Paul Thomas Anderson is the filmmaker that every avid film watcher geeks out over. Inherent Vice is critic appointment watching. However, this Anderson film is going to disappoint many of his big fans, in part because of the adapted nature of the story.
Inherent Vice is based on a Thomas Pynchon novel of the same name. Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) is a hippie detective doctor in 1970. One day out of the blue, his ex Shasta (Katherine Waterston) comes to his house and lets him know about an affair she is having with Michael Wolfmann (Eric Roberts), a powerful businessman. Almost immediately, Shasta and Wolfmann go missing. It is up to Doc and his reluctant police colleague Bigfoot Bjornsen (Josh Brolin) to solve the case.
Anderson clearly respects the source material, and he mostly plays it straight adapting the novel. However, some of the director’s flair makes appearances here and there, causing severe tonal inconsistency. Pynchon’s material is equally hazy and dark, with many characters displaying their own inherent vices. Anderson’s material tends to be melancholy and humorous. The meshing of the two leads to confusing scenes that will start out funny but because the material is serious clangs like nails on a chalkboard. If Anderson played it totally straight, or better, if he used the novel as a suggestion for his own creation, then Inherent Vice might have been more powerful.
Too bad, because the setup of Anderson and Pynchon leads to some really powerful stuff amidst the chaos. The jumpy story let’s Anderson play around with scene cutting to give the audience an impression of an unreliable protagonist. The Charles Mansony setting gives us a memorable Anderson character or two that kill the scenes they are in. Most importantly, Pynchon’s story has undercurrents of deep sadness, something Anderson is a master at extracting (especially evident in the Shasta/Doc scenes). Inherent Vice feels like a first try for Anderson at Thomas Pynchon; fortunately, the director pulls out enough from the novel that I’d be interested to see how they pair again.
Joaquin Phoenix was mesmerizing the last time he paired with Anderson (The Master). Here, he is just asked to be the glue to the story, a role he is more than capable of playing easily. Katherine Waterston can pull of sultry, seductive, and sexy in her sleep (also helping is how well she looks for the era); the big surprise is her deep emotional resonance: her scenes with Joaquin Phoenix are the highlight of the film. Josh Brolin and Owen Wilson (as an enigmatic informant) find their characters pretty easily and give the movie their all. Martin Short gets the showy Anderson role as a drug-obsessed doctor. Familiar faces also dot the story: Benicio Del Toro, Eric Roberts, and Maya Rudolph to name a few.
Inherent Vice taught me how in the clouds the smoker crowd lived doing day to day activities. Paul Thomas Anderson sure knows how to transport the audience to a place and time, and he succeeds again while adapting Thomas Pynchon’s novel. One thing PTA reminded me about: I can’t believe how shoeless the hippie crowd was. Apparently hobbits come from San Francisco in the 70s.