While Paul Thomas Anderson doesn’t have the longest filmography in the books, he certainly has one of the most impressive, boasting more than one genuine American classic on his resume.
The way he keeps putting out quality work after quality work without a single misfire is nearly uncanny. Each release from Anderson, then, feels like something of an event. How often is it we get to be on the front lines of new work from one of the luminaries of contemporary cinema? And that brings us to Inherent Vice, a fun, funny, and weird psychedelic detective story, as well as the latest worthy entry in Anderson’s estimable canon.
It’s tough to know what to make of Inherent Vice after just one viewing, other than the fact that we’ve just witnessed a great piece of cinema. Like many of Anderson’s other films, this one is capital-D “dense.” Yet Unlike some of his other films, Inherent Vice is dense not so much with heavy themes and introspection on the human condition, but rather with an intimidating volume of plot and information that whips by like a near-miss of a bullet (true to the novel that inspired it).
That being said, trying to explain to the plot of the film is something of a futile effort. It’s convoluted, complicated, and full of twists and dead-ends that keep the proceedings snappy and engaging. Unfortunately, all this also makes Inherent Vice somewhat tough to absorb. So while it’s not quite the type of gut-wrenching dismantling of humanity that was There Will Be Blood, that doesn’t mean it’s casual viewing, either. The story throws so much stuff at you, the unsuspecting viewer, that if you lapse just for a moment you might very well get lost in the particulars of who’s who to who and what’s related to which object that’s a clue to some person’s involvement of a disappearance that might be murder that’s really just fraud perpetrated by the government because they don’t want anyone to find out the moon landing was faked. (I made that last part up (maybe).) Explaining the whole thing is like a puzzle, and you’re trying to find which piece fits just so where. (All that being the case, I don’t want it to sound like a criticism, necessarily. Yes, it can be tough to follow — although some, I suspect, will have less trouble than I did — but that doesn’t necessarily make the plot bad, and I certainly don’t consider it a demerit against the film. What is plot, anyway, but an excuse for characters to exist? And Inherent Vice has some excellent characters.)
However, that doesn’t mean I can’t try to cover the basics. In Inherent Vice, we have Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix), a P.I. living on Gordita Beach circa 1970, a mythical haven of sorts where hippies and drugs roam free as the realities of the most modern modernity steadily creep through the surrounding Los Angeles that’s being corroded by conservative politics and corporate interests. Doc is going about his usual business (marijuana-enhanced P.I. work) when an old flame, Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterson) mysteriously appears, telling him about her new boyfriend, a land-development mogul by the name of Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts). The thing about him is… he’s disappeared. Not only that, but Shasta was let in on a scheme by Wolfmann’s wife and her boy-toy to kidnap Mickey and put him in a “looney bin.” Needless to say, Doc goes on the case. And from there, things snowball.
Regardless of the specific convolutions we’re treated to (which are all part of the fun), the film is a pleasure to watch. Since the days of Hard Eight, it’s been clear that Anderson is in complete control of his craft. He has a knack of creating worlds so rich, detailed, real — even when they encroach on the magical — and painstakingly realized that they threaten to overpower the great characters he writes. Or, more like it, his locations become characters, essential factors in shaping the psyches of the people who inhabit them (all of whom are played flawlessly by the ensemble cast). And in Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson is yet again at the top of his game. To say he creates vivid portraits of his characters would be doing him a disservice; both he and his cast work to make it seem as though we just happened to pop in on flesh-and-blood human beings during a particularly interesting part of their lives.
When it comes down to it, though, what the film boils down to is this: a contemplation of the fading of the American Dream (or some version of it). Everything in the world of Inherent Vice is changing, rapidly evolving around a cast of characters who are desperately trying to find something of the paradise they once knew, the unique vastness of American potential that is being overtaken and whittled down by the passage of time. It’s like a psychedelic Death of a Salesman or Glengarry Glenn Ross; but whereas those plays are tragedies of futility, Inherent Vice has something resembling hope in store for its characters. While the events of the film are largely circular, there’s a sense, however slight, that the glory days are not totally dead and gone.
There are certain filmmakers, some of the auteurs in our midst, who present a challenge to critics: At a certain point it doesn’t matter if their film is good or bad; what we see is them. Their films are their inner selves, an expression of taste or something deeper, made tangible. Their films, their art, is the concrete magnitude of the factors and elements that have molded the artist to the point where their creation is an inevitability. And here we have one of those filmmakers, someone who creates because he must, not because he is driven by the dollar.
But, as a reviewer, it is my job (one that is neither good nor bad but simply is) to relay my judgment of Inherent Vice: It’s a pretty good movie.
The film is now playing.
