Might Thomas Pynchon be somewhere out there too? Ahead of the premiere, rumours abounded that the enigmatic author had agreed to a cameo in the film, presumably tucked away deep-cover amid the rogues' gallery of figures who keep changing their names and their political ties. His film is like a jubilant spin painting in which the characters have been scattered and splattered to the furthest reaches of the frame. Anderson has all manner of fun with the tale's whirling, blurring trajectory. The centre could not hold, the old assumptions have unravelled and Charlie Manson is the patron saint of New Age seekers ("What would Charlie do?" wonders Doc's ex-girlfriend, attempting to inspire him when the detective's trail turns cold). Because if Anderson's previous film, The Master, spotlighted the search for meaning in prosperous 1950s America, then Inherent Vice shows us where all those hopes and dreams eventually washed up, in the fracturing counter-culture of late 60s southern California. Is it possible to identify a pattern to all this darting chaos? Heaven help us, perhaps it is. They keep drifting towards the ocean as if hoping the tide will sweep them up. But then again, who does? The flotsam of Inherent Vice have all lost their bearings, come unstuck. "I don't belong here, man," murmurs Owen Wilson's double (possibly triple) agent, sitting beneath the Tiffany lamp as a series of nude revellers cavort behind his back. Instead the thrill is in the trip, which is often uproariously funny, dragging us through a shadowy landscape in which cops moonlight as actors, black panthers make common cause with the Aryan Brotherhood, and a gathering of four people apparently qualifies as a cult. The plot amounts to an arrangement of red herrings and besides, solutions are for squares. Except that this, of course, leaves us none the wiser.Īsk not where the film is leading that's hardly the point. "Beware the Golden Fang", Doc is warned at one stage - but does the Golden Fang refer to a rock band, or a boat, or an Indo-Chinese heroin cartel? Who can say for certain? "It's real name isn't really the Golden Fang," explains Benicio Del Toro's lawyer in a conspiratorial whisper. A real estate tycoon has vanished and neo-Nazis are suspected. His duplicitous ex-girlfriend (Katherine Waterston) has embroiled him in a missing person's case and he's fallen foul of Josh Brolin's straight-edge LA cop. Here comes Doc Sportello, sporting mutton-chop sideburns, a natty straw hat and a permanently glazed air. Joaquin Phoenix in the trailer for Inherent Vice. They should screen it in a pop-up cinema in a city park, with complimentary reefers and a henna tattoo. The film's natural habitat is with the deadbeats and the dreamers, in a bygone California where hippie freak-ins bloom like wildflowers and a menu at the massage parlour advertises oral sex for $14.99. And yet Vice, for all its virtues, is too wild, baggy and disreputable to play well with Academy members - and this is surely for the best. Anderson's yarn arrived at the New York film festival confidently billed as one of the prizes of the autumn season, buttressed by an all-star cast and exciting instant talk of Oscar glory. Inherent Vice, by contrast, turns out to be a ramshackle triumph a colourful detour disguised as a crime caper, making antic hay from Thomas Pynchon's 2009 novel. It's clear from the outset that he's going nowhere fast. Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) is interviewing witnesses in a frenzy and scribbling "Paranoia Alert" in his detective's notepad. Paul Thomas Anderson's gloriously rambunctious Inherent Vice follows the fortunes of a stoner investigator who finds himself hopelessly lost in a case he can't solve. Everybody here appears to have mislaid the plot. It's the end of the 60s, the death of the age of Aquarius. America makes no sense to the denizens of Gordita Beach, California, down by the ocean at the edge of the world.
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