Inherent Vice captures an era of dark change in America with twisty, funny detective story
January 9, 2015
It sounded like staid material in 2009 for author Thomas Pynchon when he set a detective story called Inherent Vice in 1970, a time when Flower Power had faded, in Los Angeles, a city in the state that once defined the hippie movement. But Pynchon focuses on creating a marvelous morality tale with great humor and witty layers of experience, perfect for the author known for his postmodernist writing. The time period captures a mythic moment in American history. Ideas of utopia and slogans like “make love not war” that once defined a generation had been overshadowed by the hedonism of Woodstock, the horror of the Kent State shootings, the quagmire of Vietnam, not to mention the Manson murders, which are often referenced in the text. The post-war product of the baby boom were coming of age into an era of idealism and were then suddenly hit with disillusionment. Look up the definition of the phrase “inherent vice,” and it seems a perfect title for a book seeking to examine the transition between the ideal 1960s and the grim reality of the early 1970s.
Now director Paul Thomas Anderson has adapted Inherent Vice, becoming the first director to take on Pynchon, an author whose works have often been called “dense” or “complex.” Working for the first time from a novel instead of an original script, Anderson takes Pynchon’s story and enriches it. After his amazing 2013 movie The Master (The Master harnesses cinema’s power to maximal effect), the auteur once again takes on another mythic era of America to offer another superficial take on the cultural landscape that actually shrouds a compelling tribute to people looking for purpose in the face of nihilism.
Also for a second time in a row, Anderson is working with arguably the greatest American actor of the 21st century, Joaquin Phoenix. He plays Larry “Doc” Sportello, a private detective with a serious marijuana habit. Sporting momentous mutton chops to rival Hugh Jackman’s in the X-Men flicks, Phoenix gives Doc an endearing bumbling character that sometimes feels like a tribute to Jeff Bridges’ Dude in The Big Lebowski. Tasked by his ex-girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston) to intervene in the looming kidnapping and institutionalization of her current lover, real estate mogul Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts), by his wife Sloane (Serena Scott Thomas), Doc finds himself soon over his head. The story twists and turns as more people enter the picture and Doc takes notes in his little pad with big letters like “paranoia alert” and “something Spanish.”
Throughout the film Doc suffers beatings and uncalled for detentions at the hands of his hippie-hating nemesis LAPD Lt. Detective Christian F. “Bigfoot” Bjornsen (a marvelously intense Josh Brolin). As the film’s most dynamic character, Bigfoot is not just a straight-edge policeman with a disdain for hippies. He also fancies himself a renaissance man who moonlights as a bit actor on TV shows and even the real estate commercials for Wolfmann that slyly lampoon hippie speak while celebrating it. Wearing a bad Afro wig and sunglasses, he tells Doc, “
Right on” from a TV screen before — in a moment of magical realism referring to Doc’s high — his face fills the screen, and he says, “What’s up, Doc?” At every turn, Bigfoot tries to undermine Doc or even arrest him. However, he is also an ally, like a big brother beating on a younger sibling. Though married with children, in a sly, comic dramatic twist, the film later reveals Bigfoot hardly has any love at home, and he and Doc have a bond that eclipses their differences. It’s one of the greatest relationships you will see in the movies this year, and it gives this byzantine comedy its warm heart.
The film features voiceover narration by Sortilège, (a pleasantly benign Joanna Newsom), a friend of Doc’s who provides the first cue in how this film presents its themes through its characters. The film opens with a stationary shot down the nondescript alley to Doc’s beach shack he calls home. The title card reads, “Gordita Beach, California. 1970.” It appears to be sunrise and the only thing on the soundtrack is the sound of the surf. Then there’s a cutaway to a woman’s face backlit by brilliant sunlight. As if born of the California sun, a golden glow shrouding her blond head of hair,
Sortilège sets up the film’s story. She says Shasta “came along the alley and up the back stairs the way she always used to.” It’s a surprise visit after over a year-long absence from his life. Though Shasta’s entrance harkens to the past, somewhere around 1968/69, this is not the same woman. She arrives a changed woman “all in flat land gear … looking just like she swore she would never look.” While Sortilège appears in a halo of light, Shasta sneaks in and emerges from the nocturnal shadows with a whisper.
