The term “inherent vice” can be found on property insurance policies eliminating coverage for loss “caused by a quality in property that causes it to damage or destroy itself.” In other words, if the chocolate you’re shipping melts, you’re out of luck.
The new film from director Paul Thomas Anderson not only borrows the term as a title, but also the spirit. A complex stoner detective story, the movie’s characters are a doomed lot, debasing themselves with their own behavior. The result is a story of damaged personalities that requires a roadmap to navigate.
Joaquin Phoenix, is Larry “Doc” Sportello, a shaggy haired hippie detective in 1970 Los Angeles. Perpetually stoned he sees the world through a fog, and writes things like, “Paranoia Alert!” and “Not hallucinating” in his red detective’s notebook. When his ex-girlfriend Shasta (Katherine Waterston) asks him to investigate a plot to have her wealthy, married lover committed to a mental health facility, Doc is sucked into a complicated web of deceit involving a neurotic LA cop named Bigfoot (josh Brolin), a snitch (Owen Wilson), a drug crazed dentist (Martin Short), a drug syndicated called the Golden Fang and a man with a swastika tattooed on his face (Keith Jardine).
“Inherent Vice” plays like a brainier Cheech and Chong movie. The rambling story, that makes the work of Alaskan Native storytelling seem linear, sometimes gets lost in a cloud of pot smoke, and is occasionally almost incomprehensible, but never less than compelling. The actors, doing very high-level work, cut through the confusing murk of the plot, putting a human face on the twists and turns of the tale.
It’s been suggested that the mutton-chopped Phoenix based his performance on Leslie Nielsen’s work with the Zucker Brothers. That means playing it straight, or as straight as a stoner can be played. His hard-boiled lingo and natural PI ability are not played for laughs, but every now and again a measure of slapstick works its way into the performance; an unexpected yelp or an eager lunge at a table full of white powder. It’s an audacious performance that rides the line between serious and ridiculous without ever swaying too far one way or the other.
Your appreciation of Phoenix’s work, or at least the essence of the work, will relate directly to your enjoyment of “Inherent Vice.” The wonky tone, spread throughout the movie’s 148 minute running time, feels like an extended joke the audience isn’t always in on. When it works, it hums along, like a strange but enjoyable dream. When it doesn’t, it’s nightmarishly incoherent.
It’s impossible to deny the correlation between “The Master” and the origins of Scientology. No story about a midcentury mystic starting a religion based on sci fi could avoid the comparison, but Tom Cruise and John Travolta needn’t boycott the film. Director Paul Thomas Anderson simply uses the birth of the religion as a backdrop for a study in extreme behavior focusing on two troubled men, Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix).
Quell, a WWII vet with a taste for gut rot hooch and post traumatic stress disorder drifts through life until he meets Dodd, a self described “writer, doctor, nuclear physicist, theoretical philosopher [and] hopelessly inquisitive man.” Dodd is the godhead of a new movement called The Cause aimed at maximizing human potential. His disciples, who believe his mix of sci fi and religion will rid them of past trauma, call him the Master.
Quell is invited to join the group with the welcome, “leave your worries for a while. They’ll be there when you get back. Your memories aren’t invited.” The bewildered sailor agrees, becoming a pet project for Dodd, who “processes” him to cleanse past lives and free his spirit. What follows is a beautifully choreographed ballet of loyalty, deceit and betrayal with Quell and Dodd taking turns leading the dance.
Giving away too much more isn’t fair to the movie or the viewer. The relationship between the men is complex. It’s doctor-patient, or perhaps father-son, maybe almost oedipal. It’s been suggested that Quell is a Tyler Durden character; that he doesn’t exist except as a manifestation of the rage that Dodd manages to keep in check most of the time. I don’t buy that. They may be two sides of the same coin, but they are definitely two different people.
As Quell Phoenix is a raw twitching nerve, part Brando, part Bukowski. He’s restless, disturbed and feral. The kind of man who enjoys drinking a home brew made from paint thinner, picking fights and crying when he thinks of lost love. Emotionally damaged, he’s unpredictable and Phoenix embodies him. It’s an astonishing, revelatory performance that recalls “Raging Bull” era De Niro.
As untamed as Phoenix is, Hoffman is controlled, handing in a performance brimming with confidence, power and charisma. Imagine Orson Welles as a wannabe prophet and you get the idea. He’s a charlatan with a silver tongue, a true believer who presents his wacko ideas “as a gift to homo sapiens,” and, alongside Phoenix a lock for an Oscar nomination.
