Movie review by Greg Carlson
Paul Thomas Anderson’s future cult film “Inherent Vice” is soft-boiled detective fiction. Bleary-eyed and hair-tousled, the movie is a pungent, shambling, meandering, and thoroughly hilarious shaggy dog story with a non-agenda traceable directly to the likes of Howard Hawks’ adaptation of “The Big Sleep” and its famous anecdote in which Raymond Chandler received a telegram from the director demanding to know who committed one of the murders. Chandler, of course, claimed he had no idea, and the legend has evolved into one of the most glorious arguments summarizing the value of the journey rather than the destination.
As the pot-addled private investigator Larry “Doc” Sportello, Joaquin Phoenix is about as far as he can get from the tightly coiled Freddie Quell, and the one-eighty feels like Anderson’s gift to his star. A mellow cat in a dog-eat-dog, post-Manson horror show, Doc may or may not be smarter than he lets on. A visit from his ex “old lady,” Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston), propels Doc, more or less, in the direction of a knotty/naughty missing person case, and the leads only lead to what might be described as more rabbit warren than rabbit hole.
“Inherent Vice” is the first big screen adaptation of Thomas Pynchon to be produced, and Anderson’s script preserves much of the novel’s tone and language, especially evident via the narration provided by Joanna Newsom’s Sortilege. The story goes that Anderson transcribed the novel’s dialogue line for line and the action scene for scene before deciding what had to be cut, and the result should delight devotees of Pynchon’s gift for Heller-esque monikers, spider-webbed pop culture allusions, brain-melting argot and the warped antinomies of L.A. law enforcement, the last perfectly captured by Josh Brolin’s Lt. Detective Christian F. “Bigfoot” Bjornsen.
The flat-topped civil rights violator is a perfect foil and nemesis to Doc’s filthy-footed hippie, and the symbiosis between the two unlikely bedfellows provides many of the movie’s biggest laughs and most satisfying exchanges. Bjornsen’s square jaw and square attitude clash with Doc’s permissive anti-establishment vibe, but “renaissance cop” and gumsandal are more unified than either cares to admit. Theirs is the movie’s most thoroughly understood and fully realized relationship.
Anderson’s deliberately slack pacing will alienate many viewers, but the relaxed running time allows the filmmaker to indulge in one of his greatest strengths: the non-stop introduction of fabulous faces in meaty roles, some of which turn out to be single scene appearances so delicious you keep your fingers crossed that Doc will reacquaint himself with these creatures later. Not unlike the gallery of misfits in Anderson’s other 70s Southern California period trip “Boogie Nights,” “Inherent Vice” showcases the auteur’s affection for actors, and the giddy exuberance shows.
In his entertaining video essay, Chris Wade makes a case for the “Slacker Noir,” a “mystery in which the protagonist’s primary goal is to extricate himself from the main storyline rather than somehow solve or resolve the conflict.” Naturally, the subgenre mash-up of tough, pulpy crime writing perfected by Hammett, Cain, and Chandler (dependent on procedure) and stoner comedy (dependent on inability to function procedurally) relies on parody, and in this respect “Inherent Vice” can be aligned with hallmarks including Anderson-hero Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye” and Joel and Ethan Coen’s “The Big Lebowski.”