Inherent Vice review

It's only after the smoke clears and the euphoria wears off that we can look around at it all and ask "What just happened?" Cinema, pure and not-so-simple. That, my friend, is what has just happened. With Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson has deconstructed the gumshoe detective film genre and created one of the best novel adaptations of the past ten years. When I first saw the trailer for the movie, it looked quite a lot like a return to the hyper-energetic fast moving Anderson of the 90's. The man behind Boogie Nights and Magnolia. That couldn't be further from the truth. Inherent Vice is Anderson at his most constrained and wistful. He completely abandons elaborate and exuberant camera moves for slow dollying in on characters and very relaxed tracking shots, perfectly fitting the film's tone. This is the kind of movie I'd imagine an elderly man sitting on his front stoop in a rocking chair telling as he watches his fragile life slip from his fingers. It plays as a fondly looked back upon memory, with a hint of regret. It is very fitting Neil Young's song "Journey Through the Past" accompanies the soundtrack. The film takes place on the verge of change. An era of hippies and long-haired relaxation specialists being pushed to the fringes of society. The violent advent of Charles Manson certainly hasn't helped anything. Larry "Doc" Sportello (played by Joaquin Phoenix) is a good-natured P.I. holding on to the past with the help of plenty of marijuana and late night pizza. He's just a guy who wants to stay cool and do the right thing. Like a bowling ball dropped through a window, Doc is plunged headfirst into a complicated case involving a supposed dead saxophone player, a mysterious organization that might be a boat called the Golden Fang, and many other loose strands that require a very clear head to keep in place. The plot isn't as hard to follow as some may have said, but it doesn't matter. The convoluted case isn't what's important in this movie. Like it's spiritual predecessor The Big Lebowski, Inherent Vice is a movie about characters, tone, and setting. The many complications of the plot are also due to Anderson lampooning the noir genre, which is notorious for its numerous complicated plot strands. Just look at some famous examples like The Maltese Falcon or North By Northwest. They are all over the place, and that is part of their genius! Anderson understands this perfectly, and uses all of it to his advantage. The novel Inherent Vice is a personal favorite of mine and its writer, the famed Thomas Pynchon, is also a writer I admire very much. PT Anderson is also a fan of Pynchon. His film here is not just hero worship. He is taking his knowledge and love of film and applying it to his love of the work of Thomas Pynchon to create a perfect Pynchonion vibe filtered through the pot haze of early 1970's California. It's nothing short of beautiful. One thing Anderson added in that was not in the novel is voice over narration from one of the secondary characters, Sortilege (Joanna Newsom). In adding this, Anderson was able to capture Pynchon's wonderful use of language and apply his own personal literary touch. All of it works to near perfection. This was shot on 35mm, and it looks stunning on the big screen. There has been a shift toward shooting on digital recently, and this film is proof that film is a medium that still has its place. The whole thing looks gorgeous, mainly because of the celluloid it was shot on. It certainly helped that Robert Elswit, a long-time cinematographer for Anderson, was working here. He is one of the best (the best?) cinematographer working in Hollywood today and deserves some recognition for his work here. Holding it all together are the wonderful ensemble of actors working here. Joaquin Phoenix, channeling his inner Dude, does some great work (as expected) here. He truly embodies his character and never hits a wrong note. Josh Brolin plays a macho cop and opposite side to Phoenix's detective. Brolin has always been good. But this here may be his best work. He is funny, yet subtle, and delivers some of the movie's best lines. Joanna Newsom is great, Katherine Waterson is great, Benicio del Toro is great, Reese Witherspoon is great. Really, everyone is great. Overall, it's a masterpiece. A pot-fueled, funny, wistful, journey through post-60's California. While it might not be There Will Be Blood, Inherent Vice is more or less the best new film I've seen in 2014.

There Will Be Blood

Towards the beginning of Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 film, There Will Be Blood, there is a shot that descends from the bright sun-washed Californian desert into a dark long hole filled with oil. Below, is Daniel Plainview. This is where the movie begins, in Plainview's "heart of darkness." Daniel Plainview is not a man, not in the traditional sense at least. He is a demon, a devil, a fiery being whose origins unknown. It is not wholly unbelievable that he was simply begat by the bowels of the Earth, thrown forth in some vicious gushing of oil. Daniel Plainview cannot be a man, for he is far too ruthless to be anything other than supernatural. A god made of anger, gristle, fury, and determination. He is the ultimate personification of all of the greed and evil in America, a build up of pure corruption. Yet, one cannot help but feel a sense of respect for the character of Plainview. He is a "bad person", yes. But, he got to where he is all on his own. All of the oil wells and land and money he has procured, he has procured himself. One looks at him with the same fearful admiration they would of Adolf Hitler. A man of unconscionable evil, but he's worked hard to get all that evil. One of the greatest actors of our time, Daniel Day-Lewis, portrays the character of Plainview. With a role like this, many other actors would make the character campy. Day-Lewis makes it one of the most intense and horrifying performances I have ever seen. It is a fact that he is great here, an indisputable one at that. It is a performance so good, people often overlook the other fantastic elements of the movie. There Will Be Blood, after all, is directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. A filmmaker who I firmly believe is one of the best, if not THE best, person working in the movies today. There Will Be Blood is his masterpiece. A masterpiece, coming from a man who has made such films as Magnolia, Boogie Nights, and The Master is an extraordinary feat. The filmmaking on display in Blood is comparable to the best work of Stanley Kubrick. I do not make these claims lightly. Anderson began his career making brilliant character ensemble pieces. He frequently referenced his directing heroes, people like Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme. With Blood, he proves that he can make a film so purely his own. He also proved he is a true genius with filmmaking. I struggle to think of any other filmmaker who not only fully understands the human condition and how to write it but also how to film it. With There Will Be Blood, Anderson has cemented his name in the history books. At its very core, the film is about good versus evil. The pious preacher Eli Sunday (played by Paul Dano) up against the violent oil man, Daniel Plainview. In any other movie, good would prevail because goodness always rises above the evil. Yet, in real life that is not always the case. Eli Sunday may be a man of god, but his hands are far from clean. In the end, the most godly man does not win out, but the man who is most equipped. In some sense, There Will Be Blood is a perfect argument for Darwin's "survival of the fittest theory". The film takes place in between the years 1898 and 1927. An epic expanse of time that ends right at the edge of national disaster. The Great Depression. The events take place on the brink of a collapse. An apocalypse. At the end of the movie, Plainview (who at this point is near insanity) begins to scream "I am the Third Revelation! I am who the lord has chosen!" This line might be more than just ramblings of a man gone mad. Plainview is the harbinger of  the end. A horseman riding a steed made of oil, evil, and greed. He is the lord of his wide desert expanse. The very end of the film is the ultimate summation of Plainview's insane determination. It is the American Dream, like it or not. It does not come with a majestic waving of the flag over a bright blue sky, but with a bowling pin smashing down on a man's head. This is America. This is Daniel Plainview's America. Anderson does not point his finger at capitalism or at corruption in this country, he simply shows us it and laughs. With There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson has more or less crafted a perfect film. I have seen the movie three times now and I can say that with the utmost confidence. It is a cinematic landmark that will be remembered for a long time.

