ARTS & CULTURE
6 Obiter Dicta
A Trio of Film Reviews, Currently in Theatres
Adventurous Moviegoing – Athletic, Historical, or Drug-Induced
kendall grant › staff writer
Inherent Vice (2014) 3.5/4
Sexy, seedy, and swirling, Inherent Vice is a hilariously louche and ramshackle psychedelic beach
noir, a jubilant spin painting in which the characters
have been scattered and splattered to the edges of
the frame. Like spying in a stranger’s sketchbook,
it’s radically befuddling, sometimes incoherent,
frequently inspired, always offbeat: a film about a
stoner which itself seems stoned.
When private eye Doc Sportello’s ex-old lady
shows up out of nowhere with a story about her current billionaire land developer boyfriend whom she
just happens to be in love with, and a plot by his wife
and her boyfriend to kidnap that billionaire and
throw him in a looney bin, Doc learns that “love”
is one word that usually leads to trouble. Sporting
a ridiculously stacked ensemble (Josh Brolin,
Owen Wilson, Benicio del Toro, Jena Malone, Reese
Witherspoon, Martin Short), Inherent Vice’s highlights include a superb Joaquin Phoenix (The Master)
as the perennially bewildered Doc and a careermaking performance from the unforgettably striking Katherine Waterston.
Based on legendary author Thomas Pynchon’s
exquisite stoner mystery set at the dawn of the ‘70s,
Inherent Vice has a whirling, blurring trajectory.
Trying to pare back Pynchon without killing the
joke wasn’t a challenge – it was an impossible task.
Noble “failure” or otherwise, writer-director Paul
Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood) has done a
remarkable job of replicating the crazy kaleidoscope
of crime, dope, and raunch the novelist conjured.
Indeed, the spiralling, wordplay-happy script never
quite resolves the difficulty of adapting the philosophical whodunit, but the film’s groovy sprawl is a
fine place to hang out for 2.5 hours.
With a cast of cha racters that includes surfers, hustlers, rockers, dopers, LAPD detectives, a
murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working
undercover, and a mysterious entity known as the
Golden Fang, Inherent Vice is undiluted PynchonAnderson madness. Daffier, looser, freer, and friendlier than anything touched by PTA since Boogie
Nights, Inherent Vice is so funny, so strange, so
charmingly deranged that it bakes your brain, in a
good way.
While its surface cousins are none other than
The Big Sleep and The Big Lebowski, Inherent Vice
is a slapstick noir homage that doesn’t just reward,
but demands multiple viewings, calling to mind LA
Confidential, Inland Empire, and Anderson’s own
Magnolia. It’s a head trip that plays like impure jazz,
with a reverb that can leave you dazed, confused,
and even annoyed. Packed with shitfaced hilarity and soulful reveries, it supplies good dosages of
stoner giggles and mixes absurdity with an air of
looming cataclysm.
An affectionate riff on the gumshoe genre and
an audacious stylistic leap for Anderson, Inherent
Vice is a wondrously fragrant movie, emanating
sweat, the stink of pot clouds, and the press of hairy
bodies. Robert Elswit’s speckled, sun-dappled photography and Jonny Greenwood’s score – ranging
from jazzy freakbeat to anxious pulsations of electronic analog – are expectantly delectable. Big, wistful, confounding, and wonderfully oddball, it’s a
film you sink into, like a haze on the road, even as it
jerks you along with spikes of humour.
Inherent Vice is not only the first Pynchon movie;
it could also be the last, best, and most exasperating
one that we’ll ever receive, capturing the heady vibe
of the novel while stumbling into the great cinematic lineage of fatalistic California “sunshine noir”
(The Long Goodbye, Chinatown), where the question of “whodunit?” inevitably leads to an existential vanishing point.
Certainly, Inherent Vice may be criticized as
only intermittently compelling, a little insular,
too cool for school. It’s drugged camp, all showing
and no telling, and may leave some viewers feeling
unmoored. Yet it’s gnarled and goofy, but in a studied way. Anderson brings us tangibly close to the
colours and moods and dream horizons of America
in the days of Hawks and Doves. Pynchon, Phoenix,
Anderson – these are towering talents, proven time
and again.
Inherent Vice should come with a prescription
that instructs the viewer to let the movie wash over
them like a cloud of smoke blown into one’s face. It’s
a film that’s meant to be experienced, more than
ê Inherent Vice, is the seventh feature from Paul Thomas Anderson and the first ever film adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel.
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