So here's my official write up on Inherent Vice. First thing I want to say is that I think this movie is virtually un-spoilerable.
If someone put a gun to my head and asked me to give a play-by-play of IVs plot Id be a dead man. Ill need to watch it at least seven more times with subtitles before Ill have the vaguest idea what was going on. Even beyond the plot the movie is difficult to describe. The word beguiling has been used and is actually pretty apt. Its hard to put your finger on, but thats maybe the point, because Doc has a hard time putting his finger on anything beyond his lost love for the duration of Inherent Vices running time. The beauty is that it doesnt even matter if youre able to follow the story what was most compelling to me was the always unexpected, dissonant ways the characters Doc comes across behaved within their vignettes. A scene is moving this way and a character is moving that way instead. Their life, their full, fleshed out life, memory, experience, all that, is what youre watching, a specific slice of it shown just because it happens to coincide with the plots need to show a character at that moment, but their helping to unravel the mystery doesnt really seem to matter. We get to see them, instead. This has to have the best acting in any PTA movie, often Cassavetes level, an unprecedented immediacy in comparison to his previous films, and the detective story seems more an excuse for observation, a way to get Doc mobile running around Los Angeles and into the presence of all these insane characters to fix his eyes on whats-going-on-with-them as humans regardless of their part within the crime thread.
The Master was beautiful but visually this is another horse entirely, a step beyond. It LOOKS like a movie straight up made in the 70s even moreso than Boogie Nights, and if I was unfamiliar with all names involved and happened to see it Id probably think it actually was. The lighting, the textures, the furniture
how did he do that? It boggles my mind. I wasnt alive 40 years ago, but even if it isnt period accurate it definitely doesnt look like now, and it doesnt look like a pastiche. I need to rewatch the trailer but I feel like it was color timed to appear more like a normal movie, the picture I saw up on that screen felt such a departure from it. Maybe the trailer difference was my imagination. Whatever.
Inherent Vice starts off like something in the tonal vein of Love Streams and morphs, with the momentum of a hawaiian slide guitar, into a mad, mindblowing labyrinth of cryptic doublespeak and double entendres. Its perverted as hell, thank god (Thank GOD), and DENSE, so many things going on and to pick up on repeat viewings. Its a slipstream of madcap antics and unbeatable melancholy. Who is who and why is why and how is what I couldnt tell you. I dont think I care that I couldnt tell you. The acting is SO GOOD though, that even when youre bewildered, when characters like Martin Shorts Doctor Blatnoyd are speaking almost incoherently but Doc seems right there with them and to have some clue whats going on, you believe them so fully as people, their renderings feel so real, that it doesnt feel like the scene doesnt make sense, but that youre privy to an actual event that took place and just havent cracked the code. I loved that. Even if I never make sense of it I could watch it again and again an endless supply of deranged company to hang out with.
In some ways Inherent Vice feels like a fraternal twin of The Master, conveying similar skepticism about Americas ideals, about its skeptics alternatives, and of any answers in general, and like The Master, at its core the movie is about a love that got away - love the only thing that will save you, and love as a drug thats worth taking because sobriety in this life without a point doesnt seem to be worth it. Love as a drug
a loved life worth living
sobriety as a life without love
drugs as a substitute for that lacking love
something or other
Ironic that this is the film of PTAs that has a big studio backing behind it WB is out of their minds. Yeah it has humor, but its his least commercial movie by a mile, and I wonder what the **** is going to happen come day one of its wide release when word of mouth spreads. The trailer is SO OFF I dont even know what to relate the movie to as Ive never seen anything else like it. Long Goodbye this Big Lebowski that the more I think about these comparisons they are not even close. Ill say this - the movie makes you feel like PTA is the only real filmmaker out there right now making anything new or pushing any boundaries to show you something you havent seen before. You realize how rote everything else is in comparison, how many patterns most movies follow even in terms of art film style.