The Master or The Young Man and the Sea: A Deconstruction of Paul Thomas Anderson's Exquisite Masterwork

Freddie Quell is a bird of the vast, grey, and infinite sky. He drifts through life like dust motes in a shaft of afternoon light. Women, jobs, alcohol, and people in general try to pin him down. To label him, diagnose him, explain him. Put him in the cold dank prison cell we all call a purpose. Many think they have the answers to Freddie, they know what's wrong with him. Whether it be doctors, therapists, or Philip Seymour Hoffman's charismatic cult leader Lancaster Dodd. Many try, but they all fail. Quell is a character like that of some elusive and far away indecipherable message. One can try and understand him, to grasp him and fit him into a peg in society, but they will fail. When Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master was released in 2012, a common criticism was that Joaquin Phoenix's character Freddie Quell did not change, evolve, or develop. He started out a confused and mumbling drunk and then stayed that way throughout the entire movie. What critics failed to realize was that Quell wasn't supposed to change. To have him develop would be completely disregarding everything the film has worked to establish. In fact, in launching this very complaint at the movie critics themselves are falling prey to the exact mistake almost every character in the film made: they tried to put Freddie under an umbrella. This is an impossible feat. He is a man so broken by the war, by life. Left with nothing to do but float drunkenly through the bottomless abyss of this here world we are all prisoner to. Freddie is the unchanging sea. Try as we might, we simply cannot chart his waters. No Captain Cook could ever penetrate through the exterior of him. Philip Seymour Hoffman's last monologue sums it all up perfectly: "Free winds and no tyranny for you, Freddie, sailor of the seas. You pay no rent, free to go where you please. Then go, go to that landless latitude and good luck. If you figure a way to live without serving a master, any master, then let the rest of us know, will you? For you'd be the first in the history of the world." Freddie is a seaman, a directionless drifter who is bound by no chains, subjugated by no master. The film opens with a beautiful shot that repeats throughout the film. The flowing vibrant blue ocean. It is breathtaking simple. It is Freddie Quell himself. At another point in the beginning of the movie, Freddie lies down next to a woman he has crafted out of sand on the beach. In what I believe is the very last shot of the film, he once again lies down next to this mysterious sand mistress in an almost identical shot. He has not changed. Held down by no bride, he chooses to lie with the alluring beauty of the sea. I've often hear people complain about this movie in that it is too confusing and has little to say. Hogwash, says I. Anderson awes us and entrances us with his visuals and complex story about cults and religion. Yet, at heart The Master is truly about one man and his quest for ultimate freedom. A man so detached and broken off from the regularity of society he can only drift among the eternal waves of the Pacific. The film takes a look at the effects of war on a single man, but doesn't do it in the same formulaic way we have all seen before.  In many ways, Freddie's inherent wanderlust has made him a better person than most of the characters in the film. He, at least, is outright with his flaws of drunkenness and laziness. He does not hide behind any veneer, nor does he make himself slave to his intricacies and downsides. Everyone else in the film chains themselves to their persona's and auras of perfection they think they have. Amy Adams character looks down on Freddie as a boozer and possible criminal, but is too cold and uppity to see her own problems. Hoffman's Lancaster Dodd is so trapped in his hubris and power trip he simple cannot realize that he shouldn't try to change Freddie, but that it's really himself that needs changing. The Master in this film is not Dodd, but Quell. A man who in having no master, has become the master himself. Master of living life the way he sees fit. Like an eagle flapping its wings, Freddie glides along the winds of pure freedom and easy living. He is a man out of place in time, for there is no real time for Freddie. He lives outside the boundaries of linear time. His time is an ocean, and he is commander of the ship sailing on its waves. The Master is a beautiful, somewhat misunderstood, masterpiece from the Kubrick of today. An austere and wondrous tone poem that looks at humanity for what we are. "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." I believe F.Scott Fitzgerald unintentionally sums up the film best.