‘Inherent Vice’ Is Far-Out, Man

Paul Thomas Anderson has avoided making straightforward, Hollywood-style narratives since his breakout feature, Boogie Nights. Whereas another contemporary filmmaker, say Christopher Nolan, fills his scripts with page after page of deadening exposition, as if driven by a fear of being misunderstood, Anderson fills his works with ambiguity, loose ends, and, ultimately, plenty of questions over intent and meaning. As an author, Thomas Pynchon writes in a similar manner as Anderson films. Adapting Pynchon to the screen for the first time ever, Anderson chose Pynchon’s latest novel Inherent Vice, a book that transposes the hard-boiled detective stories of Raymond Chandler into the end of the ‘60s, the dark shadow of the Manson family obscuring all the peace and love, man. Like most of Anderson’s films, Inherent Vice can’t fully be explained after only one viewing. It’s a riddle crushed up with some high-grade weed, rolled up in an Enigma Zig-Zag, and smoked down to a roach.

Living the hippy lifestyle on Gordita Beach, Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix), hippy private eye, is surprised one evening by a former girlfriend Sasha (Katherine Waterson), “looking just like she swore she’d never look. Sasha tells Doc about her current relationship with Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts), a real estate mogul, and fears that she may soon be entangled in a plot to place Wolfmann in a looney bin. The next day, at his offices, Doc meets with Tariq Khalil (Michael K. Williams), a black militant recently released from prison, who wants Doc to track down Glenn Charlock (Christopher Allen Nelson), an Aryan biker who works with Wolfmann and owes Tariq some money. Doc travels to the Channel View Estates, Wolfmann’s latest development project. While there, Doc is knocked unconscious and awakes next to the dead body of Charlock. Brought in to custody by Christian “Bigfoot” Bjornsen (Josh Brolin), the straight-laced, flat-topped, borderline fascist, hippy busting member of the LAPD, Doc is held until his lawyer Sauncho Smilax (Benicio Del Toro), who practices maritime law, can secure his release. After being cut loose by Bigfoot, Doc is then called to meet Hope Harlingen (Jenna Malone), a single mother and recovering junky who believes that her recently OD’d husband, Coy (Owen Wilson), isn’t actually dead. Through a haze of pot smoke and blunt head trauma, Doc must try to connect all these pieces and make sense of it all.

Inherent Vice doesn’t quite look like other Paul Thomas Anderson films. Like The Master, Anderson shoots the film in a lighting that feels all but natural. In a film full of outrageous costumes and design from a colorful era, Inherent Vice never feels showy. The grainy film stock, the dirty feet of its actors, and astounding production design give Anderson’s film a textured, lived-in feel. Collaborating again as they did on The Master and There Will Be Blood, Anderson and Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood wonderfully incorporate music as the final layer to the film’s atmosphere. As well as Greenwood’s original compositions, the soundtrack varies between artists like Sam Cooke, Neil Young, Can, Les Baxter, and even the old Japanese hit Sukiyaki by Kyû Sakamoto.

As he’s always done, Anderson coaxes great performers from his ensemble cast, but once again Joaquin Phoenix steals the show. Since his I’m Still Here phase, Phoenix has delivered performances that are all greatly different yet still great in The Master, Her, and now Inherent Vice. In this film, Phoenix shows a side of physical comedy he’s never really displayed before. As the scowling foil to Doc’s hippy ways, Josh Brolin gives what is likely the best performance of his career. Scenes with Doc, Bigfoot, and a frozen banana are strangely hilarious. While the film is mostly the Phoenix/Brolin show, the rest of the expansive supporting cast are great, especially Martin Short in a brief but manic role.

Inherent Vice excels at the present counter culture at a crossroads. The hippy dream is already dying in the wake of the Manson family, and it will meet its brutal end with the reelection of Richard Nixon in a landslide. As much as Inherent Vice is about the many mysteries surrounding the life of Doc Sportello, it’s just as much about the victories of the system. The peace and love of the ‘60s gave way to the successive excesses of the ‘70s and ‘80s, as well as their conservative political counterparts. Most hippies wound up looking just as they swore they’d never look.

Anderson doesn’t hold your hand and tell you what you just saw. That with the subtle nature of the film’s humor may cause some viewers to be disappointed. It may seem like The Big Lebowski, but Inherent Vice is a very different movie with very different themes presented very different visually. From where I’m sitting, Inherent Vice is one of the most complicated movies of the year. It’s also one of the best movies of the year. I’m very much looking forward to taking another trip down to Gordita Beach.