Movie Review: Inherent Vice

The descent is tangible. The fear is real. And the buzz is just about to hit. Coming off a film, or any work of art, that leaves you with aesthetic, creative and mental tremors is something to be yearned for and relished. It’s the magic elixir with no hangover. It’s the sweetest of drugs.

“Inherent Vice” is the story of groovy gumshoe detective, Larry “Doc” Sportello, voyaging through what remains of the 1960s counterculture in Los Angeles in order to find the location of and motive behind the disappearance of real estate mogul Michael Z. Wolfmann and his mistress (and Doc’s ex-girlfriend) Shasta Fey Hepworth.

That might be the mystery, but it’s far from the point. Just like the Thomas Pynchon novel it’s based on, Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation isn’t about justice or crime fighting, it’s an odyssey that encompasses the paranoia, bliss and absurdity of a generation.

After dealing in broad strokes and near-mythic characters in his epic examinations of greed and power in “There Will Be Blood” (2007) and “The Master” (2012), Anderson returns to the streets and curbs of American life in splendid fashion. Anderson has the most diverse representation of the human condition of anyone of his filmmaking generation. Coming of age when the indie scene was at its financial peak, Anderson has helped make art house epic and desirable again in an age that reeks of superheroes, wizards, robots and blockbuster desperation.

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Anderson, from the beginning, was confident in form and vision for exploring the stories and characters that lived at the edges of society and our imagination. Financial desperation ("Hard Eight"), the formation of the modern pornography industry ("Boogie Nights"), his hometown of Los Angeles ("Magnolia"), off-kilter romance ("Punch-Drunk Love"), the oil and corporate conglomerate ("There Will Be Blood") and the tantalizing poison of religion ("The Master") have all fallen under the lens of his camera, and Anderson’s unpredictability of subject and form are intoxicating to the eyes.

“Inherent Vice” is another accomplished chapter in his career. Not to rest on his laurels for his first literary adaptation, Anderson tackled perhaps the most dense and mysterious author of contemporary American fiction: Thomas Pynchon. Although “Inherent Vice” is the most traditionally comprehensible of his novels, due to the author’s use of mystery and pulp-novel convention, structuring a comprehensible visual narrative and dialogue from the book would be a challenge to any director or screenwriter.

Fortunately, Anderson was readily capable of translating Pynchon’s thick and lyrical prose into an appetizing visual splendor. The opening shot of Doc’s alleyway outside of his beach bungalow with a domineering, yet serene Pacific Ocean in the background is indicative of the feeling of impending doom dressed in a good vibes and a nice high.

It draws to mind Hunter S. Thompson’s prophetic ruminations in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” on the 1960s counterculture: “We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave ... so now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

That wave is crashing all around private eye “Doc” Sportello (played by Joaquin Phoenix). Rough-shod LAPD detectives, white-supremacist bikers, Black Power militants, surf rockers, ex-girlfriends, cocaine-happy dentists and mysterious international drug syndicates orbit around Sportello like feral animals. Phoenix gives an impressive comedic turn as the befuddled yet street-smart protagonist. Denied a deserved Oscar nomination for his melancholy and fragile turn in Spike Jonze’s “Her,” the Academy Awards ignored another engrossing and nuanced performance from Phoenix, who traipses from hippie and Zen revelry to violent desperation and despair.

Surrounding Phoenix is a cast nearly on par with much of Anderson’s former and formidable ensembles. Denizens of this neo-noir glimmer of L.A. include Jordan Christian Hern, Eric Roberts, Maya Rudolph, Michael Kenneth Williams, Benicio Del Toro, Owen Wilson, Jena Malone, Martin Short and Reese Witherspoon. Of particular note are the three main relationships in his life: Katherine Waterston as Doc’s missing ex-girlfriend, Shasta Fay Hepworth, Joanna Newsom as Doc’s narrator and neighborhood counsel Sortilège and Josh Brolin as the hippie-hating and emotionally stunted Lt. Detective Christian F. “Bigfoot” Bjornsen.

Waterston is illusive in emotion and motivation as this neo-noir’s femme fatale. She maintains power of Doc’s life and emotions when absent. But when she returns as a recurring presence in his life, she's void of connection, always lost in the next score.

Joanna Newsom is a great narrative construct as Anderson’s narrator and guide for the story and audience in Pynchon’s dense jungle of a plot. Newsom maintains an almost mythic ability to soothe and excite in her voice. As Sortilège, Newsome inhabits a character one can’t really identify as real or a fictional phantom created by Doc and Shasta.

Frozen bananas will never be the same after this movie, thanks to Brolin’s fearless commitment to the portrayal of the deranged and self-righteous LAPD officer. Brolin is at times a force of nature, always seemingly present in Doc’s insecurities and fears. And then in other exchanges, Bigfoot is a deeply flawed and insecure man, calling Doc like a possessed ex-girlfriend, checking in to see how he’s doing. Brolin handles a character that could easily drift into caricature and cartoon buffoonery with measured aplomb.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice” is a studied stroke of deranged and sublime pleasure. Though not as epic in scale and character as his last two films, Anderson’s masterful interpretation of Pynchon is worth celebrating. It leaves a subtle, yet lasting texture and impression like few films this year. “Inherent Vice” is a direct ancestor of Howard Hawks’s 1946 noir masterpiece “The Big Sleep.” Also a product of literary luminaries (William Faulkner and Raymond Chandler), the film has a detective trying to solve a mystery that never has a tangible culprit or tidy solution. It’s the sexual and ambiguous journey that is the point and not the destination itself. Anderson offers the audience a window into detective Doc’s world. We’re just along for the ride, looking out onto a seemingly endless sun-soaked horizon.