Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Joanna Newsom
Larry “Doc” Sportello (Phoenix) is a stoner, beach bum,
private investigator and doctor living in California at the beginning of the
1970’s, concerned over the disappearance of his girlfriend, Shasta (Katherine
Waterston). Delving deeper into the mystery, Doc investigates a local land
developer, Larry Wolfmann (Eric Roberts) who has similarly disappeared and the
path that leads him to solve these two mysteries takes him into bizarre
territory.
Thomas Pynchon’s 2009 novel is the basis for the latest film
by director Paul Thomas Anderson. His second feature without his mainstay,
Philip Seymour Hoffman (given Hoffman’s tragic death), this time Anderson seems
to have clung onto Hoffman’s co-star in Anderson’s The Master (2012), Joaquin
Phoenix pulling out a memorable leading role that allows the mercurial Phoenix
to have a good amount to work with. This is also a favourable environment for
Paul Thomas Anderson but less akin to his more recent darker films such as The
Master or There Will Be Blood (2007) and more reminiscent of his earlier films,
combining the eccentric comic-mystery of Punch-Drunk Love (2002) with the
hedonistic 1970’s stylings of Anderson’s breakthrough, Boogie Nights (1997).
For all the comforting promise that provides however, Inherent Vice comes off
as a little disappointing.
Although he’s one of America’s most prominent modern writers
(a fame that admittedly is somewhat linked in with his notoriously reclusive
personal life) Inherent Vice marks the first film adaptation of a work by
writer, Thomas Pynchon and is said to be very close to the source material as a
film adaptation. Therein lies the film’s central problem. For as long as there
has been narrative cinema there have been literary adaptations to film, many of
them classics with the great Stanley Kubrick practically making a career of
them but there are clear differences in execution between film and literature.
Literature is, by its nature, a medium of words. A medium of description, of
dialogue and what can be read. Film is probably more than anything else, a
visual medium. What is presented visually is placed as more important by and
large than what is said or what is read. Pynchon’s writing style (and
Anderson’s adaptation of said style) is wonderful. It’s vivid, humorous and
full of abstract hippie turns of phrase. It’s fun to listen to, but there is a
lot of it about. A LOT. Given the film’s intentionally convolute plot, its
attempts to bamboozle an audience are also clearly intentional but after a
while it numbs to the point of just being noise. At a certain point, the brain
freezes up and is unable to keep up with the plot as you drown in a sea of “far
out” slang.
To a certain end, there are definite comparisons to The Big
Lebowski (1998). A film somewhat literary in its ideas (though not one specific
book, Lebowski owes more to the collective style of Elmore Leonard) mixing
together mystery and comedy with an eccentric So Cal noir vibe and a
drugged-out protagonist, even though Phoenix’s Doc seems more together to Jeff
Bridges’ Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski. The Big Lebowski wasn’t a huge success
when it came out and critical response was rather muted (Lebowski was a
follow-up to Fargo (1996), widely held up as the masterpiece for film-makers
Ethan and Joel Coen and so there was some disappointment) but has endured as a
very popular and critically acclaimed film. Pynchon’s prose is a heavy pill to
swallow at first and there are some moments which simply are too eccentric for
their own good (Martin Short’s brief appearance quickly wears out its welcome for
how intense it all is) but after a few tries to wrap your head around just what
the devil is going on, we might just see something to Inherent Vice that isn’t
quite clear yet.
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