New York Film Festival
Thomas Pynchon’s novel “Inherent Vice” ends with his chief character, Doc Sportello, attempting to discern shapes within a haze that has formed outside his car window. Not to worry, this is not a spoiler since screenwriter and director Paul Thomas Anderson chooses to end his cinematic adaptation on an entirely different note altogether. But the passage is such an apropos summation of “Inherent Vice,” both in terms of its content and the ensuing experience, that it certainly deserves a place in the discussion.
While this is a not entirely unusual noir-tinged mystery surrounding corruption and vice, the story is hardly straightforward or easily discernible. Characters drop in and out of the narrative at will, making it rather difficult to decipher who the key players really are. Take no motivation and no appearance at face value, because it is likely to change in the blink of an eye.
Anderson cycles through events at such a dizzying speed that trying to connect the dots of “Inherent Vice” in real-time will only result in missing the next key piece of information. (I found myself drawn to read Pynchon’s novel after seeing the movie to get a firmer grip on the plot.) Might I suggest just to kick back, allow the film to wash over you, and let Joaquin Phoenix’s Doc Sportello be your spirit guide through the fog of Los Angeles in 1970.
In a fictional beach community outside the city proper, steadily stoned private eye Doc tries to make sense of a strange case in a transitional time period. The city is still reeling from Manson mayhem, and hippies are no longer cute animals at the zoo but entities whose every move is subject to suspicion. People are beginning to anticipate Nixonite and Reaganite malaise, though it remains unformed and intangible. Ultimately, his understanding is about as good as ours – which is to say, it scarcely exists. What begins as a routine investigation of Doc’s ex-flame and her rich new lover quickly spirals into something far more sprawling.
Marshall and the Movies 
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