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Thursday, January 8, 2015
MOVIE REVIEW
Inherent Vice
A 1970s L.A. Drug Haze, Filled With Phallic, Psychadelic And Other Realms Of Impossibility
Joaquin
Phoenix as "Doc" Sportello in "Inherent Vice", written and directed by Paul
Thomas Anderson.
Warner Brothers
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
FOLLOW
Thursday,
January 8,
2015
Before running purely on its own exhaust fumes, "Inherent Vice" is a stellar
celebration of novelist Thomas Pynchon's sunshine days of post-social upheaval in 1970s hedonist
L.A. It's an addicting, intoxicating trip through trippy-ness.
The cheerfully satirical noir features Joaquin Phoenix at his brilliant best in a frequent monotone
mumble, emanating from his pot-addled Doc Sportello, a private eye. Doc's
trying to solve a mystery to keep LAPD Bigfoot (Josh Brolin) off his back while
Shasta (Katherine Waterston), the ex-girlfriend of Doc, offers a riddle of sorts
to Doc, who still loves her. Their romance is sweetly observed in
Paul Thomas Anderson's hypnotic new film. It's the one aspect
grounded in a tangible existence. Much of the rest of the film it seems,
may not be.
Rooted in phallic sight-gags supplied by Mr. Brolin, whose box-cut
topped Bigfoot represents the authoritarian 1960s L.A.P.D., "Inherent Vice"
is an evocative comedy that engages in the art of arrested engagement.
Doc, a hippie representing the countercultural flower power 1970s -- a "Let The
Sun Shine In" kind of guy, perhaps, -- is the yin to Bigfoot's yang. As
suggested via one of Doc's early hallucinations, both are more alike than not
-- maybe one and the same. Though they'd never consciously admit it, both
Doc and Bigfoot so desperately wants to be the other. Doc wants to find certitude amidst
folly, and Bigfoot wants freedom from an emasculated, faux-masculinity that
overcompensates and traps him.
The women in their lives are the enabled whispers, trumpets or anthems of their
consciences, reinforcing them in their set ways. Neither man evolves in a
tale of a transitory L.A., defined by blood, power and violence. "The
Mexicans were uprooted from their land for Chavez Ravine," Shasta says, noting
Dodger Stadium. "Inherent Vice" operates as a series of
transitions of experience, from a hippie-fueled Last Supper, with pizza as its
trimmings, to a classic coke extravaganza in a dentist's office (Martin Short's
oddball character fits perfectly.) Doc would like
to buy the world some coke
and keep it company -- but all by himself.
What Mr. Anderson best depicts, atmosphere aside, is a gleeful collision of
substances and lack of substance. "Inherent Vice" is permeated by bland,
visceral descriptions of bodily fluids and the endless dry ironies and
contradictions in people's characters and lives. Seen through the eyes of
a stoner, it's somehow all the more profound, acutely observed, thoroughly worthwhile, wildly funny, and
"highly" entertaining. It's love letter tribute to 1970s L.A. all the way through.
The director knows Los Angeles, loves Los Angeles and lives in Southern
California. In "Boogie Nights" he caught its seamy side through porn.
In "Punch Drunk-Love" its melancholy. In "There Will Be Blood" its
rapacious, destructive human elements. Mr. Anderson's male characters are
all outsized characters in their own stage. All of them are rapacious
souls, starving and devoid of one more thing in their lives, or trying to keep
their own greedy engines running.
In "Inherent Vice" Mr. Anderson delights in
plays and players and the notion of scene and the juxtapositions in it.
The idea that L.A. is a cast of characters -- that a tai-chi maven could bump up
against a bikini-clad woman waiting to cross a street -- is more cosmic L.A.
maps-to-the-stars design than the nature of things itself. If you're in
L.A., "Inherent Vice" suggests, anything can and will happen. The random
collisions are a theme.
Role play is always at play. Mr. Anderson gets an assortment of classic
1970s L.A. types that could come from straight from Central Casting. The
"I'm here"-type entrances or introductions of players are often more interesting than their
settled presences -- an apropos
reflection of the superficiality of the Los Angeles some loathe and others
luxuriate in and live for.
Staging is something that Mr. Anderson, in his best depiction of L.A. yet, gets
thoroughly. Amid the illuminations of L.A. contradiction the moments of
truth in "Inherent Vice" arrive in low-lit or monochromatic scenes that further
seduce. When
Doc attempts to gain a foothold on rationality as he closes in on Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts), a real estate developer whose growing territories are
marked with blood, there's more fog -- a black and whiteness -- in a scene with Owen Wilson
(comically great here), and it's another fine irony, well executed by Mr.
Anderson's fluid direction.
Paul
Thomas Anderson's psychadelic trip is seductive.
Doc is trying to wade through a variation of impossibility, that of seeing through the deep fog in his brain, let alone the
fog of scandal and power he's ensconced in. This head trip is too big
for him. You are not always sure that he's enjoying anything he does, even
the pot he consumes. Maybe it's too weak. He wants to escape from the craziness.
