A Literary-Cinematic Wet Dream: Paul Thomas Pynchon (Inherent Vice) - from 2014

I'm predisposed to like, no, fucking love, this film. The idea of adapting Pynchon to cinema has been around for years. Like a lot of people, I would have assumed "Crying of Lot 49" would be themost likely candidate.

Until three years ago when I read "Inherent Vice." Accessible, funny, and entertaining, it still holds Pynchon's themes and vision of the United States as a complex of power waning toward empire's fall. Setting that aside, I started a short list over the years of who would be the best to direct and/or write the adaptation, any adaptation. While he was alive, Kubrick. But I would have voted for the Coen brothers, maybe Spike Jonez, possibly Terry Gilliam, possibly the Nolan brothers, but oddly, Paul Thomas Anderson didn't occur to me. In retrospect, it's a no-brainer.

Like his mentor, Robert Altman, Anderson has a similar multivalvent interpretation of the "American Dream"; "Boogie Nights" and "There Will Be Blood" document the rise and fall of a dream, a pursuit. They bear witness to the collateral damage of those falls. In both cases, the fall-out lands on the immediate circle of characters. In "Blood", you could argue that the repercussions are much broader. In "Inherent Vice", the aftermath radiates further into communities and the end of an era. The same is true of the previous films, but it feels more intimate here. And that's saying something, given how intimate Anderson's cinematic families are.

This last is the brilliance that makes Pynchon work, as well. Despite the layer upon layer textual and meta-textual dimensions, at heart, Pynchon is deeply concerned with the personal. This is where the two artists meet. Fortunately, Anderson is as in-control of his medium as Pynchon is of his. It doesn't hurt that he's already adapted a seminal classic of American lit.

This may not be the movie I would have made, but I'm glad it's the movie we have. There is an abundance of love for the source and the characters. There is the supremely sure mastery of the filmic language to be roughly equivalent to the language on the page. Impossible, of course, but then Anderson is doing the smart thing; let the story tell itself.

Which story, though? All too often, adaptations take the form of audiovisual study aids. With Pynchon, you may have a principal storyline, but not necessarily a central plot. This might be why "Gravity's Rainbow" would likely wind up providing fodder for several films. Beyond the play of ideas, the overlap and multiple levels of meaning render the greatest works of literature unfilmable. Fortunately, "Inherent Vice", more so even than "Crying of Lot 49" is simpler in structure and content. It lends itself to a level of complexity that you would find with the Chandler adaptations, so in that way, there are some precedents.

What makes it more challenging is that the novel and the film are approaching the past, a very specific time in our shared history that I would argue is pivotal to what we've become. Additionally, there were side plots that were excluded and the choices Anderson made were judicious in light of how he shaped the film.

The story we have isn't so dissimilar from "The Big Lebowski" except the stakes are higher. Think of mixing the Coen brothers' opus with "Chinatown" and that approximates what we have. Interestingly, the notes Anderson didn't hit were the end of an era's malaise as the sixties hope turned to blackness and the sense of paranoia that runs like a plumb line through Pynchon's work. This isn't to say that not emphasizing those elements is a flaw, it just makes the film more of Anderson's.

But PTA does capture the feeling that the government is more of a giant corporation and that we are increasingly governed by corporate interests. That makes it scary enough. Then, there are the characters and the actors who bring them to life. It's hard to imagine a better ensemble and I'm not even gonna try.

Just a couple of old pals...

I want all movies to have Joaquin Phoenix and Josh Brolin in them, for starters. Eric Roberts and Martin Donovan dropping in for a couple of well-timed and well-turned cameos was icing on the cake. Benicio del Toro showing up as Phoenix's lawyer (a maritime attorney, at that - and yes, I'm

sure that while it was integral to both the book and the script, the idea of a sea lawyer representing the interests of a dope-addled slacker of a PI was lost on no one...see, lawyer?) was inspired. Some people feel Owen Wilson as the dead but not dead sax player turned informant was a demerit. I don't think so, at all. He had the right mixture of confusion and desperation. Not to mention longing to get back to his family.

Then there are the women. Katherine Waterston as Shasta Fay did some of the subtlest acting in the ensemble. If I have an issue with the film, however, it's that I felt there needed to be a bit more urgency in her interactions with Phoenix's "Doc" Sportello. You get that in the book, and I think it's there in the script, but some scenes felt she was more laconic than I might expect under the circumstances. Joanna Newsome did a wonderful turn as Sortilege, the mystic guide to the narrative, if you will. Using her as the narrator was a wonderful idea as the action unfolded through the end of the grooviness of the period. You get a genuine sense, as in the novel, of what was ending and the darkness that was in the offing in Nixon's America.

Jena Malone as Hope Harlingen, the common law wife to Owen Wilson's Coy Harlingen was as low-key as Waterston, but more endearing (that's actually as I got the character in the book, too, though). And Reese Witherspoon was awesome as the assistant D.A. Sportello is casually seeing (and using as a source...turnabout's fair play when she delivers him into the hands of the Feds, though).

There were so many smaller roles illuminated by some superlative acting. The list could include Hong Chau as Jade, a hooker from a brothel who felt bad after leaving Doc to take the fall for an Aryan Brotherhood member's murder; Maya Rudolph as Petunia Leeway, the receptionist at Doc's office; Peter MacRobbie was appropriately disconcerting as Adran Prussia; and Martin Fucking Short was stupendous as Dr. R. Blatway, a coke snorting dentist member of ... The Golden Fang!

But the film belongs to Phoenix and Brolin's "Big Foot" Bjornsen, a cop who's still trying to get over his partner's murder, working out conflicted feelings toward Sportello (no, not like that!), and really just wants some respect from his fellow cops. Big Foot just barely manages to hold onto his interpretation of the world and if anything, he's more sympathetic than the wheelers and dealers who are carving up the California landscape with parking lots, subdivisions, and strip malls.

He and Doc are an odd couple, but there's a glimmer of mutual respect in there. We see that in Big Foot's toking on a major blunt after kicking Doc's door down. It's a hoot of a scene, but there's a terrific chemistry between the two that neither actor has to work too hard to convey.

Anderson has fun with this. It's the kind of fun we last saw with "Punch Drunk Love" and it's revelatory how sure his voice is throughout, even as the dialogue is mostly Pynchon's. The punning, the pop references, the popping up of characters and their vanishing are true to the novel and make the utmost sense. It's a wonderful feat of adaptation. In a lot of ways, this is the most Altmanesque film Anderson has done, and it's of necessity; maybe that's the guy who could have done Pynchon justice. As it is, though, I'm perfectly happy with this Pynchon I've got.