A Naval veteran arrives home from war unsettled and uncertain of his future - until he is tantalized by a cult and its charismatic leader.
Following his discharge from the US Navy after WWII, Freddie Quell is having difficulties adjusting to non-military life partly due to his war experiences in the tropics. He has a violent temper. He is obsessed with sex, which is partly why he can't and won't commit to his teenaged girlfriend, Doris Solstad. And he is an alcoholic, drinking primarily concoctions he creates himself with dangerous ingredients. It is these factors in combination that lead to him being fired from one job after another, from department store portrait photographer to cabbage picker. Wandering one night in 1950 while drunk, he stumbles upon a yacht being used by Lancaster and Peggy Dodd, the yacht aboard which their daughter Elizabeth will get married. Feeling a connection to the stranger, Lancaster invites Freddie to stay aboard to work. In addition to that work, Lancaster indoctrinates him into his cult, named the Cause, which purports to do things as varied as cure serious maladies and create world peace. Peggy, Elizabeth and Elizabeth's husband Clark all subscribe to and support Lancaster's teachings. The only one of the Dodd family that doesn't is Lancaster and Peggy's son, Val Dodd, who believes his father is just making things up as he goes along. Because of being lost psychologically, Freddie is easy prey, he who is looking for something or someone to guide him to a higher plane. But as Freddie travels with the Dodd family as they spout the gospel, he and the Dodds may become at odds with each other if Freddie cannot or does not find from them and the Cause what he needs in life to survive emotionally.—Huggo
Freddie (Phoenix), a volatile, heavy-drinking veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, finds some semblance of a family when he stumbles onto the ship of Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman), the charismatic leader of a new "religion" he forms after World War II.
After returning from the Second World War, having witnessed many horrors, a charismatic intellectual creates a faith-based organization in an attempt to provide meaning to his life. He becomes known as "The Master". His right-hand man, a former drifter, begins to question both the belief system and The Master as the organization grows and gains a fervent following.—Anonymous
Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is a sex-obsessed alcoholic World War II veteran struggling to adjust to a post-war society. He becomes a portrait photographer at a local department store but is soon fired for getting into a drunken fight with a customer. Freddie then finds work on a cabbage farm, but his moonshine poisons one of the elderly migrant workers and he is chased off.
One night, intoxicated, Freddie stows away on the yacht of Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the leader of a philosophical movement known as "The Cause". When he is discovered, Dodd invites Freddie to stay and attend the marriage of Dodd's daughter, Elizabeth (Ambyr Childers), as long as he will make more of his mysterious brew (made with paint thinner), which Dodd has developed a taste for. Dodd begins an exercise with Freddie called Processing, a flurry of disturbing psychological questioning aimed at conquering Freddie's past traumas.
Freddie reveals that his father has died, his mother is institutionalized, he may have had an incestuous relationship with his aunt, and he abandoned the love of his life, a young girl named Doris, who wrote to him while he was at war. Freddie is enthralled by Dodd, who doesn't flinch from his abject revelations, and Dodd sees something in Freddie. Freddie travels with Dodd's family as they spread the teachings of "The Cause" along the East Coast, staying as guests in the homes of various women drawn to "The Cause". But Freddie's violent and erratic behavior has not improved, nor has his alcoholism. At a dinner party in New York, a man questions Dodd's methods and statements, and Freddie pursues him to his apartment and assaults him that night.
Other members of "The Cause" begin to worry about Freddie's behavior, despite Dodd's attachment to him. While they are guests of an acolyte in Philadelphia, Dodd's wife Peggy (Amy Adams) tells Freddie that he must quit drinking if he wishes to stay, to which he agrees. However, he has no true intention of keeping his promise. Freddie criticizes Dodd's son Val for disregarding his father's teachings, but Val tells Freddie that Dodd is making things up as he goes along. Dodd is arrested for practicing medicine without proper qualifications, after one of his former hostesses has a change of heart, as is Freddie, for assaulting the police officers. In the jail cell adjacent to Dodd, Freddie smashes the toilet and batters himself against the bars and his bunk, while Dodd tries to calm him.
But Freddie erupts in a tirade, questioning everything that Dodd has taught him and accuses him of being a fake.The two men trade insults until Dodd turns his back. They reconcile upon their release, but members of "The Cause" have become more suspicious and fearful of Freddie, believing him to be insane or an undercover agent.Freddie submits to additional exercises with "The Cause" but becomes increasingly angry and frustrated with his lack of results and repetition of the exercises. Eventually he passes the tests, and they travel to Phoenix, Arizona, for the release of Dodd's latest book.
But when Dodd's publisher criticizes the quality of the book, and its teachings Freddie assaults him. Helen Sullivan, their Philadelphia hostess, confronts Dodd in the lecture hall for suggesting that members should now "imagine" rather than "recall" the experiences of "other lives" in his new book, and he also loses his temper. During another exercise, in which Freddie is supposed to ride a motorcycle at high speed through the desert towards an object in the distance and then return, he instead abandons the group, riding the motorcycle out of the desert, and leaving Dodd and "The Cause" behind. He goes home to rekindle his relationship with Doris but learns from her mother that she has married and started a family in Alabama in the seven years since he last saw her. Freddie leaves disappointed, but he seems pleased that Doris has made a happy life for herself.
While sleeping in a movie theater, Freddie has a "vision" of Dodd, who calls him by telephone, having mysteriously located him. Dodd informs Freddie that he is now residing in England and that Freddie must join him as soon as possible. Taking the dream literally, he travels across the Atlantic to reunite with Dodd. When Freddie arrives, he discovers Val is still in his father's employ and that Elizabeth has been expelled from the movement. Dodd seems happy to see him, but Peggy tells him that Freddie has no intention of improving his life and that he should no longer be involved in "The Cause". Dodd finally realizes that his wife is correct, and he gives Freddie an ultimatum: stay with "The Cause" and devote himself to it for the rest of his life or leave and never return.
Dodd then serenades Freddie with the song Slow Boat to China. Freddie leaves and picks up a woman at a local pub, then spews questions from his first Processing session with Dodd as he is having sex with her. Finally, he appears to curl up on a beach next to the crude sand sculpture of a woman he created during the war.