Things do change in this world, as Sortilège notes after Doc and a friend join her to share some pizza and beer. She gets vibes that Doc’s mind is racing about the unexpected visit of Shasta, a former intimate who had transformed in a way he never anticipated, so she recommends he do a little change. “Change your hair, change your life.” When he asks her what he might do with his hear, she suggests, “follow your intuition.” Then there’s a smash cut to a close up of Doc’s face with his hair in twists to enhance the curls of his already curly hair.
Change and surface presentation are a big part of Inherent Vice. Everybody is someone else below the surface or in a state of flux — well, maybe everyone except our protagonist Doc. It’s a role that won’t stand out much for Phoenix, which is a shame because he is terrific as a man caught in stagnation yet hoping for some connection. Some will find the developments in Doc’s case confusing as characters enter and leave the narrative. Though other characters come in and out of the picture, there is always something
unforgettable about them. Maya Rudolph (Anderson’s wife) plays Doc’s alert secretary, a very aware being never short observation. Owen Wilson plays a musician lost in his own myth, and there’s even Martin Short who plays a dentist with a coke habit, a taste for young, runaway girls and nefarious connections to a drug cartel called “The Golden Fang.” I’ve left out about seven to 10 other import recurring characters. But it doesn’t matter. As the film falls further down a rabbit hole of narrative that will confuse many hoping to keep the story straight, the viewer should keep in mind that this is a detective story with a pothead hippie as the protagonist.
Beyond dialogue and characterization, as ever with Anderson, he never misses a chance to define his characters visually. Though The Master had an intensely measured pace and a precise mise-en-scène, consistently shot with an exquisite and meticulous quality by Mihai Malaimare Jr., Anderson has called back Robert Elswit to photograph his vision, and the result is not only wonderfully 
evocative of ‘70s era TV and movies but also speaks to the film’s themes of the unknown change ahead. Much of the camera movement is handheld, and many scenes are shot against the light. On the other hand, there are scenes deeply saturated by shadow and darkness, especially as the film barrels through some more nerve-racking moments for Doc, as he gets deeper and deeper into trouble with more dangerous characters, from Aryan brotherhood bruisers to drug dealers connected with The Golden Fang.
As ever with Anderson, the music is brilliantly curated. The choice early in the film to not use some tired, overly familiar pop song from the era but an underground hit by the Krautrock band Can is inspired. I don’t say this because I’m a big Krautrock fan. The song, in this case “Vitamin C,” though not entirely accurate to the era (it was released in 1972) has deeper resonance because it represents a new form of music born of a need to revolt against the establishment, even if it came about in Germany. It also helps that it’s a good tune, abstract yet catchy, involving enough standard rock instruments and a chirpy organ to be cool but quirky.
Anderson has also once again hired Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood to provide a score for the film. Greenwood provides a fantastic, sometimes romantic soundtrack that’s very aware of the era it’s representing, a sort of mix of Neu!, Soft Machine and Ennio Morricone. His music either features strings and oboe or quietly grooving rock instruments. It’s spacey sometimes, and other times it’s pastoral. As with the more subtle, earthy camera work of Inherent Vice, the music, from songs to score, is not as intrusive as it was in The Master. As great as the score for that film was, Inherent Vice is a movie concerned with a different tone, after all, something much lighter and less intense. Again, it all fits the theme of flux and an obscured core defying clear comprehension, reflective of the era and the people struggling in it.
Much as I love the deliberate, controlled artistry of The Master, even more so than this loose-limbed film, Anderson proves he is in terrific control of his approach, and it serves the story and it’s deeper concerns very well. Inherent Vice actually features some of the most hilarious moments in an Anderson film since 1997’s Boogie Nights, another film where Anderson explored the dark side of the 1970s. Both films tangle with humor, from slapstick to witty dialogue and an ironic sense of discontent not really apparent to the film’s characters. It’s ironic, but it all culminates with great affection for the film’s hero and even his nemesis, Bigfoot. They are this film’s terrific beating heart. Change is inevitable, just go with that flow and enjoy the ride… man.
Inherent Vice runs 148 minutes and is Rated R (expect drug use throughout, graphic sexuality, cursing and several violent encounters). It opens pretty much everywhere today, Jan. 9. Warner Bros. provided a DVD screener for awards consideration last year.
The Independent Ethos’ Best Films of 2012 (so far)
December 31, 2012
There were many great film experiences for me this year. I had more access than ever thanks to the Florida Film Critics Circle, a group of professional film writers who welcomed me into their group in 2011. We voted on many films for several categories. The results of these winners was posted and discussed a bit here.
