From Paul Thomas Anderson, the director of There Will Be Blood, comes another fictional biopic about a potentially disturbed self-made man whose work would come to affect millions in ways not necessarily for the better. Despite Anderson’s own denials, parts of the Internet swear The Master is thinly veiled nonfiction about L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics, and/or the creation of Scientology. Any similarities to any movements living or dead, real or fictional, will no doubt be left to the viewer to decide and write pretentious essays in response.

(That’s not meant as derogatory. Seriously, I look forward to reading said essays. Some days I thrive on pretentiousness.)

The cast includes Joaquin Phoenix, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Laura Dern, and Kevin J. O’Connor (the lanky toady from Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy). As with Blood, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood is composing the presumably eerie, non-traditional score. This first teaser avoids any overt hints of its ostensible subject, instead focusing on flashbacks of Phoenix’s shenanigans while an obscured interrogator watches his immature smugness melt into unease.

[Content warning: teaser contains brief clip of bawdy sand-sculpting.]

I’ve played this a few extra times for the soundtrack alone, but I’m also savoring the one-minute sample of Phoenix’s performance that hints at grander, controversial, hopefully pretentious things to come.