Inherent Vice
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures, IAC Films, and Ghoulardi Film Company
The main problem with adapting Thomas Pynchon is that Pynchon has written some of the most complex, trippy prose that has ever existed. Just reading his short story “Entropy” will confuse and educate you on the style and tonality of much of Pynchon’s work. (Though that story includes aliens) A great way that Paul Thomas Anderson incorporates the madness and frivolity of Pynchon’s words is having a narrator to spout it off constantly. Tonally, this film is a time capsule of the seventies, complete with stock characters: the doped hippie, the hippie hating cop, and the gorgeous beach babe, maybe a leftover remnant of the sixties. Anderson, through a difficult process of adaptation, has truly shown the world the wayward complexities of Pynchon’s prose, and illuminated a frank, honest, and yet childlike character, who just wants to do his job effectively.
Honestly, Paul Thomas Anderson was never going to get his film nominated in the main acting categories. Though he has been nominated countless times before for his films (“There Will Be Blood,” “Magnolia,” “Boogie Nights,” etc.) this was much different than the ambiguous and yet entertaining films he has put out before. This film’s characters are archetypes, the plot is random and yet heavily structured, making it difficult to follow, and some scenes are so out of place that they are just too much. Academy members don’t want artful, hazy, loose concepts included in films that they give nominees to, at least in the bigger categories. They want determined performances, obvious and yet artful direction, and a plot that is both easy to follow and entertains. While “Inherent Vice” is about characters that are awkwardly strange (Bigfoot, Wolfmann, Bambi, Coy Harlingen, Japonica) they do little to follow their instincts, mostly falling into the lap of our protagonist as red herrings, as he tries to find the killer.
The performances are solid; undebatable. Joaquin Phoenix does wonders as the pot smoking, almost vagrant detective “Doc.” Since coming back to the world of the living after his stunt with Casey Affleck, Phoenix has taken on complex, ethos pondering, crooked characters, that both entertain with their density, and enrage many with their brilliance. I would have liked Meryl Streep’s undeserved Best Supporting Actress nomination to be given to either Reese Witherspoon as Doc’s girlfriend and the DA Penny Kimball, or Katherine Waterston as Shasta, a newcomer who enchants throughout her short time onscreen. The main reason why this film feels so long and conflated is all the side characters. It’s difficult to keep their motivations and reason for existing, straight. There’s a side plot involving the kidnapping of Harlingen (Wilson), there’s a shell corporation hiding a deadly secret and helmed by a cocaine addicted doctor (Short), a brothel posing as a massage parlor comes back to an old kidnapping, crazed cops are everywhere, a sidekick who does little to further the story (del Toro) adds even more narrative, and romantic entanglements between Doc, the DA, and Shasta complete a side plot, that at least adds character development. It’s a lot to follow, even with a two and a half hour screen time.
As a critic I found this film completely dreamy and thick with narrative prose that sank me in my seat. As an audience member, I was thrown by the length, the heft, and the illusive quality of the plot. If you can’t consider yourself to be a patient person, or even a person who would like Pynchon’s work, this may not be the film for you. Otherwise, I strongly recommend you give this ambitiously huge story a chance.