However, as the critic motivated to celebrate the independent ethos of creators of art, my votes for best films and their components often steer toward another direction. Well-made films are not always easy to understand (though they must first be well-made: smart, writing, illuminating pacing, surprising cinematography, an eye for mise–en-scène, great soundtracks and powerful acting performances can all be found in the films listed below). If I learned one thing while completing my MA thesis on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, it is that the depiction of the sublime should never seem literal. I would blame Ang Lee’s Life of Pi for something like that. It is also well and good that a film have entertainment value. I won’t deny that I enjoyed Ben Affleck’s Argo, but was it something more than thrilling jingoistic entertainment? It was not. Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty does a little better, as it explores the slipperiness of the notion of truth. It’s a subtle thing, overshadowed by lots of dramatic violence, including 20 long opening minutes of torture, explosions and a climactic ambush attack whose results are no spoiler (review to come sometime next week).
Though one of the better film experiences of the year, Zero Dark Thirty still does not enter my top 10 (it may enter my top 20— that list to come in February). My top 10 are for those looking for something even deeper. It starts with a gut feeling that is hard to explain, but even if you cannot understand the film at first glance, there is something in it that makes you feel you saw something different. These films often warrant and reward repeat viewings (or a lengthy review on my part). Several of the films listed below I did see more than once this year. Here are my top 10 films of 2012, as of Dec. 31 (with links to my original reviews were appropriate. Note: all titles are links that will re-direct you to the title’s Blu-ray version on Amazon. By buying the item through that link, you support the Independent Ethos with a commission at no extra charge to you):
1. The Master
2. The Turin Horse
3. Holy Motors
4. This is Not a Film
5. Amour
6. Take This Waltz
(This film was not reviewed on Independent Ethos)
7. In the Family
8. Beasts of the Southern Wild
(This film was not reviewed on Independent Ethos)
9. Moonrise Kingdom
10. Cosmopolis
Now, why “as of Dec. 31” or the “so far” in this post’s title? As noted in a similar post for 2011, based on my experience as a film critic in Miami, many great foreign films of the year do not make it to my area until the early part of the following year. Amour saw its debut in Cannes at the start of this year, but will not see official release in Miami until the end of January. Thanks to my membership in the FFCC I had a chance to see this movie way in advance. However, I still have not had the opportunity to see much praised foreign works like Miguel Gomes’ Tabu, Christian Petzold’s Barbara and Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills. I also have some catching up to do. I have yet to see Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Neighboring Sounds and Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone. So there is still time for the top 10 to shift. In order to make up for the shift and allow for some text to explain my top 10 (the under-appreciated and often superficially understood Take This Waltz especially merits some explaining). In February, I plan to do what I did for my favorite films of 2011 with this post and this post. So here’s to looking forward to what 2013 has to bring. Happy New Year, indeed!
‘The Master’ harnesses cinema’s power to maximal effect – a film review
September 21, 2012
Before I get into the aesthetic beauty of the Master, including the film’s music, cinematography, editing, mise-en-scène and—most of all— the acting, allow me to present you with a test. Watch these two teaser trailers the film’s director Paul Thomas Anderson put together to build anticipation for the film. The first one, released earlier this year, featured Joaquin Phoenix:
Then there arrived one featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman:
Now, if those two clips excited you about what you will see acting-wise when these two extremely different characters meet in the film, you should love the Master. If you expect anything else, you may be just a tad disappointed.
Though the chatter of buzz surrounding this film has been around Anderson’s take on the birth of Scientology, his preoccupation seems more focused on the two men at the film’s heart. Beyond their dynamic, the cult created by Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd only serves to magnify the intense relationship of these two men. Phoenix’s Freddie Quell is sucked into the world of “The Cause” only by the interest Lancaster shows in Freddie. Freddie, a rapscallion before he meets Lancaster, easily falls in line with calling him Master, as the followers of the Cause do. Anderson stays so in tuned with Freddie and the Master that the film becomes more about the cult of personality than the cult of any pseudo religion.
The film first sets up the rootless Freddie as a sailor in the Pacific during World War II who seems to have missed most of the fighting. 
He and his mates kill time jerking off on the shoreline and making sand sculptures of female figures in the wet sand. As a radio transmission announces VJ Day and the end of combat, Freddie crawls around artillery shells in his ship’s armory, making a drink from whatever chemicals he can find: an alcoholic beyond alcohol.
