I can’t pretend to have known what was going on throughout much of the runtime of Inherent Vice. Between the rich and challenging dialog that felt like it was spoken by people populating a very real planet that is not our own, and the nature of the story itself being a mystery, the audience are regularly left in the dark as far as exactly what is happening. It is perhaps equally remarkable, then, how much I enjoyed a film in which I rarely knew the impact or significance of the very scene I was watching.
It is as though Paul Thomas Anderson has created something excitingly, perhaps exhaustingly, fresh, out of genres like “detective mystery” and “druggy/hippy movie”, which couldn’t be more deeply mined in cinema past and present.
I’ve traditionally not been a big fan of drug movies. And even more specifically, such lauded films as Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, or really any experience I’ve had with the works of Hunter S. Thompson and the “gonzo” tradition, have been films I largely had no connection to or interest in upon seeing them or reading about them. I’m not personally someone who uses drugs, which is neither here nor there, except for the fact that drug movies often make me feel the way I do at parties when everyone else is drunk and I’m stone cold sober. I’m just having a different experience than everyone else. And that is okay, but it is at the very least one more barrier preventing me from connecting.
I also found Anderson’s last film, The Master, to be largely inaccesible, and despite it being brilliantly acted, beautifully shot, and having an air of importance about it all… I just had to ultimately admit that I didn’t like it very much. This was a sad place to be because despite my generally having more mainstream tastes than many of my film critic peers, I’ve long been a fan of Paul Thomas Anderson’s and had seen and enjoyed all of his films up to this point. So I approached Inherent Vice with trepidation. Here was a film based on a book that was totally unfamiliar to me, but known to be quite dense (Thomas Pynchon’s novel of the same name), adapted and directed by a beloved filmmaker who seems to have gotten increasingly inaccessible in his technique. If I didn’t like Inherent Vice, could I even claim to be an Anderson fan anymore?
Paul Thomas Anderson managed to sidestep all those barriers in rather ingenious ways. While it is challenging to follow the happenings of Inherent Vice, that doesn’t ultimately matter. This is in part because it is just as challenging for our characters to figure out what is going on, and that endears us and connects us to them. I also realized as the film played out that Anderson continued to use camera techniques that have been signatures of his. Classical compositions, long takes, excellent framing, and subtle movements… all of which seem to be the first things lesser filmmakers would throw out when dealing with psychedelia. Never once does Joaquin Phoenix’s Doc smoke or snort something and immediately burst into some type of feigned filmic trip filled with swirling colors and camera tricks. We feel the impact of the characters’ drug use in their dialog and in the very structure of the film. It is as though Anderson let his characters’ drug use seep into the bloodstream of his screenplay rather than assaulting us with trippy and overdone visual trickery. As much as I love The Big Lebowski… there are no bowling ally trip sequences in Inherent Vice, and I couldn’t be more relieved by that.
The affect that drugs seem to have on the characters’ words and actions in Inherent Vice are so interesting and well executed that the film feels like an experience I’ve never quite had before. And while I was never certain what was happening or how the events of one scene might impact what would happen next, I never felt disconnected from the film based on my own disinterest in drug culture. The mystery element really helped here. Doc (in another award worthy performance from Phoenix, who is becoming one of our generation’s very best screen talents) is a private investigator in California in 1970, and he’s involved in a whirlwind of a case when the love of his life Shasta (Katherine Waterston) returns after a long absence and seems to be in some kind of trouble. This shortly involves him in a high profile investigation when a rich man goes missing, as does Shasta. At first as a suspect, and then as a kind of hilarious partner, Doc ends up working the case alongside Detective Christian “Bigfoot” Bjornson, (Josh Brolin in his most brilliant and exciting performance since No Country For Old Men showed us he deserved to be “A list”) a holdover from the 1950s with a flat top and a much higher regard for the system of law than the hippy detective Doc. Their interplay and tension yields the film’s biggest laughs, and those laughs may even be hearty guffaws. Mine were.
Inherent Vice also manages to sidestep the “style over substance” debate almost entirely. To suggest that this largely impenetrable screenplay doesn’t have substance is to render your opinion moot. It takes mastery of screenwriting, not to mention total mastery of the actual events of your story, to build such hilarious and authentic characters. And just because audiences will likely have a hard time understanding all the events on their first viewing doesn’t mean the mystery itself isn’t fairly airtight. The more I think about what actually happened, the more it not only makes sense, but further fleshes out the characters.
Also in opposition to the “style over substance” debate is the fact that style can be substance. Inherent Vice builds its own unique world. A world unlike anything I’ve really ever seen. Sometimes when I watch films made in the midst of the hippy movement they still feel so exaggerated and cartoonish that they turn me right off. This film feels like it takes place in a more real world, where hippies and squares are just real people, than almost any other tale I’ve ever experienced set in or around that late 60s movement. But again… this isn’t the real world. This is Anderson’s (and perhaps Pynchon’s) world. So in that regard, I’d suggest that my being transported very effectively into another time and place, wrapped up into an alternatingly hilarious and dangerous investigation, is itself noteworthy. So yes… Inherent Vice is a stylish film. Classical camera work melds with phenomenal ensemble acting, note perfect song choices, and sequences of hilarity fueled by excellent character work, writing, and editing. All of this creates a spectacular film filled with substantive style. It all works together to take us someplace we’ve never been before, and that is an experience that can’t be overvalued.
Inherent Vice reinvigorates when it comes to Paul Thomas Anderson’s brilliance. I couldn’t be more excited to report that I had a blast with it and that I’m now anxiously awaiting his next filmic endeavor. He’s among the most revered American filmmakers of my generation and it was simply uncomfortable to feel so little connection to The Master, to the point where I was less excited about this film and more dreading it. And in spite of that unnecessary dread and my own pre-formed dislike for drug movies, Inherent Vice, as persistent and drug-addled as its protagonist, fought against my preconceptions and won me over in a big way.
Moto PT Anderson. Moto!
And I’m Out.