Why "The Master" Fails

Well, if "The Master" has done nothing else as it pertains to me, it has caused me to contemplate it heavily for the last several days. I have not dissected a film in my mind to this extent in many years.
Unfortunately for Paul Thomas Anderson, for the most part I have considered why it failed.

When I attended film school I often had private sessions with instructors who had extensive education about screenwriting and had written many screenplays. It was one of the few practical benefits that I had in film school.

But even if I had presented "The Master" as a screenplay to someone who knows even a moderate amount about screenwriting it would probably not play well.
If I said, “I’m going to make a film that is just about two men and their relationship with each other. The relationship has very little conflict, and it hints at homosexual themes. I’m going to close it with a ‘people don’t change’ message.”
I hope that the person who I'm addressing would say, “No, you’re not. That’s a student filmmaking error. You must have changes in at least one of the characters– good or bad. They should change each other in some way. Otherwise it’s absolutely pointless. ‘People don’t change’ isn’t any sort of message for a feature length film.”

PTA knows these things. Yet he either doesn’t care or, when he made The Master he thought that he could transcend them. He couldn't... at least, not with this film.

PTA might have been able to violate most of the rules of screenwriting when he made Blood, but when he tried to torch them completely with The Master he fell on his face. There is almost nothing in this film aside from its characters-- it relies almost entirely on the viewers' interest level in its characters, which is dangerous ground.
When PTA made "There Will Be Blood" he and Daniel Day Lewis created one of the most fascinating characters ever: Daniel Plainview. There are no Plainviews in The Master, and it has much less of a story than Blood.

So who loves The Master most? I've read many messages on movie boards, and I'm disappointed to write that it comes down to 1) pretentious people and 2) people who probably have suppressed homosexual urges and can relate to Philip Seymour Hoffman's Lancaster Dodd character.
If the characters have an immense appeal to you, more power to you.

But I would have preferred a real story.