The leads are joined by an impressive cast of supporting actors, notably Amy Adams as the steely wife of the Master and Laura Dern as an early disciple.
“The Master” won’t satisfy those who like their stories tied up in neat bows. It is an enigmatic story about impenetrable people; an opaque, singular experience that is best thought of as a tone poem about man’s aspirations and failures.
I loved Magnolia and Boogie Nights, but unfortunately lightening has not struck a third time for director Paul Thomas Anderson. Punch Drunk Love I think, was an attempt by Anderson to pare down the epic length movies he is known for and make something simpler and more linear. He has accomplished that, cutting the running time down to one and a half hours from his usual three, but in doing that has sacrificed character development. I was hoping this would be Adam Sandler’s entry to adult roles, and while he is almost there, he displays no ability to grow and develop into a believable character. His Barry Egan is a distributor of novelty items (like plungers with dice on them for use in Casinos), with a severe anger management problem. He falls in love with Lena (Emily Watson) while at the same time becoming involved in a phone-sex extortion scam. Not a bad premise, but when the main character is hard to identify with it makes it difficult for the viewer to feel sympathy or any connection to them. Sandler stretches his usual teen-movie shtick a little bit, but not enough to satisfy. I’m not sure whether this is a mediocre Paul Thomas Anderson film, or a really great Adam Sandler movie.
In the 1990s Paul Thomas Anderson made his name directing films like Boogie Nights and Magnolia that recalled the sprawling, complex work of Robert Altman. Epic in length, but intimate in detail, those films established him as one of the best of young Hollywood directors. He took a u-turn stylistically with Punch Drunk Love, a briskly paced, but unconventional love story in 2002. And then nothing for almost six years.
It was worth the wait.
There Will be Blood, the story of twin American obsessions of greed and religion told through one man’s rise through the early days oil business is one of the best movies of the last twelve months and is bound to be an Oscar magnet for its star Daniel Day-Lewis.
Loosely based on Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel, Oil!, the films begins with a stunning extended scene in an open mine in turn-of-the-last-century California, played completely silent save for the odd grunt or grown from the prospector, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis). Suspenseful and tense beyond belief it sets up a sense of foreboding that lasts through the entire film, while at the same time positioning Plainview as a powerhouse character who’ll do anything to succeed.
From this point on Anderson is letter perfect with the tone of the film, expertly juggling both the epic and intimate aspects of the story as he captures Plainview’s aggressive rise from poor prospector to tycoon. It is the quintessential story of power’s ability to corrupt as he amasses wealth and becomes obsessed only with amassing more wealth at any cost.
Plainview slowly becomes a monster who has a complicated relationship with his adopted son, becomes a murderer and uses religious salvation as simply a way of getting a land deed that he needs to drill for more oil. By the end of the film he is a megalomaniacal Charles Foster Kane-like character, alone in a huge mansion, isolated by choice from friends and family; his only companions are servants and money.
Daniel Day-Lewis is devastating in the lead role. His Plainview is one of the architects of America’s transformation from a rural to industrial nation; a man who helped usher in the change, but at a huge personal cost. Day-Lewis handles the changes in Plainview expertly, as he slowly allows the character’s morality to slip until it has almost entirely been eroded away. Vocally he seems to have found the perfect reference point for his character by channeling John Huston’s misanthropic Noah Cross from Chinatown, another great fictional Californian businessman willing to do anything to exploit that state’s natural resources for profit.
Also look for Paul Dano—best known as the mute-by-choice son in Little Miss Sunshine—as a devout preacher who represents the religion that gnaws at Planview’s conscience. The pair are at odds throughout, a physical manifestation of Plainview’s growing lack on scruples as he gradually walks away from the morals he was taught in Sunday School and steps toward the fire and brimstone of his new life. Dano’s powerful performance is at once disturbing and exhilarating, as it ranges from courteous piousness to dancing-with-snakes-religious-fury to submissive schemer.
Layer on top of all that an arresting electronic score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and you have a tour-de-force look at the making of a nation and the individualistic men who created the country.
The term “inherent vice” can be found on property insurance policies eliminating coverage for loss “caused by a quality in property that causes it to damage or destroy itself.” In other words, if the chocolate you’re shipping melts, you’re out of luck.
