If it were not for Paul Thomas Anderson, there is a (very) good chance I wouldn’t be interested in writing about movies. It is because of his films that I take time to write for this humble little website. When I was a high school senior in 2009, my interest in movies inflated dramatically, and I watched a movie just about every night. I would watch a movie, go to sleep around 1:00, and wake up at 6:00 am to head off to school. I was a very dumb teenager, but weren’t we all?
One fall night, I booted up a film that I knew little about besides the fact that many people thought it was very, very good. That film was Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. I don’t know if it is completely possible for a film to change your worldview, but There Will Be Blood came pretty damn close for me. I had always stuck my nose up at what I perceived to be the ambiguous and snooty idea of “art” (“I’m just not really an ‘art guy’,” I would often say because, again, I was a dumb teen). But, for the first time, I realized that film is not just about telling a story, but writers, directors, actors, cinematographers, etc. collectively showing people their thoughts on the way the world works. I hate separating the medium into the categories of “movies” and “films”, but I’m going to do it here anyway, because it seems to be a thing that people do. If Raiders of the Lost Ark is what made me like “movies” when I was young, There Will Be Blood is what made me like “films”.
I write all of this to give you an idea of my adoration of PTA. There Will Be Blood and Boogie Nights are probably two of my ten favorite movies of all-time and I count down the days to the release of his films. But I have to admit that I had some feelings of trepidation when it came to the impending release of Inherent Vice. For the most part, I did not enjoy Thomas Pynchon’s novel that the film is based on. I laughed out loud several times while reading it and appreciated the rich prose to a certain extent but, on the whole, I found it to be a complete grind to get through despite its fairly modest length. It was a bombardment of ridiculous names, out-of-nowhere plot points, and convoluted to the nth degree.
It is the only Pynchon novel I have read and I have come under the impression that it is supposed to be one of his most reader-friendly works (which makes me weary of going within ten feet of Gravity’s Rainbow). I was constantly flipping back and forth in the book, my brain slowly disintegrating as I tried to make sense of a story that I now believe to be purposefully nonsensical. But this, is PTA, man! There’s no way the adaptation could be anything less than great, right? Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is great, but there is enough PTA in the Inherent Vice film to make it more watchable than the book is readable, especially after multiple viewings.
Getting Down to Canna-Business
It is 1970 in California. In a post-Manson world, pot smoking hippies like Private Investigator “Doc” Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) are losing favor with the culture at large. They are thought of as unstable, their communal nature stirring up fears of cults with sinister intentions. Inherent Vice is like many other films in that it utilizes interwoven plots to create its narrative. But unlike other films, it weaves its thread in a disorienting pattern with yarns that make the viewer’s heads hurt.
At its most basic level, Inherent Vice consists of three cases undertaken by Doc. The main case is brought to him by his ex-lady, Shasta (Katherine Waterston). She shows up at Doc’s apartment uninvited to ask him to look into a plot to put her new lover, real estate mogul Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts), into a mental hospital. Shasta believes that Mickey’s wife wants him committed so that she can take control of his fortune. Then, Tariq Khalil (played by the always great Michael K. Williams) walks into his office, which is located in the back of a medical facility – that’s where the nickname “Doc” comes from. Khalil wants Doc to locate a man he was in prison with who owes him money. Coincidentally, this man happens to be one of Mickey Wolfmann’s enforcers; oh, and a member of the Aryan Brotherhood.Doc’s third case is for Hope Harlington (Jena Malone), who believes her “dead” husband, Coy (Owen Wilson), may not be as dead as everybody thinks.
But do not be fooled, the film is approximately 450 times more complex than that. Your head will hurt within the first hour from the unceasing twists and turns and back-and-forth dialogue. I have seen Inherent Vice three times. The first time, I walked out think, ‘I have read the book and now seen the movie, and I still only know 60% of what really happened in that movie.’ The second time, I took copious amounts of notes (5 pages in a small notebook, to be exact) and had probably 85-90% of it figured out. Then, I decided to sit back and relax for the third viewing and let the individual scenes wash over me and it was so much more enjoyable. It was after this viewing that I recognized that this is a very good film that is meant to represent the cultural haze of the era by keeping you disoriented through the absurd and convoluted plot. If the title Dazed and Confused wasn’t already taken, it would have been a perfect one for this film.
