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PostPosted: Sat Oct 04, 2014 3:26 am 
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KATHERINE WATERSTON AND JOAQUIM PHOENIX IN INHERENT VICE

Thomas Pychon's stoner SoCal private eye novel gets a worthy if perhaps too-faithful adaptor in P.T. Anderson

As Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice begins it's 1970, in an LA beach enclave called Gordita Beach. Things start off when an old girlfriend, Shasta (Katherine Waterston) turns up at the pad of mutton chop, straw hat wearing stoner private detective Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) to beg him to help protect her new lover, millionaire real estate developer Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts), from being thrown into the "loony bin" by his wife to seize his money. Then Shasta and her lover both disappear, and Doc is led to a boat called "Golden Fang," which is also perhaps a drug ring, or a dentists' investment scheme. Things get more and more complicated and goofy. More and more characters, subplots, and suspicions arise, the film becoming, in the words of Todd McCarthy in Hollywood Reporter, a "dazed journey through the mash of corrupt cops, druggies, new age cultists, hookers, Nazi bikers, Black Power toughs, real estate tycoons, Nixonian politicos and free love chicks that was L.A. forty-four years ago." Over and over, Doc runs into ambitious, aggressive, but not entirely unfriendly LA cop Detective Christian "Bigfoot" Bjornsen (Josh Brolin), a kind of pal-cum-nemesis for him. The action is continuous and humorous, though also sometimes dark.

This is an accomplished film, as one would expect from P.T. Anderson, but a big departure from what he has done before in tone and look. Certainly a remarkable artifact, it's also something of a disappointment. The comedy is ultimately muffled, the point is obscure -- other than multiple homages to the period and to the noirs and neo-noirs that celebrate it, like Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye. Chinatown, and Night Moves. The Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker film comedies are also mentioned among PTA's many sources and inspirations, not to mention Kiss Me Deadly, The Big Sleep, and Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke. (Not, evidently, James Elroy, and not really much of a film as beautifully constructed as Chinatown, despite its mention.) Though word is there was plenty of improvisation on set, the basic plotline is faithful to Pynchon. In fact that seems to be the main problem: it's not clear what the director is doing other than playing around with his source material a bit. And having a bit of fun doesn't seem enough for a filmmaker this intense and this brilliant. Note also that those many sources are not noted for their good storytelling (The Big Sleep's action notoriously incomprehensible even to the cast and crew). A pity someone noted for neat and tidy construction, like Elmore Leonard, didn't serve as a model.

Inherent Vice is the first movie adapted from a Thomas Pynchon novel, and for you statisticians out there, it's also PTA's second literary adaptation and his seventh feature, based on Pychon's seventh novel. This is a film that could conceivably yield endless pleasures to the obsessive cultish re-watcher. First time through, for someone who hasn't read the novel (or any Pynchon novel) -- well, I have to say it's the most disappointing PTA film I've encountered, and I even managed to like Punch Drunk Love; I'm a pretty big fan. At two and a half hours, with bevies of characters with funny names played by interesting but sometimes not that well-known or easy-to-recognize actors (Eric Roberts, for instance: I didn't guess it was him). -- and involved in (stoned) film noir plot(s) that interconnect but keep spinning out and out and out, introducing new characters and possibilities in every scene or two, it's crazier than David Fincher's Gone Girl. Gone Girl felt crazy and over-inventive too, but on a more modest scale. I have a feeling that surely Inherent Vice is "better" than Gone Girl, that it comes from a more distinguished literary source, at least. But Gone Girl is more conventional and accessible movie fun, with the kind of surprises and climaxes you can latch onto and enjoy. Basically these two big long much-hyped new American movies are almost equally shapeless, or lacking in strong, satisfying narrative structures. Minute to minute and scene to scene, Inherent Vice is fun, but one starts feeling one isn't in on the joke.

Before I watched Inherent Vice the person next to me, another attendee of the 52nd New York Film Festival in which it was featured, told me that every good, smart movie has to have a subtext, and that (in her view) Gone Girl had fallen short because it lacked one. This is probably true. Fincher's new effort, accomplished as it is, is still basically just clever, expensive cinematic playing around with skillful schlock. What about Inherent Vice? Does it have a subtext? You would think that anything by a famous, certifiable post-modern novelist would, even sub-text on sub-text on sub-texts. But more than one of the reviewers of the book when it came out in 2009 noted that it's unironic, embracing SoCal's most stoner days of the late Sixties and early Seventies with nostalgic enthusiasm and looking on its bumbling (but not dumb) hero, the pothead, acid-dabbling private dick protagonist Doc Sportello with kindly indulgence. As Doc (the greeting "What's up, Doc?" is used once too often), Joaquin Phoenix, on mellow autopilot, seems much at ease. But he alsio seems unfocused, and lacks that intensity and precise timing he displayed in Anderson's previous film, The Master.

Mind you, as I said, the re-watching potential of this movie is high, and Anderson's brilliant use of actors makes for some amusing cameo-like moments. Martin Short is delicious as a cokehead dentist. It's fun watching Benicio Del Toro, Jena Malone, Reese Witherspoon, and the others come and go. Joanna Newsom’s readings of Pynchon's narration as voiceover provide a nice extra layer of nostalgia and irony -- or perhaps just adds sexy spice to the confusion.

Anderson may be having fun here. Actors in the film report a sense of chaos, but a pleasant atmosphere, on the set. This is Anderson letting go, easing up from the epic intensity of previous films. But there is not much in its place. There are funny moments, yes, but the humor becomes muffled. Jokey moments do not make comedy. And if timing is essential for comedy, and it usually is, Phoenix undercuts the humor when he's on screen. The film grinds to a halt with the stoner mood he carries around. Anderson jolts the film awake by introducing new incidents and new characters in every successive scene. But that's not enough. It's fun to be challenged, not much fun to be befuddled.

Inherent Vice, 149 mins., debuted 4 Oct. 2014 at the 52nd New York Film Festival, where it was screened for this review. Presented as the NYFF Centerpiece film, and its world premiere. Opens (limited), 12 Dec., and 9 Jan. 2015 (wide) (Warner Bros.)

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(For my full coverage of the 2014 NYFF see also FILMLEAF.)

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.


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