After the war, he receives a psychological exam via a Rorschach test where all he sees is “pussy” and “cock.” After his discharge, he floats from one job to another. They both end in violent confrontations. Freddie is one lost, primal soul. Phoenix plays him brilliantly, speaking out of only the left side of his mouth. Even his left eye stays wider open than his right. He laughs whenever someone asks him to share what he thinks or feels. He walks hunched over and stands crooked with one arm twisted backward, the heel of his hand resting on his hip. He looks like a 70-year-old man with osteoporosis.
After being chased off a farm at his last job, Freddie stows on to a cruise ship departing a harbor. He springs over the railing just as the vessel pulls away with a zest unseen until that moment. Again at sea, Freddie seems to have rediscovered his verve. This is where he meets the Master.
There Will Be Blood (2007), Anderson’s previous film, featured no dialogue for the first half-hour. In the Master, a similar thing occurs, as Freddie never seems to connect with anyone in a true give and take conversation until he meets Lancaster. During their first conversation, it is revealed they had met on board sometime off-screen on the night the ship had set sail. However, Freddie seems to have been too drunk to remember. “I don’t have any problems,” Freddie says and squeezes out a laugh/sigh. “I don’t know what I told you.”
“You’re aberrated,” the Master tells him, and Freddie laughs again with his crooked uncomfortable smile. 
This marks the first dynamic conversation on-screen— a true exchange— and the start of bonding between these two men. These two may have not only met earlier but may have met in another life. It will soon turn out past lives are a part of Dodd’s doctrine.
But Lancaster is not the only one with power here. Just as the Master has created his own culture, history and rules of living, Freddie too is an inventor. He has brewed up a drink of household chemicals that can possibly kill. “You have to know how to drink it,” he tells the Master. Lancaster is charmed and fascinated by this concoction. The only reason he seems to allow Freddie aboard the chartered cruise ship wedding of his daughter seems to be for the stowaway’s ability to concoct this cocktail. But Freddie also offers honesty unparalleled by any of the followers of the Master’s Cause. While everyone else, including Lancaster’s wife (Amy Adams playing cold and distant), 
seem like sycophants who follow the Master in order to be like him, Freddie offers something better. He is Lancaster’s best friend, and I mean best friend with the devotion of a dog. Freddie enjoys the teachings for what they are: games to play for the Master’s love.
One of the more intense moments of the film occurs early in Freddie and Lancaster’s relationship, on board the ship, when Lancaster offers Freddie “processing” (a reference to Scientology). This indoctrination involves a ritual in the form on an interview that is recorded. The Master asks Freddie a series of yes or no questions about his personality. When the Master asks Freddie whether he is unpredictable, Freddie responds with a fart. “Silly animal,” the Master tells him.
When Lancaster declares Freddie has finished his first round of processing, Freddie asks for more like an eager child. The Master agrees, but only if Freddie promises not to blink during the next series of questions. If he does blink, he will have to start over from the first question. During this second level of processing, the questions and answers prove stomach-churning, probing even deeper into Freddie’s personal life (“Have you ever had sex with a member of your family?”). 
Not only does Freddie not blink, but he sheds tears from holding his eyes open. For what some will consider trauma, to Freddie it’s about complying to the rules of a game. The fact that he “cries” as part of the game and not the trauma, heightens the character. It’s a powerful moment for Phoenix. I have only seen that done once before: in one of Andy Warhol’s screen tests when Ann Buchanan, a Bohemian follower of the art scene that thrived among the Beat generation, resists blinking for the entire 4-and-a-half-minutes of the reel of 16mm film that comprised these series of “screen tests.” It offers an interesting dichotomy with response to a true-life figure with the cult of personality.
Freddie’s primal mannerisms are further highlighted later in the film when he sits in the corner of a home where Lancaster has paid a visit in order to share his teachings. As the room erupts in song, Freddie sits there like a resting beast… staring. If one thinks Freddie has seriously bought into the Master’s preaching, watch as all the women suddenly appear naked as the singing and dancing continues. They do not react to their own nudity, as this clearly represents what Freddie is “seeing.”
When police take Lancaster away from the home in handcuffs on a warrant for malpractice, the Master yells about the preposterous idea that police of this city would dare think they have jurisdiction over his body (his belief is that his soul has lived trillions of years, after all). Freddie lashes out to defend the Master, and the police need four to five men to hold him down and cuff him. Meanwhile, the Master yells, “Freddie, stop!”
The paradox of these two men is further on display when they are thrown into two neighboring jail cells. Freddie continues his rampage at the cell’s furnishings while the Master leans against one cot with one arm. “Your fear of capture and imprisonment is an implant from millions of years ago,” he yells at Freddie, “implanted with a push-pull mechanism.”