He's Jake Gittes without the footing or the suits. Forget it Doc, it's
Actor's Town.
None of the characters on this L.A. stage ever
truly intersect. They are all on their separate and discrete stages trying
to gain a foothold in their own stardom, self-indulgence or irrelevance. All play roles,
and that's what "Inherent Vice" is about: illusion and the freaky, staging of
transitory players on it. Mr. Wilson's Coy Harlingen is a shape-shifter, and Mr. Brolin
wants to leave a life so desperately unreal. Sometimes in "Inherent Vice"
things are too perfect to be true.
Doc, a hippie still trying to awake in a waking dream opposite of that in
"Eyes
Wide Shut", is the disassembled star of his own high, and in him Joaquin Phoenix
has the best performance of his career. Here Mr. Phoenix is as intense as
he was in "The Master", but it's a different kind of intensity, one rooted in
full
commitment to an absolute nothingness amidst a conundrum of absurdity. Characters float
towards us, sometimes examining us as audience through the frame as if
we're the ones who are crazy. Maybe we are for indulging this
fantasy planet of men, women, sex, drugs and murder. "Inherent Vice" is the best kind of
masterful dope. I was sold, and I wanted
more, more, more.
Throughout Mr. Phoenix ardently stays true to the uncertainty and randomness of
Doc's adventures. It's the most intense performance Mr. Phoenix has given,
one completely and utterly different from almost everything he's done before on
the big screen. Mr. Phoenix, effortless here, making reacting natural
propulsive action all its own, works hard to make us believe Doc can even
function in his Willie Nelson doped-up world. (It worked at least for a
while, for Jimi Hendrix and many other musicians.) If the characters Doc
encounters are wilder than he, and Doc's high?, then how wild are they if he's
lucid? Doc may be paranoid, but it doesn't mean he's wrong about his
theories. The whole movie is an ingenious hallucination. A
deliberate, calculated one, with faint winks by the actors at the audience.
They've been playing us all along.
Perhaps the person Doc most resembles is
the
person Mr. Phoenix *was* in 2009. I thought he was out of
his mind then. But he wasn't. He was acting his behind off.
He fooled me. I suspect I wasn't the only one. The following year
came
the reveal. Mr. Phoenix mocked stardom,
reality TV (and David Letterman) in that '09 appearance, as he did in his
documentary with Casey Affleck. "Inherent Vice" does the same. The
film mocks stardom and its artifice, or at least the pettiness of those trying
to achieve it in their own idiosyncratic way. I was left with the
suggestion that nothing had changed. The 1970s of "Inherent Vice" is
reality TV before reality TV, and far more entertaining. Mr. Pynchon drew
it up well.
Joaquin Phoenix is a brilliant actor who doesn't get the credit he should.
Like many actors he burrows into types, but always does it better than almost
everybody. His Doc marinates in sensations, observations and the
experience of observing. The pot is his
Vitamin C. It's a lifeline he craves. If he can stay high
long enough Doc can solve whatever mystery there is to be solved. The film
however, doesn't care about mystery and resolution. Mr. Anderson just
shows us what Doc feels , observes and tries to make sense of on his random
adventures. Impossibility is the common sense of "Inherent Vice" and it's
wonderfully comical.
Jonny Greenwood touches and tweaks "Inherent Vice" with his perfectly enveloping
musical accompaniments. There are fine soul sounds (Chuck Jackson's
"Any Day Now",
via Bacharach, is great.) Joanna Newsom's cosmic, exaggerated narration is
priceless. Jeannie Berlin is great too, with a priceless line that
underlines the film's contradictions and comical ridicule. The whole
thing, this bonkers, off-the-wall carnival, even with its dragging final
half-hour, a mild-let down or let-off from this crooked elevators of this
dope-fiend odyssey, is marvelous.
Shasta, played with attractive wiliness and precociousness by Ms. Waterston, is
as much a drug to the film and its fixation on leggy dirty-blonde women as the
pot is to Doc. Shasta, a lonely figure smarter than those who've made the
big time, wants to fly to stardom and search for something better than the L.A.
she's known, but the City of Angels traps her too. All the while we are
trapped in the hilarious gaze of Pynchon's tooling. The weirder the view,
the better and more pure it feels. Which means it's working. Like a
good drug should.
Also with: Jordan Christian Hearn, Benicio Del Toro, Michael Kenneth Williams,
Eric Roberts, Hong Chau, Maya Rudolph, Serena Scott Thomas, Jena Malone, Reese
Witherspoon, Jillian Bell, Katie Schwartz, Michelle Sinclair, Martin Donovan.
"Inherent Vice", which opens on Friday in San Francisco and
expands its release across the U.S. and Canada, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association Of
America for
drug use throughout, sexual content, graphic
nudity, language and some violence. Its running time is two
hours and 29 minutes.
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