Inherent Vice
Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson
Written by: Paul Thomas Anderson - Based on the novel by Thomas Pynchon
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Katherine Waterston, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Martin Short, Jena Malone, Joanna Newsom, Eric Roberts, Hong Chau, Maya Rudolph, Sasha Pieterse, Michael Kenneth Williams, Jeannie Berlin
Comedy/Crime/Drama/Mystery/Romance - 148 Minutes Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 6 Jan 2015
Written by: Paul Thomas Anderson - Based on the novel by Thomas Pynchon
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Katherine Waterston, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Martin Short, Jena Malone, Joanna Newsom, Eric Roberts, Hong Chau, Maya Rudolph, Sasha Pieterse, Michael Kenneth Williams, Jeannie Berlin
Comedy/Crime/Drama/Mystery/Romance - 148 Minutes Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 6 Jan 2015
In 1998, Sam Elliott’s voiceover in The Big Lebowski introduced us to the idea of a man, a man who fit perfectly into his time and place. He was talking about The Dude. In Inherent Vice, a tale set in roughly the same locale, there is another such dude, one Larry “Doc” Sportello. In the last bit of the tumultuous ‘60s cultural shift, we identify Doc as a low-key hippie maintaining a perpetual marijuana high doing his best to excuse himself from the culture wars raging just outside his beachside bungalow. It’s not his fault ex-old ladies, straight-laced cops, and tax-dodging dentists keep dropping by to disturb his herbal euphoria. Yet, Doc is a man of his times. Created by reclusive novelist Thomas Pynchon and adapted for the screen by director Paul Thomas Anderson, Doc is not necessarily this year’s Dude manifestation, but he is just as memorable as any other Anderson leading man including The Master’s Freddie Quell and There Will Be Blood’s Daniel Plainview.
Notice the lingo. Doc’s vernacular lands on the grammatical spectrum somewhere between The Brady Bunch’s calculated ‘groovies’ and the jive lady from Airplane! (“Cut me some slack Jack!”). Just like the Dude, Doc (Joaquin Phoenix, 2013's Her) has his own narrator from time to time voiced by musician Joanna Newsom, “Doc may not be a “Do-Gooder” but he’s done good.” Classic film noir quips and zingers also lace the late ‘60s slacker slang. We are never 100% sure where Inherent Vice’s haphazard episodes are going to lead us, but we know for certain we are going to hear some of the year’s juiciest dialogue on our exploration.
Notice the lingo. Doc’s vernacular lands on the grammatical spectrum somewhere between The Brady Bunch’s calculated ‘groovies’ and the jive lady from Airplane! (“Cut me some slack Jack!”). Just like the Dude, Doc (Joaquin Phoenix, 2013's Her) has his own narrator from time to time voiced by musician Joanna Newsom, “Doc may not be a “Do-Gooder” but he’s done good.” Classic film noir quips and zingers also lace the late ‘60s slacker slang. We are never 100% sure where Inherent Vice’s haphazard episodes are going to lead us, but we know for certain we are going to hear some of the year’s juiciest dialogue on our exploration.
Pynchon’s novels are known for their inability to be summarized. One does not skim a Pynchon book jacket to see if the plot piques their interest. Spill a cup of water? You have a better chance of predicting where it decides to pool than where Pynchon’s story is headed. Let’s start with the main character, Doc. Doc is a low-rung private eye who holds court in a hospital doctor’s office. Doc appears to be the inevitable Los Angeles conclusion of what the 1969 gumshoe is supposed to look like. Plot the line from Bogart’s Philip Marlowe to Nicholson’s J.J. Gittes, and Doc may be their illegitimate offspring.
Doc is paranoid. Well, the entire city including all of its inhabitants are paranoid, but Doc may or may not be justified. Doc’s ex-girlfriend, Shasta (Katherine Waterston, 2013's Night Moves), drops by seeking help for a situation she is caught up in spiraling out of control including her current billionaire real-estate developer boyfriend, his wife, and his wife’s boyfriend. See why the plot can get a bit jumbled? Shasta then disappears. We meet the rest of Inherent Vice’s large and diverse cast through the course of Doc’s investigation trying to find out what happened to Shasta and the labyrinthine plot her story put us all into.
Guiding us through the complicated landscape is frequent Paul Thomas Anderson cinematographer, Robert Elswit, an Oscar winner for his work on There Will Be Blood. Shooting on 35mm film, reminiscent of the early-‘70s aesthetic, Elswit and Anderson show us a Los Angeles era you may not be able to find anymore driving around town. The stoner surfers on the beach are fading away while the bulldozed neighborhoods with over-sized billboards promising the latest in suburban ease take shape. Also take notice of a very quick but show-stopping shot of the 1969 hippie version of The Last Supper.
Perhaps it is the utter randomness of the entire affair that makes Inherent Vice so brilliant. Doc calls his Aunt who knows everybody to try and find the billionaire; she says he’s Jewish but wants to be a Nazi. A frazzled and alone young mother asking Doc to find her husband who everyone assumes is dead shows him a picture of her daughter. Doc screams at the first sight of it and then nods his head in all seriousness. While ambling into LAPD headquarters, some straight-laced uniforms nonchalantly shove hippie Doc into the gutter. These are really throwaway scenes and have nothing to do with the meandering, go anywhere plot, but these parts form a whole of one of the best films of the year.
Joaquin Phoenix, channeling a late-‘60s Neil Young, is the convincing heart and soul of Inherent Vice and proves once again he is one of this generation’s greatest actors. The rest of the cast is amusing but they fall in and out of our line of sight so often it’s best to just lean on Doc. Paul Thomas Anderson, a brave man to tackle an author most label unfilmable, not surprisingly creates another masterpiece. It is not surprising because that is what we expect Anderson to do and he delivers over and over again. Inherent Vice has its fair share of critics who shake their heads in bewilderment and consider the entire venture over-rated. Not so. I say embrace the weird, marvel at the gall, and get your kicks where you can brother man.
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