Inherent Vice

In 1970, drug-fueled Los Angeles detective Larry "Doc" Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) investigates the disappearance of a former girlfriend.

Whether or not Los Angeles was like this in 1970 does not matter. For the sake of the story, this is the world Doc Sportello lives in, and it is one crazy place: drug cartels, ouija boards, crooked cops and hippie cults.

The problem with this film, and what seems to turn most people off, is the very complex plot. Following in the same vein as "The Long Goodbye" or "The Big Lebowski", this is a world where many seemingly unrelated worlds intersect. And it is brilliant. Unfortunately, it is very hard to follow and that will ruin it for many people. Or, at best, it will make them want to watch it two or three times until it all starts to click.

I think Anderson is amazing, one of the few directors of our time who can touch film-makers like Kubrick. But while the film is full of wonderful camera-work, production design and performances, and there are some very funny scenes, I couldn't quite get my head around the thing. I get that's the point, and that while Thomas Pynchon's novel has the outer form of a detective story, it's not really about plot but about mood and playful mind-games, details and surreal moments. But somehow the lack of tonal focus made it hard for me to get lost in it's rhythms.

Feeling like a goofy comedy one minute, a subtle satiric elegy for a hippie age that was never quite as fun as we'd like to remember the next, and a story driven detective noir the next, I found myself not getting engaged in the way I kept wanting to.

Given the talents involved, my huge admiration for Anderson, and the generally great critical reaction, I'm open to the idea that I'm missing something. And there are a lot of moments that echo with me, from Josh Brolin's truly gonzo, but yet also somehow understated performance as an uptight, straight-laced cop who is a lot more complex and messed up then he'd like to admit, to the very long single take seduction scene between Joaquin Phoenix and Katherine Waterston that is uncomfortable, sexy, repellent, real, a fantasy and beautifully acted all at the same time.

It's certainly a film worth seeing, but for the first time with an Anderson film I felt locked on the outside looking in, feeling a little sheepish and a little dumb.

"I never remember the plots of movies. I remember how they make me feel."

• Paul Thomas Anderson, 10/5/2014, "On Cinema Masterclass", New York Film Festival

It's nearly impossible to talk about Inherent Vice, PTA's new stoner noir, without providing some context.

It's crucial to know, for example, that the film is an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's 2009 novel. It's also crucial to understand the novel's subject matter and setting: a sprawling conspiracy, which may or may not exist, that involves a real estate mogul, hippies, the LAPD, and a heroin cartel named the Golden Fang, all against the backdrop of Southern California in 1970, the year after the Manson Family Massacre. Some familiarity with Pynchon's literary output–both his prose style and unique narrative structure–is helpful as well, almost required. Finally, to really grasp Inherent Vice, it'd be useful to know PTA's relationship with plot, which can best be understood by reading the quote above and thinking about the trajectory of his career (a career marked by films that have become more and more "plotless").

So, when we put all of this together, what do we get? To a large degree, we get exactly what we should have expected: a filmmaker creating a nearly-flawless adaptation of a nearly-impossible-to-adapt author. Wacky humor, a never ending stream of new characters (some of whom are neither introduced nor explained thoroughly), dialogue that sometimes feels like it's written in code, abrupt jumps between characters and scenes, unapologetically deep cultural references, long and wordy voice-overs, seemingly random occurrences that don't tie together, and a continual sense of paranoia that grows from the viewer (or reader's) inability to decipher what's real and what's imagined. Make no mistake, at the center of Inherent Vice is PTA's unyielding dedication to Pynchon's vision and his desire to put that vision, in full, on screen.

But, PTA's decision to remain so faithful to Pynchon's imagination comes with its faults. The only character we really feel invested in is Doc, the stoner, private eye protagonist played by Joaquin Phoenix (Phoenix is in almost every scene and deserves another Oscar nomination for his fantastic work). The other characters end up feeling peripheral, almost like they exist only to drive forward the narrative of Doc's detective search rather than exist as individual characters we should care about. Even Doc's love interest, Sashta, who shows up at Doc's house in the first scene and asks for a favor that sets in motion the goose chase at the heart of the film, is difficult to care about. Her presence in the film, while strong in certain moments, doesn't seem to stick because it's so ephemeral, dreamy, and enigmatic.

