'The Master' trailer: Is Philip Seymour Hoffman leading a cult?

After a couple tantalizing-if-oblique teasers of Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master trickled across the Internet over the past few months, the film’s first full trailer gives us a much more complete picture of its story: WWII vet Freddie Sutton (Joaquin Phoenix) struggles to find his way after the war, and ultimately finds himself by the side of Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his wary wife Mary Sue (Amy Adams). A self-described “writer, doctor, nuclear physicist [and] theoretical philosopher,” Dodd is also as the beguiling head of a faith-based organization, into which Freddie gets deeply involved.

That organization has been rumored to be based on Scientology, and Dodd on its founder L. Ron Hubbard, and this trailer certainly features lines that echo common criticisms of the religion.

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