Inher­ent Vice

Could Inher­ent Vice be con­sid­ered a late addi­tion to this small wave? Its 1970 set­ting would sug­gest so. Yet as with Anderson’s pre­vi­ous film, The Mas­ter, it’s hard to say where its true alle­giances lie, who it’s slam­ming, who it’s prais­ing or even if has any incli­na­tion towards either. There’s a point in Inher­ent Vice where it’s com­ment­ed that a Swasti­ka tat­tooed on the face of a bur­ley Hell’s Angel is actu­al­ly the Hin­du sign for peace, hand­i­ly sur­mis­ing the idea that every ​“truth” has its req­ui­site, pos­si­bly phoney duel read­ing. For­mal­ly speak­ing, The Mas­ter teetered on the exper­i­men­tal, fol­low­ing a char­ac­ter in Joaquin Phoenix’s Fred­dy Quell who dis­played no sense of pre­dictable for­ward momen­tum, like a thou­sand-yard pin­ball, or an extend­ed cor­net wig-out which plays over a surg­ing free-jazz back­drop. Inher­ent Vice employs a sim­i­lar tac­tic, using a non­sense, ultra-con­vo­lut­ed post-noir plot­line as a way draw atten­tion away from the film’s the­mat­ic sweet meat.

The con­nec­tion between the two films, how­ev­er, is con­spic­u­ous. Both open on shots of the sea, look­ing specif­i­cal­ly at how the for­mu­la­tion of water (truth?) changes when there’s some kind of human inter­fer­ence. In the for­mer, it’s the swirling Rorschach-like pat­terns pro­duced in the foamy trail left by a Navy cruis­er. In the lat­ter, it’s surfers bob­bing up-and-down in the swell, their move­ment entire­ly gov­erned by the briny mass beneath them as they wait patient­ly to ride a wave which could very well wipe them out. They also both end on shots of Phoenix’s char­ac­ter find­ing love, albeit of a taint­ed vari­ety. In The Mas­ter, it’s with a female effi­gy made of clumped sand. In Inher­ent Vice, it’s with Shas­ta Fay Hep­worth (Kather­ine Water­ston), a char­ac­ter who may also be an ide­alised appari­tion, a fig­ment of Lar­ry ​“Doc” Sportello’s dope-addled imagination.

Dur­ing an on-stage Q&A ses­sion fol­low­ing a screen­ing of Inher­ent Vice, Ander­son loose­ly agreed when the pro­pos­al was made that the film is sim­ply about a guy try­ing to find his old lady. Love: nar­ra­tive cinema’s irra­tional vari­able of choice. One key dif­fer­ence between the book and the film is that Pyn­chon doesn’t push that idea to the fore until quite late in the game, mak­ing the pangs of romance more of a sub-con­scious rev­e­la­tion than a con­crete intent from the get-go. It’s at the point where Doc spots a white suprema­cist sport­ing a kip­per tie embla­zoned with a crude nudie car­toon of Shas­ta Fay that his love for her becomes a pal­pa­ble plot-dri­ver — pre­cip­i­tat­ed sole­ly because of the jeal­ous real­i­sa­tion that she’s been inti­mate with oth­er men.

The film, per­haps due to its rel­a­tive brevi­ty, straight away latch­es onto Doc’s dor­mant yearn­ing as an occu­pa­tion­al dri­ving force, with Jon­ny Greenwood’s coo­ing, mock-syrupy score con­stant­ly empha­sis­ing the fact from behind the soft­boiled ver­biage. It opens with Doc in a state of hap­py repose in his cabana-like beach shack, wait­ing for his mint-green rotary phone to ring. Fris­bee-eyed hip­py siren Shas­ta Fay slinks by to inform him she’s in trou­ble, embroiled with­in a com­plex inter-fam­i­ly sting oper­a­tion involv­ing the jeal­ous tro­phy wife of unpre­dictable and pos­si­bly insane prop­er­ty mag­nate, Micky Wolf­mann (Eric Roberts). She’s only a pawn in their game, but it could have fatal ram­i­fi­ca­tions unless she trades on the resid­ual love Doc has for her to make sure he’s primed as a pro-bono guardian angel.