This is a flaw sometimes overlooked in novels (see DeLillo or Foster Wallace in addition to Pynchon), but it often distances viewers when done in films. More importantly, it's a criticism totally inapplicable to PTA's previous films. Boogie Nights and Magnolia also centered around ensemble casts, but in those films the viewer deeply cared about each and every character, whether it was Quiz Kid Donnie or pornographer-turned-speaker- salesmen Buck. The difference: PTA creating his own characters from scratch versus PTA capturing another artist's vision in uncompromising fashion.

It's also important to remember that many of Inherent Vice's viewers haven't read the book. I can't imagine how wild of a ride Inherent Vice will be for them. It'll certainly be a confusing experience, somewhere between trippy and surreal, almost Lynchian in its opaqueness and lack of narrative continuity. Perhaps it can best be summed up by the words of a girl who sat behind me at PTA's "On Cinema" talk at the New York Film Festival the day after Inherent Vice's world premiere: "It was good, but don't ask me to tell you what happened." This confusion and general inaccessibility will turn people off, much like The Master left some people enamored and others disappointed and unfulfilled.

Another important piece of context surrounding Inherent Vice, as always with highly anticipated films, is the prism of expectation. Many people predicted (and, I think, hoped) that Inherent Vice would be a return to form for PTA, a Boogie Nights Redux of some sort. They anticipated that the similarities between the films–1970's content, drugs, an ensemble cast–would unlock a time machine that catapulted us back to the earlier stages of PTA's career. Others, myself included, thought the film would split the difference between The Big Lebowski and L.A. Confidential, perfectly balancing the stoner laughs with tense and mystery-driven drama. These expectations were only furthered by Warner Brothers' decision to release a late and deceptively cut trailer, which I can only assume was a marketing decision made in reaction to The Master losing money at the box office.

But, the simple reality of PTA's films is that they are so good and so unique precisely because they can't be predicted. In that sense, Inherent Vice is no different. It's a ludicrously ambitious film crafted by a director who appears more interested in challenging himself as a filmmaker than anything else. It's a film that's long on dialogue but short on plot (shortest on plot of all PTA's films, which may shock some people, especially those who weren't fond of The Master). It's a film that, for two and a half hours, takes its viewer on a journey, leisurely meandering through a certain time and place, all while fluctuating in tone from romantic to paranoid to stoned. While Inherent Vice is neither what some thought it would be nor what many wanted it to be, it's exactly what it is, and more importantly, perhaps it's exactly what it had to be.

Glad not to be a professional film critic - I would not know what to say. Great casting. Fun costumes. Some scenes give you the feeling of other scenes you might have seen somewhere else. Kind of like an instant classic rehash. Do not make the mistake to follow the plot. There is a higher chaos beneath us all. Probably good material to test the effects of various psychoactive substances on people who make an effort of connecting dots when watching movies. You do not need substances though. There are dots all right but there is no coherent picture that is good for everybody. Any connection you draw is fine. Maybe that is the message.

I usually follow the guidance of amazon (I believe it to be the owner of this site) and try to give points between one and ten. Impossible here. I consider that the film's quality.

This film tells the story of a private detective in Los Angeles who investigates the disappearance of his former girlfriend and a rich real estate tycoon.

"Inherent Vice" has a super incoherent plot. Not only do I not understanding a thing while watching it, I still don't understand it even when I paused the film and read the plot synopsis regularly. So the detective investigates the case, then somehow the case is completely forgotten because a prostitute tells him about a shipment of heroin. There are just far too many characters in the film, each one of them doing their little bit in the story that does not glue together as a whole. Every subplot gets mentioned them dropped, without any satisfactory resolution. This film is a tremendous waste of time!