Freshman year of college is a once-in-a-lifetime set of memorable and unique experiences. But that set of experiences varies widely from one person to the next. Will you win the roommate lottery, or will your shared occupancy of your tiny room be a living hell? Will you thrive in a bigger, deeper pond, or will you flounder?
Writer-director Mariama Diallo introduces us to her film, Master, through the lens of a freshman student Jasmin Moore (Zoe Renee) at an Ivy League school known as Ancaster. Flourished with the trappings of your typical Harvard-esque campus, Ancaster is rooted in prestige and history, while simultaneously trying to appear modern and progressive by way of its “radical approach” to diversity and inclusion. As a black student, Jasmin finds the try-hard progressive veneer quickly gives way to a series of interactions rooted in racism, classism, and ignorance. As the papercuts from her daily interaction begin to stack up, Jasmin is also haunted at night in her dreams by the racist history of Ancaster’s past, which includes the death of a student who once occupied her room.
Master is not only Jasmin’s story. It also follows Gail Bishop (Regina Hall), a tenured professor at Ancaster who becomes the university’s first black “Master,” e.g. Dean of Students. The title is a real one, and one Harvard only changed 5 years ago due to its racial implications. As Gail sees Jasmin’s struggle with both microaggressive and overt acts of racism, as well as the haunting dreams that terrify her in her sleep, Gail tries to teach Jasmin a hard truth: that there is nothing supernatural about what she’s experiencing, and that it will follow her everywhere she goes. But as Gail finds her own promotion touted as an example of the university’s radical diversity, she too begins to feel overwhelmed by the institutional rot endemic in academia.
Although Jasmin and Gail are the primary points of view in Master, there is also a third point of view from Professor Liv Beckman (Amber Gray) that raises the film’s stickiest and most unique set of questions in the final third of the narrative. In the way these three characters interact, Master posits some of its most complex questions about the way these women, as well as other black staff at the school, are pitted against one another.
Between the dual narratives of Jasmin and Gail, Master is telling several stories at once. Jasmin’s story has the clearest “horror” hook – a haunted room, coupled with tales of witchcraft and Jasmin’s penchant for sleepwalking create a clear racism-as-horror narrative. Although it has the more obvious horror bent, I found this half of the story less intriguing. Diallo acutely illustrates the horror Jasmin experiences in daily interactions, but the supernatural elements didn’t click as well. Jasmin’s character, as a result, feels more flat.
Gail’s slice of the story, however, takes the film into different territory. Although there are minor jump scares here and there, there is a notable absence of supernatural leanings baked into Gail’s point of view. Instead, her most interesting moments come through in her interactions with Jasmin and Liv. It also helps that Hall is the MVP of the film, lending a sense of complexity to Gail. For the first two-thirds of the film, Hall plays Gail as a weathered veteran of the institution. But the film’s most shocking moments come in the final 30 minutes, when Gail’s weary-but-aware approach to the world is turned on its head.
Master is a mixed bag of a film. Its dual-lead approach to the story results in an uneven experience. One half of the narrative feels like more rote, while another takes an unexpected path. The messy parts are outweighed by the film’s final turn, though, which make Master well worth a watch.
Master is available streaming on Amazon Prime starting March 18.