On Monday Paul Thomas Anderson joined Marc Maron on his wondrous podcast WTF. In the nearly two-hour interview Marc grills PTA on literally every film in his catalog – often asking him point blank – “what the fuck is THIS movie about?” It’s hilarious and completely sophomoric but it’s clear that PTA doesn’t get a question that pointed very often. It throws him, makes him wonder aloud what each film in his cannon has to say. The surprising thing is most of the answers are just as simple as the question.
There Will Be Blood? It’s about oil, power and religion. Boogie Nights? It’s about the porn industry that he saw where he grew up (Studio City, CA.) Punch-Drunk Love? It’s about love, man. Then, what did he say when you peel back the onion that is Inherent Vice? Spoiler Alert – I’m not sure PTA is even sure yet.
That’s not to say Inherent Vice is confusing but it is dense. It’s all at once a deconstruction and mockery of traditional detective stories, a buddy cop movie, a Hunter S. Thompson fever dream and a 1940’s screwball comedy. PTA keeps the rhythm languid, as if the entire production smoked a bowl before shooting. But – as it is with all his movies – the world is so vivid, so lived in and at times so breathtaking you’ll feel stoned leaving the theater.
Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) is a beach bum PI in the 1970’s. He’s a wake and baker, lunch and baker…frankly he’s an anytime-baker. One day his old girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston) shows up, paranoid – but not from a trip, she has a seriously ungroovy dude after her and needs to split. Soon enough Shasta is missing and Doc is unraveling a wildly deep, dark, dank world of corruption, double and – dare I say – triple crossing.
It’s a fool’s errand to attempt on any level to do the film’s plot justice in under-800 words. No matter, IV has very little time for traditional machinations anyway. It’s much more about the mood of the late 1970’s and each characters reaction to it. Many outrageously named characters come and go with ultimately little recourse but each react to casino online the dichotomy of this era. Doc is our bleary-eyed arbiter of hippy-dum, holding onto the fleeting flower power that formed him. Lt. Bigfoot Bjornsen (played with tightly wound verve by Josh Brolin) is the come-down to Doc’s oh so glorious high. Just being in the presence of Doc repulses Bigfoot leading to hysterical 1-1 interactions between the two as they push and pull under the weight of their own world views.
Having never been a Thomas Pynchon reader I’m coming at the material fresh. Even so, the film”s narrative has an authorly quality. PTA adapted it alone but massive passages of dialogue are lifted from the text which gives the film a slight lack of ownership that is so apparent in his other films. It’s not a bad feeling necessarily just a jarring one compared to his other micro-focused works.
It hit me about a third of the way through Inherent Vice that this may be the closest PTA ever comes to a traditional comedy. And I dug it. If you can get on board for a wild trip and jive with what the man is servin’ it’s groovy to be in the world of one of America’s greatest auters. And even when PTA has built expectations to such astronomical heights sometimes just chillin’ and havin’ a good time is good enough man.
Rating: 