Stoner-Day Night Live
Paul Thomas Anderson described Inherent Vice as his first comedy, and the humor is fantastic on a scene-by-scene basis. It is a very funny film focused more on disorientation, ambiguity, and mood than plot. Because of this, Inherent Vice at times feels like an incredible sketch comedy presentation, as opposed to a fully fleshed out film. It is a movie of quips and moments. Whether it is Josh Brolin (who takes advantage of every moment he has on screen as strong-armed cop “Bigfoot” Bjornsen, squeezing out every drop of comedy – both physical and verbal – he can) going at a chocolate-covered banana more like a porn star than a man of the law or Phoenix smoking a joint with legs propped in the birthing position in stirrups, there is a lot to laugh at when you let the haze take over.
Most notable is a scene in which Anderson lets Martin Short do Martin Short things as a horny, drug-loving dentist. It is great to see Anderson bring out the best in a performer like Short, whose talent is undeniable, but needs great directors to reign him in when necessary and unleash him when the time is right. No director gets better performances out of his or her actors than Anderson. Despite all of this, there is always this desire for some sort of structure lingering in the back of your mind.
I left Inherent Vice thinking less than I had after watching any of Anderson’s other films. This may not be a fair assessment, as he has defined this to be a comedy above all else, but there is an odd hollowness to Inherent Vice on the whole. Anderson’s previous works cannot be held against his latest, though, and it is nice to see a director of his caliber go out on a limb this unstable. It is a very funny film that captures the isolation and transition of the 1970s. This is the 3rd era whose mood Anderson has specifically tried to capture. There was the post-World War II disillusionment of the late 1940s and early 1950s in The Master, the realignment of culture from the freewheeling 70s to the cynical 80s in Boogie Nights (remember the less than uplifting way that brought us into the new decade?), and now the post-Manson, Nixon-ruled America trying to “go straight”.
The period wardrobe in Inherent Vice is phenomenal and all of the sets and locations are pitch perfect for the era. As usual, Anderson leaves no stone un-turned. The cinematography exactly as you would expect it to be in an Anderson film – beautiful. No director working today (along with cinematographer Robert Elswit in this and several other Anderson films) uses bright, natural light as effectively as he does. Most movies today are far too concerned with limiting light in an effort to be “dark” or “gritty”, but Anderson is able to bring out black humor evenly as the light shines down on the white sand of the Pacific beaches. There are so many whites in the backgrounds and bright colors in the foreground by way of costumes or furnishing. The film is a technical achievement, even if it isn’t really one in any other regard, save the tremendous performances.
Multiple Personality Disorder
The comparisons between Inherent Vice and The Big Lebowski are yearning to be made, but where Lebowski commits to the signature Coen absurdity, Inherent Vice sometimes gets stuck between its full-fledged comedy and Anderson’s pervasive sensibilities. This is especially true in one of the film’s final scenes featuring Phoenix and Waterston, where a dark turn is made and the manic tone halts and a sense of dread and disturbance grabs hold. Like all of the other scenes, this one is tremendous on its own, but feels out of place in this stoner noir. This often disturbing scene is one of the few instances where Johnny Greenwood’s score is really able to show any sort of personality. Greenwood takes a backseat to the era-specific soundtrack for much of a film, which is a tad disappointing since he has been creating some of the best scores for nearly a decade since 2007’s There Will Be Blood, but Anderson and his crew have a knack for constructing strong soundtracks from specific time periods, so it does not hold back the film in any way.
As with all of Anderson’s film, this is one that should be seen multiple times (and my thoughts on it became more positive as I watched it through multiple lenses), which will be a put-off for many but it is a very interesting experiment into a genre not too familiar to one of the modern era’s greatest filmmakers. It may not completely engaged for the two and a half hour runtime, but the film’s best moments could go toe-to-toe with just about any other. Unfortunately, Inherent Vice is less than the sum of its parts; parts that include tremendous technical and acting achievements. It may not be one of Paul Thomas Anderson’s better films, but there is enough there to make it a more enjoyable than not.
What did you think of Inherent Vice? What are your favorite Paul Thomas Anderson films? Let us know below!
(top image source: Warner Bros. Pictures)
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