I'm exaggerating, but this is what I want to shout during most movie scenes featuring classical musicians practicing a piece. It sounds fine, then the teacher comes in and shouts, "No! You have to FEEL it, to understand what the composer was saying about heartache and despair!" And then the teacher proceeds to play it in pretty much the exact same way.

It drives me crazy and, to be sure, it happens in 'A Late Quartet,' but, luckily by this point of the film you are quite in tune with the different characters -- know them, even -- and are willing to let it slide. Frankly, a great deal of 'A Late Quartet,' a gossipy soap opera for the NPR-set, is forgiven because of its marvelous cast.

Quell, who wanders into Dodd's life in a drunken stupor and becomes his confidant, assistant, photographer, and unofficial bodyguard, doesn't just look like an animal; he behaves like one, lashing out anyone who threatens Dodd with the ferocity of a caged tiger. Most of the members of Dodd's movement called him "The Master" because he is the head of their religion. When Quell calls Dodd "Master" it sounds different. Their relationship is as much teacher and pupil as attack dog and owner.

That relationship forms the core of Paul Thomas Anderson's remarkable new film 'The Master,' which is less about the origins of Scientology -- although Dodd is an undeniable analogue for L. Ron Hubbard, the man who invented the infamous religion -- than about the push and pull between these two men.