There is no belief system going on with a devout follower. This is a scary representation of programmed fundamentalism, one of the scariest aspects of our society. There are Christian movements whose members will murder abortion doctors to save theoretical lives, as there are Muslims who blow themselves up for their own cause. But these are news stories, things on paper or things that pass in 20-second soundbites. What more powerful way to shake up the film-going, escapism-searching audience than through two intense character sketches on the big screen?
The director achieves this masterfully, if you will pardon the pun. Not only is The Master about a love affair between these two but a third man: the director himself. Everything he does in the film serves to magnify these two great actors’ performances. He did the same for Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights, Tom Cruise in Magnolia (1999), Adam Sandler in Punch Drunk Love (2002) and Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood. All of those films and performances served to enhance their careers as actors.
The dialogue in the Master (Anderson also wrote the original script) is never more efficient than in that “processing” session described earlier. Phoenix does much when he spits out one-word answers to the Master’s terse, biting questions. The film may sound long at two hours and 15 minutes, but I can appreciate a film that earns a long runtime, and the Master does this, even if it is only about the dynamic of two men in a relationship. The film has a hypnotic quality. The camera is allowed to linger in order to activate the viewer’s own imagination and knowledge of history of the times, as the film is filled with subtle postwar trauma. 
Anderson does wonders not only in these moments that linger, recalling Kubrick and Malick, but he does something miraculous and rare with placement of a camera and the scenery it captures. He catches almost tactile moments of the time. The viewer will notice transporting details when the camera pans over part of a car, allowing a moment for the viewer to notice the gap between the door and the quarter panel, the dust on the paint, the sheen on the glass, the design of the side-view mirror. Early in the film, as sailors back from the war climb a circular staircase, the grime in the corner of the stairwell and the echo of footsteps says more about the era than the uniforms alone. It’s a refined moment of attention to detail unparalleled in any earlier film by Anderson. He has attained another level of mastery of mise-en-scène.
Clearly tempting the director and his cinematographer, Mihai Malaimare Jr., in some indulgence in imagery is the fact they shot on 65mm film stock. This makes the film perfect for the big screen, especially if you can find a theater screening the movie in 70mm. However, as an intimate drama, it sounds counter-intuitive to have bothered with such film for such a presentation. It is not. These are some large personalities that inform the film, and what better testament to such grandiose figures than large format film. Their occasional juxtaposition to the open sea and vast desert landscapes translate to not only breathtaking imagery but as a metaphor for these people who indeed believe they have souls older than the earth.
Another grand element of the film is its score by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, who also worked with Anderson on There Will Be Blood. The clunk in the music’s soundtrack that introduces Freddie and his fellow seaman is the same sound of Freddie squeezing the lost drops of his drink from a flask later in the film. From the creepy clarinet that provides the score to Freddie’s “mixology” in the photo lab at the store where he is first seen working to the sweeping strings that augment the open sea, Anderson does not waste a single note of the score. Meanwhile, Greenwood seems to channel Ligeti in the mix of beauty and cacophony of the ever-shifting music.
The director also uses popular music of the era with enthralling results. Just as Anderson used Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” to ominous effect in Boogie Nights (1997), he re-contextualizes Ella Fitzgerald singing “Get Thee Behind Me Satan,” early in the Master. Though it does not feel nearly as stressful as the botched drug deal in Boogie Nights, the song is just as effectively utilized, as the placement of the lyrics and images are not left to haphazard atmospherics. Anderson’s framing flows as musically as Fitzgerald’s patient, silky voice. Edits are placed at the right moments as the camera glides along, always watching Freddie, as he flirts with a female co-worker.
But the real love affair is that between Freddie and the Master, and it is an epic thing to watch unfold. Like any fiery love affair, it does burn itself out by film’s end. When it does, Anderson presents a pair of enlightening moments that seem to reveal an unseen depth to Freddie, best served for the audience to discover. The Master will beguile those starved for a powerful character drama, and, once again, Anderson does not let down, as he continues to grow into one of the handful of great original directors who can maintain a vision and pull it off within the high-profile world of the Hollywood system.
One more trailer:
The Master is Rated R and runs 137 min. It opens in wide release today. If you want to know where to catch the Master in 70mm, jump over to this great Paul Thomas Anderson fan site. Annapurna Pictures hosted a preview screening for the purpose of this review.
Independent Ethos 