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| Inherent Vice review: a free range freak-out for California dreamers | Inherent Vice review: a free range freak-out for California dreamers |
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| America makes no sense to the denizens of Gordita Beach, California, down by the ocean at the edge of the world. It's the end of the 60s, the death of the age of Aquarius. Everybody here appears to have mislaid the plot. Paul Thomas Anderson's gloriously rambunctious Inherent Vice follows the fortunes of a stoner investigator who finds himself hopelessly lost in a case he can't solve. Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) is interviewing witnesses in a frenzy and scribbling "Paranoia Alert" in his detective's notepad. It's clear from the outset that he's going nowhere fast. | |
| Inherent Vice, by contrast, turns out to be a ramshackle triumph; an colourful detour disguised as a crime caper, making antic hay from Thomas Pynchon's 2009 novel. Anderson's yarn arrived at the New York film festival confidently billed as one of the prizes of the autumn season, buttressed by an all-star cast and exciting instant talk of Oscar glory. And yet Vice, for all its virtues, is too wild, baggy and disreputable to play well with Academy members - and this is surely for the best. The film's natural habitat is with the deadbeats and the dreamers, in a bygone California where hippie freak-ins bloom like wildflowers and a menu at the massage parlour advertises oral sex for $14.99. They should screen it in a pop-up cinema in a city park, with complimentary reefers and a henna tattoo. | |
| Here comes Doc Sportello, sporting mutton-chop sideburns, a natty straw hat and a permanently glazed air. His duplicitous ex-girlfriend (Katherine Waterston) has embroiled him in a missing person's case and he's fallen foul of Josh Brolin's straight-edge LA cop. A real estate tycoon has vanished and neo-Nazis are suspected. "Beware the Golden Fang", Doc is warned at one stage - but does the Golden Fang refer to a rock band, or a boat, or an Indo-Chinese heroin cartel? Who can say for certain? "It's real name isn't really the Golden Fang," explains Benicio Del Toro's lawyer in a conspiratorial whisper. Except that this, of course, leaves us none the wiser. | Here comes Doc Sportello, sporting mutton-chop sideburns, a natty straw hat and a permanently glazed air. His duplicitous ex-girlfriend (Katherine Waterston) has embroiled him in a missing person's case and he's fallen foul of Josh Brolin's straight-edge LA cop. A real estate tycoon has vanished and neo-Nazis are suspected. "Beware the Golden Fang", Doc is warned at one stage - but does the Golden Fang refer to a rock band, or a boat, or an Indo-Chinese heroin cartel? Who can say for certain? "It's real name isn't really the Golden Fang," explains Benicio Del Toro's lawyer in a conspiratorial whisper. Except that this, of course, leaves us none the wiser. |
| Ask not where the film is leading; that's hardly the point. The plot amounts to a set of red herrings and besides, solutions are for squares. Instead the thrill is in the trip, which is often uproariously funny, dragging us through a shadowy landscape in which cops moonlight as actors, black panthers make common cause with the Aryan Brotherhood, and a gathering of four people apparently qualifies as a cult. "I don't belong here, man," murmurs Owen Wilson's double (possibly triple) agent, sitting beneath the Tiffany lamp as a series of nude revellers parade behind his back. But then again, who does? The flotsam of Inherent Vice have all lost their bearings, come unstuck. They keep drifting towards the ocean as if hoping the tide will sweep them up. | Ask not where the film is leading; that's hardly the point. The plot amounts to a set of red herrings and besides, solutions are for squares. Instead the thrill is in the trip, which is often uproariously funny, dragging us through a shadowy landscape in which cops moonlight as actors, black panthers make common cause with the Aryan Brotherhood, and a gathering of four people apparently qualifies as a cult. "I don't belong here, man," murmurs Owen Wilson's double (possibly triple) agent, sitting beneath the Tiffany lamp as a series of nude revellers parade behind his back. But then again, who does? The flotsam of Inherent Vice have all lost their bearings, come unstuck. They keep drifting towards the ocean as if hoping the tide will sweep them up. |