Talk­ing of love, there’s an argu­ment to be made that Inher­ent Vice forms a tril­o­gy of films about coiled homo­erot­ic urges. There Will Be Blood chart­ed the strange obses­sion between a mono­ma­ni­a­cal oil baron and a Chris­t­ian pas­tor which cli­maxed in an act of phal­lic bat­tery with a bowl­ing pin. One of the more obvi­ous (and indeed preva­lent) read­ings of The Mas­ter was that Philip Sey­mour Hoffman’s reli­gious dem­a­gogue, Lan­cast­er Dodd, had fall­en in love with his muse, Fred­dy Quell — the sur­re­al notion that he’s able to track him down to a sin­gle cin­e­ma to speak to him on the phone and invite him to Eng­land is, in itself, unfath­omably roman­tic. While this film invites you to focus on the rela­tion­ship between Doc and Shas­ta, there’s anoth­er love sto­ry run­ning con­cur­rent­ly: the one between Doc and his arch neme­sis, the surly, flat-topped ​“renais­sance detec­tive” (cf The LA Times), Chris­t­ian ​“Big­foot” Bjornsen (Josh Brolin).

The joc­u­lar, tit-for-tat inter­play between Doc and Big­foot is char­ac­terised by the old con­cept that one couldn’t real­ly exist with­out the oth­er. Big­foot is the scowl­ing face of fascis­tic police oppres­sion who’s out to harsh Doc’s mel­low, while Doc is the incor­ri­gi­ble hip­py-freak who wants noth­ing more than to play Hacky Sack on the hiss­ing sum­mer lawn of white-bread respectabil­i­ty. The irony is that these two char­ac­ters are try­ing to become the oth­er. Doc is a dab-hand at hard police work and hides his nat­ur­al wiles behind fuch­sia-tint­ed hexag­o­nal shades and a straw sun hat. Big­foot, on the oth­er hand, wants out of the law enforce­ment game, moon­light­ing as a bungling extra in TV cop filler like Adam-12 and head­ing up crass infomer­cials dressed in a hip­py fright wig. Though Big­foot often uses Doc (and his prop­er­ty) as an out­let for pent-up rage, his actions are dri­ven by a dis­placed homo­erot­ic ten­sion, com­i­cal­ly depict­ed in an ear­ly scene in which he brazen­ly fel­lates a frozen, choco­late-coat­ed banana.

So the ball is rolling and the plot-lines pile up. Every new scene invites a sin­gle-serv­ing char­ac­ter whose tes­ti­mo­ny doesn’t so much shift the goal­posts as sug­gest that Doc has, up until that point, been play­ing the wrong game. Love crops up once more in the case of surf-rock sax­o­phon­ist-cum-recov­er­ing smack addict, Coy Har­lin­gen (Owen Wil­son), whose death has been faked so he can work as an agent provo­ca­teur for the gov­ern­ment. The deity-like Doc takes heart­break­ing mea­sures to reunite Coy with his estranged wife and child, almost as if his own hap­pi­ness is con­tin­gent on theirs. The MacGuf­fin at the cen­tre of the film is a ren­o­vat­ed pirate gal­lon named The Gold­en Fang which floats omi­nous­ly off the Cal­i­for­nia coast­line. A tax shel­ter for a cadre of pri­vate den­tists? A con­tra­band-smug­gling oper­a­tion? A ser­vice offered by a druidic detox facil­i­ty? Or maybe it’s where the now-miss­ing Micky Wolf­mann and Shas­ta Fay have eloped? Its true nature is unim­por­tant, as The Gold­en Fang is more a sym­bol of any and all cor­po­rate evil, a sym­bol which Doc hap­less­ly rails against but is unable to phys­i­cal­ly reach.

The film is at once fran­tic and lacon­ic, sprawl­ing and inti­mate, utter­ly con­fus­ing and whol­ly straight­for­ward. It’s shot on film, which seems ger­mane con­sid­er­ing it’s a sto­ry which exists on an excit­ing fron­tier between one era and the next. Doc as a char­ac­ter has no dis­cernible bear­ing on the shift­ing plates of his­to­ry. His lifestyle is set to become an anachro­nism and the embers of the ​’60s hip­py be-in have all but been extin­guished by the mur­der­ous antics of the Man­son fam­i­ly and the dis­as­ter at the The Alta­mont Speed­way Free Fes­ti­val. The film’s beau­ti­ful, sun-dap­pled final shot mounts its most tan­ta­lis­ing mys­tery, a slight­ly bewil­dered facial expres­sion which leaves it to the audi­ence to decide what the future holds for these char­ac­ters. And yet by the end, Doc has lift­ed the paving stones and found more paving stones. And under those paving stones, an infi­nite lay­er­ing of paving stones. Where is the beach? Did it even exist in the first place?