Roll the dice and and go see Inherent Vice
By Otto Pippenger
The Guardsman
Paul Thomas “Anderson’s Inherent Vice,” adapted from the Thomas Pynchon novel of the same name, is a wonderfully easy film to watch and a hard one to figure out.
With a plot centering around an ever widening conspiracy that only expands rather than explains, the film takes aim at the very concept of “solving” a crime. It addresses an end-of-the-sixties malaise that questions whether the hippy movement was laid low by government design or by itself. It also speaks to a more universal paranoia over whether any force has caused the disappointments of our lives or if the conspirators and powerful men of the world are as ineffectual as the rest of us.
The film is also hilarious throughout, structured as a series of escalations that some how remain resonant no matter what degree of absurdity they reach.
Set in Los Angeles at the onset of the seventies, the film follows part-time private eye and full time hippy Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phonenix) who is asked by his ex-girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterson) to prevent a plot to commit her wealthy real-estate developer lover to an asylum. Shortly thereafter, black militant Tariq Kahlil (Michael K. Williams, well known for playing the infamous Omar on The Wire) asks him to track down one of the real estate developer’s Nazi bodyguards. Next Sportello quickly finds himself framed for murder. The plot proceeds from there into more convoluted territory that reviewers and the director himself have despaired of untangling.
This film is about the characters and scenes which Anderson has brought to life with the same sense of the surreal yet important he displayed in Magnolia’s biblical rain of frogs. When the plot resolves it has not been solved by either the audience or Sportello. Despite the confusion at the end, viewers will appreciate being brought into such an intricate world during the course of the film.
The strongest aspects of the film are its ancillary characters, from Josh Brolin’s Christian “Bigfoot” Bjornsen, avatar of police brutality, and part time actor, to former pornstar Belladonna’s brief but impressive turn as the sister of a murdered Nazi with a fondness for Nitrous Oxide.
The plot is challenging, but every single scene is one that deserves to be viewed as its own entity. It is rewarding if you can give up on following the plot.
The film is shot on 35mm film, and recalls both visually and thematically Robert Altman’s faded postcard take on “The Long Goodbye,” both being films showing a well meaning detective from an earlier era unable to find clear culprits amidst the universal culpability of the oncoming Nixon era.
Similarly it also brooks an equally valid comparison to the “Big Lebowski.” If you have ever been captivated by a spectacular shot of LA, or have any interest in honest moral inquiry in a milieu that defies and negates it through force, ridicule, and pointlessness at every turn then there is no reason that this movie will not stand amidst its thematic peers as a film not just worth seeing, but owning. And hey, go ahead and read the book.