| Is it possible to identify a pattern to all this darting chaos? Heaven help us, perhaps it is. Because if Anderson's previous film, The Master, spotlighted the search for meaning in prosperous 1950s America, then Inherent Vice shows us where all those hopes and dreams eventually washed up, in the fracturing counter-culture of late 60s southern California. The centre could not hold, the old assumptions have unravelled and Charlie Manson is the patron saint of New Age seekers ("What would Charlie do?" wonders Doc's ex-girlfriend, attempting to inspire him when the detective's trail turns cold). Anderson has all manner of fun with the tale's whirling, blurring trajectory. His film is like a jubilant spin painting in which the characters have been scattered and splattered to the furthest reaches of the frame. | Is it possible to identify a pattern to all this darting chaos? Heaven help us, perhaps it is. Because if Anderson's previous film, The Master, spotlighted the search for meaning in prosperous 1950s America, then Inherent Vice shows us where all those hopes and dreams eventually washed up, in the fracturing counter-culture of late 60s southern California. The centre could not hold, the old assumptions have unravelled and Charlie Manson is the patron saint of New Age seekers ("What would Charlie do?" wonders Doc's ex-girlfriend, attempting to inspire him when the detective's trail turns cold). Anderson has all manner of fun with the tale's whirling, blurring trajectory. His film is like a jubilant spin painting in which the characters have been scattered and splattered to the furthest reaches of the frame. |
| Might Thomas Pynchon be somewhere out there too? Ahead of the premiere, rumours abounded that the enigmatic author had agreed to a cameo in the film, presumably tucked away deep-cover amid the rogues' gallery of figures who keep changing their names and their political ties. If so, I couldn't see him; the pot-smoke was too thick. But let's print the legend all the same. Conceivably Pynchon may have disguised himself to play the musclebound "spiritual coach" in the orange swimming trunks. Alternatively he could have been one of the nude revellers at the LA freak-in, or the Asian masseuse who makes her appearance through a small wooden door decorated with a cartoon vagina. | Might Thomas Pynchon be somewhere out there too? Ahead of the premiere, rumours abounded that the enigmatic author had agreed to a cameo in the film, presumably tucked away deep-cover amid the rogues' gallery of figures who keep changing their names and their political ties. If so, I couldn't see him; the pot-smoke was too thick. But let's print the legend all the same. Conceivably Pynchon may have disguised himself to play the musclebound "spiritual coach" in the orange swimming trunks. Alternatively he could have been one of the nude revellers at the LA freak-in, or the Asian masseuse who makes her appearance through a small wooden door decorated with a cartoon vagina. |
| On balance, though, I like to think he took the role of hippie Denis, who blunders into the dentist's office at a crucial moment, just as the cocaine is being prepared on the table. He's carrying a steering wheel in one hand and has a message that perfectly captures the film's off-kilter abandon. "It's groovy being insane," says hippie Denis with a grin. | On balance, though, I like to think he took the role of hippie Denis, who blunders into the dentist's office at a crucial moment, just as the cocaine is being prepared on the table. He's carrying a steering wheel in one hand and has a message that perfectly captures the film's off-kilter abandon. "It's groovy being insane," says hippie Denis with a grin. |
| Read more | Read more |
| First look at the trailerRead a review of Inherent Vice, the novelInherent Vice to premiere at NYFFFull coverage of The MasterXan Brooks interviews Paul Thomas Anderson on the 2012 premiere of The MasterJoaquin Phoenix talks The Master | First look at the trailerRead a review of Inherent Vice, the novelInherent Vice to premiere at NYFFFull coverage of The MasterXan Brooks interviews Paul Thomas Anderson on the 2012 premiere of The MasterJoaquin Phoenix talks The Master |