days ago, the other is ‘Master’.
Premiered during the last Sundance Festival, where it was well received by both the public and the critics, even being compared to the horror films of jordan peele. It is true that racism has an important weight in ‘Master’, but the similarities do not go much beyond having a vocation for social criticism, something that, curiously, it ends up being both an advantage and a problem for the film.
three crossed stories
‘Master’ follows the story of three black women during the beginning of the semester at a prestigious university that has not exactly been characterized by giving exemplary treatment to people of color. This is something that Mariama Diallodirector and screenwriter of the film, underlines already from the opening sequence, placing special emphasis on it when it focuses on Jasmine, the character played by a convincing Zoe Renée.
In fact, it is in that part where ‘Master’ flirts more openly with horror movies, getting to design several scenes that seem to have a double function in that direction. On the one hand, to destabilize Jasmine even more and, on the other, to disturb the viewer by promoting a fantastic component that, unfortunately, ‘Master’ never fully embraces openly.
The funny thing is that the most disturbing moments are moments anchored in reality in which everyday moments border on the nightmarishas if that assumed racism is something that Jasmine should assume as normal, something that she probably could have done if she didn’t have that other supernatural threat.
One works, the other two don’t.
It’s not that Diallo achieves an ideal harmony approaching that part of the film, but that’s where ‘Master’ gives us more joy and knows how to play better with that calm rhythm that defines the film, in which music plays an important role in adding intensity to the story. The problem comes precisely when that part loses weight to the benefit of the other two protagonists, since there the story tends to be heavier.
And it is that ‘Master’ It is not a subtle work at all, something that has nothing wrong and gives rise to very powerful instants, both visually and narratively, but everything ends up being flatter and more obvious. From the concerns of the first house-master -a very controversial charge that some universities did not withdraw relatively recently- black from that university played by Regina Hall to the difficulties of the teacher embodied by Amber Gray to get the job you want.
There Diallo chooses to almost completely sacrifice that most terrifying element to bet on a more dramatic approach. Both Hall and Gray deliver competently, but ‘Master’ is a much less interesting film when their characters come to the fore. The worst of all is that it is monotonous, and not even a certain plot twist manages to get the film out of a lethargy that I suspect will bore or even despair some viewers. Because it takes more than a few good -although by no means amazing- interpretations.
Because one thing is the nobility of the message that the film wants to convey and another is its ability to do it in a stimulating way, which is where it becomes clear that ‘Master’ is Diallo’s first feature film and that his ability to mix elements as powerful as social criticism and terror has a lot of room for improvement.
In short
‘Master’ has great aspirations that only occasionally knows how to reflect satisfactorily. With a good job by its leading trio and a touch of restlessness that hovers at all times, even when the film is monotonous, it is laudable attempt to offer a different approach to the cocktail that it proposes, avoiding being an imitation of Jordan Peele, but with improvable results.