Never Seen It #241: Inherent Vice

Was it possible that at every gathering, concert, peace rally, love-in, blog, be-in, freak-in, here up north, back east, wherever, some dark crews had been busy all along reclaiming the music, watching 400 movies they'd never seen before, the resistance to power, the sexual desire from epic to everyday? All they could sweep up for the ancient forces of greed and fear? Gee he thought... I don't know.

Inherent Vice

2014

Paul Thomas Anderson

Full disclosure is that I am here because I have finally read my first Thomas Pynchon book, thus fulfilling the promise that every seventeen-year-old pseudo-intellectual boy makes to himself. We read Vineland for Boys Book Club. It was the first time in a couple years that I didn't get around to writing about the book club book on the blog (who would've figured that having to read a 400-page book in one week would cut into one's blogging time). I liked it. It was rambling at times, but that ended up being a strength more than a weakness. It reminded me of Slacker, in that the plot gets passed from character to character, baton-style, often without warning. It was occasionally tough to understand what was going on, but that's on me.

It made sense to get the first (and, until late September, the only) Pynchon adaptation into the Never Seen It queue as quickly as possible. I don't really know anything about any of the films on this list until I watch them, but Inherent Vice was mentioned a few times at book club, so that's the only reason I knew it was a Pynchon adaptation. I typically hate adaptations, but I've never read Inherent Vice (obviously), and, more crucially, I figured that this is the type of author whose words you use wholesale in the script. I was right, though I'll admit that I was surprised and delighted that most of those words were narrated by indie folk chanteuse Joanna Newsome. So you get the best of both worlds—the fantastically obtuse meanderings of Thomas Pynchon and the quirky, beautiful filmmaking choices of Paul Thomas Anderson.

I would imagine that the misgivings that folks had about Vineland a month ago are the same misgivings that people had about the film Inherent Vice when it hit theaters eleven years ago. Namely, that it was hard to follow. This is technically true, though with a few caveats. First, and probably more importantly, a movie being "hard to follow" is different than a book being "hard to follow," because in a movie, the visuals can carry you through. Inherent Vice is compelling and eye-popping even when you have no fucking clue why the characters are doing what they're doing. You can allow the words in a book to carry you—and Pynchon choose some crazy and compelling words, certainly—but it's harder to keep that engine running yourself while you're reading. A movie pulls you and doesn't stop unless you hit pause. (This is ignoring the idea of audiobooks, which is an idea that PoYB tends to ignore or at least stuff in the very back of the closet.)

Second, this film in particular seems to lean into the idea of it being "confusing," like that's by design. It's confusing to the audience in the same exact way that it's confusing to the main character (Doc Sportello, played hilariously by Joaquin Phoenix). The first time a name pops up, you attempt to file it away, like you know it's gonna be important later. The second time that name pops up, in a completely different context, your first thought is: coincidence, or does it mean something, man?? But that's also Doc's first thought! He literally writes in his notepad "paranoia?" and "hallucination?" We're trying to desperately follow what's going on, but that's not a flaw of Inherent Vice. It just means we are in sync with the protagonist.

That protagonist is probably the reason why this movie is Great instead of Good. It instantly becomes my favorite Joaquin Phoenix role of all time. I love how he plays the line between invested P.I. and absent-minded stoner. That's such a fucking hard line to walk, but he nails it. I laughed out loud at most of his insane line readings. My favorite is one that I don't even know how to put into print—he's inhaling laughing gas, a character we've never met walks in, he doesn't know whether she is another character's mother or sister, and he tries saying "mother" and "sister" at the same time... ugh, that's frustrating that I can't recreate it here, because the comedy was so fucking brilliant. 

This has a sort of similar feel to The Big Lebowski, just in terms of not-your-typical-sleuth trying to solve a twisty mystery through absurdist set pieces. But the big difference here, the thing that made me like Inherent Vice a lot more, is that Doc leans into the mystery, whereas Lebowski is pulled into it kicking and screaming. Lebowski doesn't care enough about the answers to actively seek them; Doc cares very deeply, and that rubs off on the audience. There were times when I didn't really know where this was going, but I wanted to see where it went anyway.

A similarity that I saw in Vineland the book and Inherent Vice the film was that the plots were linear, and very rarely returned to people we met or places that we inhabited earlier. I think this works really well for a film. Especially because so many people are playing heightened versions of characters they might typically. We only needed one sequence of Martin Short's insane dentist. But isn't it interesting how strong his presence is in that one scene? How easily the film can establish the character and then write him off just as easily? This could easily devolve into another book-v.-movie cliché, but why not—a book might have us asking "why are we wasting time with this character?" but a movie affords the actors space to make it time well spent.

So yeah, about the whole not-understanding-the-plot thing. It's really not that big of a deal. It's good to be challenged, it's good for movies to feature plots that aren't boring and meander and trust the audience to at least try, it's good to focus more on presenting an interesting image than a coherent one. And if this is really that big of a deal to you, there's always the Wikipedia plot summary. But I've read it, and even though I now understand "what was going on" a little better, it didn't nothing to change my opinion about this film. The mystery isn't the point. It's nice to learn that right alongside the characters.

I guess I'll let you know how the next Pynchon adaptation goes, assuming that we were being serious at book club when we were talking about a group trip to see One Battle After Another this fall. For now, I'm satisfied that this was about as great an adaptation as you could possibly pull off, especially from this author.

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

NEXT TIME: The newly christened Group E has chosen Deliverance for your viewing pleasure.