Beau Largent

12 March 2016

Phillips

ENGL 101-022

70's Transition

Inherent Vice, a 2014 stoner crime comedy-drama film, follows the eternally high private detective Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) throughout the Los Angeles basin where he sets out to solve several intertwining cases. The film, a 70's mystery drama, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson is based on the book, Inherent Vice, by Thomas Pynchon. Long considered almost impossible to adapt, the film's, "characters, structure and tone  --  a balance between laid-back mood and mayhem  --  feel as though they were crafted by Raymond Chandler while under contract at Looney Toons" (HORNADAY). Anderson was clearly inspired by the 'Master of Suspense' Alfred Hitchcock with a bit of stoner noir. And his effort is greatly enhanced by an excellent, but underused ensemble cast. 

Anderson begins each scene with a detail shot and then stylistically develops the scene, forcing the audience to question what they are watching rather than concerning themselves with how the story pieces itself together. Inherent Vice has a plot that is practically impenetrable, though the cast, dialogue, and the multi-layered relationships really drive the film and pull it together. 

The film opens with an unconventional shot sequence creating instant mystery. Doc's old girlfriend, the sensual Shasta Fey (Katherine Waterston), who has been AWOL for some time, suddenly appears through the marijuana smoke cloud at his seedy apartment explaining the details of a mysterious plot to kidnap her new boyfriend, real estate magnate, turned drug-addled, enlightenment-seeking Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts). 

Since Doc is always stoned, he's not sure what's really happening, but when Mickey and Shasta Fey both disappear, he begins to see that he's been dragged him into a mess that includes their disappearances, the murder of one of Wolfmann's Neo-Nazi bodyguards, the Golden Fang  --  which may be a boat, a dentist's tax shelter, a drug cartel, or all of the above. There's also a saxophone player (Owen Wilson) who's apparently faked his death and become a useful tool for the rising right-wing political forces, who are in cahoots with the LAPD  --  a department that has little appetite for the concept of civil rights. 

Memorably representing the LAPD is Doc's sometime friend, sometime nemesis, detective Christian F. "Bigfoot" Bjornsen (Josh Brolin). Throw in a maritime lawyer (Benecio Del Toro), an Assistant DA (Reese Whitherspoon) and a perverted coke-snorting dentist (Martin Short). As these and other assorted characters make their entrances and exits, you'll be wishing that each had much more screen time, making it impossible to highlight or emphasize any specific performance. 

As Doc is conducting his investigation of Mickey and Shasta, he's also hired by a "Black Panther-Type" parolee, who claims he's owed money by his former Neo-Nazi prison mate, Glen Charlock. While looking for Charlock, who coincidentally is working as Mickey Wolfmann's bodyguard, Doc visits a brothel where he's knocked unconscious. He awakens beside a dead charlock and is pulled in for questioning by the LAPD and his "friend" Bigfoot. 

After the LAPD lets him go, he stumbles into another case, when he's also hired by the wife of the aforementioned saxophone player, Coy. He's also disappeared and is supposed to be dead, but his reformed heroin addict wife thinks he's alive since his recent disappearance was accompanied by a significant deposit in her bank account. 

From the standpoint of the plot, much of what takes place seems almost beside the point, like a series of scenes randomly strung together with abrupt jumps. Any first time viewer would have a tough time explaining what they'd just seen. And multiple and multiple viewings don't help much. Doc has his entertaining back and forth relationship with brooding, hippy-hating, and psychologically torn LAPD detective Bigfoot. He finds, or gets by, the missing sax player, Coy, who's hiding from his wife because they're just no good for each other. So what does Coy do? What any surf-musician would do ...  he becomes a government informant? 

Robert Elswit's cinematography is heavy on close-ups frontal shots of our hero, capturing Phoenix's facial expressions and hippy-style gaze, leaving the audience to wonder whether he is deep in concentration of just too high to think. Also scattered throughout the film are deep, foggy sun filled scenes sometimes using a washed-out creamy color grading, further accentuating the blurred stories and memories of the hazy 60's being narrated. One of the most interesting yet playful shots is at the cult-band mansion, where we see the band around a table of pizza, set up almost exactly like the Last Supper. While it is a pretty obvious scene, it is almost a play of satire as the hippy non-conformist band members are being depicted as Jesus and his disciples. Meanwhile the seventies and the hippy movement are trying to fight back against conservative, church going America. The beauty of the shot really shines throughout that scene and the rest of the movie. 

Anderson's use of Doc's close friend, Sortilege (Joanna Newsom), as the narrator of the film provides a cohesive element and helps drive the various plot lines, while also serving as his friend and moral compass. Sometimes she talks directly to Doc and sometimes she narrates, but the whole stoned feeling the film has would be a lot less convincing without the addition of her voice. She brings a reassuring element of an all-knowing friend to the film, and is there to give Doc much needed advice. Anderson blends the two characters together, with scenes of Sortilege that end with her talking to Doc and then narrating the next scene, an interesting and unusual technique of Anderson's screenplay. The technique showing Anderson's premiere screenwriting abilities as Sortilege as the narrator contrasts to how the book was written, but Anderson pulls it off as though it should have been there the entire time. 

 Full of close-ups, details, inferences, and clues, Anderson captures the transition from the idealism and political activism of 1960s to fear, greed, and commercialism of the 1970s. Doc is all about that earlier simpler time, and though dazed and confused, he still has a moral compass. But the Hazy 60's are being replaced by a new and darker America, morally confused and looking for order. In this new Nixonian America, the actions of the LAPD and other Authoritarian groups seem acceptable to a country feeling the effects of the Manson family, Vietnam, and other major divisions. Anderson cleverly references the Manson tragedy when he has a traffic cop, who has stopped Doc and some of his friends, suggests that a group of three or more people is a cult. 

Anderson blends humor, suspense, seemingly random occurrences, and some surprising violence with his almost over-the-top cast of characters to highlight the great divide and major transitions occurring. But this movie is really about Doc and Bigfoot.  The striking visual contrast between the two sets the tone of their relationship when we hear they already have a blurred past. Bigfoot is the exact opposite of Doc, hotheaded, full of striking energy, a militaristic promptness and a flat top compared to Doc's laidback hippy style, afro, and muttonchops. But they always seem to get each other, even while trying to convince themselves they can't stand each other. Throughout the film it seems that no matter what happens or how different their views are, they're always thrown together. Their relationship defines and represents the divide in the early 70s between the hippies and the establishment. And though Doc and Bigfoot are at different ends of the spectrum, they're really after the same thing  --  a way through the LA haze.

 We also see a similar contrast in generational values with Doc's fling with the LA Deputy DA in a scene with she and Doc in bed smoking marijuana. This scene expresses the divide between their backgrounds and the transition of coming together in the free love sixties. 

In the end, Doc gets his guy, but like everything else in the film, it's not the way you'd expect. Overall, Inherent Vice is an interesting and complex depiction of a precarious time period giving us a look at strange human behavior and deeply complex relationships, but also mixing in crude lighthearted humor that allows Anderson to use an abundance of characters, a tight film style, and a blending between characters and narrator to express that transitional period of the seventies in a spot on view. 

Works Cited

Inherent Vice. Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson. Screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson. Perf. Joaquin Phoenix and Josh Brolin. Ghoulardi Films Company, Warner Bros., 2015. Film.

Hornaday, Ann. "'Inherent Vice' Takes Viewers on a Sun-kissed, Doped Up, Sharply Observant Journey through 1970s Los Angeles." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 8 Jan. 2015. Web. 15 Apr. 2016.
