Inherent Vice (2014) The Baked P.I.

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (Hard Eight, Boogie Nights). 

Written by Paul Thomas Anderson and based on Thomas Pynchon's novel). 

Cinematography was by Robert Elswit and Music by Jonny Greenwood.

The film stars Joaquin Phoenix as Larry "Doc" Sportello, Josh Brolin as Lieutenant Christian F. "Bigfoot" Bjornsen, Owen Wilson as Coy Harlingen, and Katherine Waterston as Shasta Fay Hepworth.

Joaquin Phoenix as Larry "Doc" Sportello

 Josh Brolin as Lieutenant Christian F. "Bigfoot" Bjornsen

Katherine Waterston as Shasta Fay Hepworth

Owen Wilson as Coy Harlingen

Also starring  Reese Witherspoon as Deputy District Attorney Penny Kimball, Benicio del Toro as Sauncho Smilax, Esq., Jena Malone as Hope Harlingen, Joanna Newsom as Sortilège, who is also the narrator. Jordan Christian Hearn as Denis, Hong Chau as Jade, Jeannie Berlin as Aunt Reet, Martin Short as Dr. Rudy Blatnoyd, D.D.S., Eric Roberts as Michael Z. "Mickey" Wolfmann. Jefferson Mays as Dr. Threeply, Chryskylodon Institute. 

I've watched this once before but it wasn't in a theater, It had to have been streaming. It didn't really click that first go round because I have never read the novel. It was like WTF? Doc has no backstory.

So, you either accept it all from the get go or you wonder was he a Vet, what kind of Doctor is he? Are we getting clues when we see Doc zonked out on a gynecology's exam table? We never know for sure since he's not the only Doc in the office. How did he get a P.I. license? This is what me, one who lived through the 70s would want to know? That is what keeps me from enjoying it as much as some. But if you are far removed from it, it wouldn't matter. 

So you can see why some people like it and some not. It's sort of a Noir P.I. Gaja inspired trip set in a different reality, and to enjoy it, you go with it. If California was really like this it must have been very interesting. But if you watch some of the Exploitation / Sexploitation Noir of the late 60's - early 70's you find that there's a lot of guerrilla cinematography and you can see it for yourself uninterpreted through time and make your own deductions.

I never made to the West Coast. In the 70's the furthest I got was Western Montana, the Idaho Panhandle and Spokane, Washington. All the folks I met from California were refugees who lit out to wide open spaces of Montana. Some lived on quasi communes. They definitely had a different head from the Midwesterners or Southerners I'd met back then that is for sure. 

Like I mentioned it may require you to read the novel and then not have wonder about it once you have the backstory if it's a must.

So here's Doc aka Larry Sportello. He moonlights as a P.I. 

He runs the P.I. business out of the medical office. He lives on Gordita Beach. He's got an old childhood / teenage friend in the LAPD. "Bigfoot" Bjornsen. who has it in for him for turning into a hippie. These two guys are in love hate relationship. 

We see Doc spiffing up for an outing spraying himself with something. Disinfectant? Hey he's a Doc, or was this a California thing to do if you lacked a shower? Pynchon knows maybe, or Anderson, I don't. Where I grew up water was plentiful. 

It's 1970. Shasta Fay Hepworth visits ex boyfriend Doc at his beach house. She dumped him for real-estate mogul / contractor Michael Z. "Mickey" Wolfmann.

She's worried that Mickey's wife and her lover are trying to abduct Mickey to an insane asylum so that they can control the money. She wants Doc to prevent it.

Bye Shasta Fay

Another client Tariq Khalil wants Doc to find Glen Charlok who owes him money. He met Glen in jail. Khalil was a Black Guerrilla, I guess a knock off of the Black Panthers? Glen is an Aryan Brotherhood member. The thing is though, Glen worked as a bodyguard for Mickey Wolfmann. Ah a tie in.

Michael Kenneth Williams as Tarig Khalil

So Doc drives his 63 Dodge Dart over to Mickey's latest stripmall. The only business on the strip is  Chick Planet Massage. 

Chick Planet Massage

He tells Jade the employee, that he's looking for Charlock. 

He gets knocked out with a baseball bat for his trouble. He awakens outside the massage parlor surrounded by LAPD laying next to Charlock's body. Kahil is shit out of luck.

He's questioned by Bigfoot and learns in the process that Wolfmann has disappeared. Doc's attorney Sauncho Smilax gets him out of jail after posting bond.  

Benicio del Toro as attorney Sauncho Smilax

His next case is to find Hope Harlington's missing husband Coy. She knows that he isn't dead. She knows because a large deposit was made into the account that only she and Coy have access to. 

Jade from back at the Chick Planet massage parlor comes to see Doc and apologizes to him for setting him up with the dead Charlock. When Doc asks Jade about Coy, She takes him to where he is hiding. Later, Jade takes Doc to,  I guess, a "happening" where Doc sees now that Coy is out in the open, and not hiding. Coy feeds Doc more info on Wolfmann.

So it goes, right along as any old pulp hardboiled detective story set in The City Of Angels does in the past taking you to the oddest of oddball places, giving you across-section of California karma. For me it was all Noirsville from the get go.

Noirsville

Jeannie Berlin as Aunt Reet

Inherent Vice is a bit too talky for me but some Noir were like that and some people like them. Me, I like a lot of  visual stimulation, I'd rather see than hear. The talky Noir tend to be more static, confined to various rooms, auto interiors, you don't have to worry about trying to recreate 70s L.A. if you barely show it. So here you had a lot of quirky conversations, phone conversations, and a V.O. narration to boot. The Cinematography is beautiful. 

What seems like in-jokes are things that were probably common in 70s L.A. So, a person like me from New York isn't going to know a lot of the L.A. quirks and vice versa. I remember one of my first impressions of the L.A. refugees in Montana was how much of Mexican / Hispanic and Mediterranean culture was woven into them. Relatable to me through my own Mediterranean heritage and yet interestingly different because of Native American influences. 

7/10 

From IMDb

Murkier than the bottom of a hashish pipe, here’s the short version of the plot: at the behest of an ex-girlfriend (an unforgettably striking Katherine Waterston), a dazed and confused private investigator, Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix), takes on the case of a disappeared real estate mogul. In the process, the mutton-chopped hippie gumshoe’s ex-old lady goes missing, and he becomes embroiled in a densely layered mystery leading to an even thornier conspiracy with all kinds of sinister tentacles into the greedy capitalistic grid. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg in a thick narrative that involves a black panther, Aryan Nazis, fruity new age types, a mysterious boat, an enigmatic entity known as “The Golden Fang” and a surfer musician/former hippie (Owen Wilson) who’s turned snitch.

Menacing Sportello like a sinister shadow he cannot shake as he investigates the missing persons is Detective “Bigfoot” Bjornsen — a civil-rights violating, power-tripping square of a cop fabulously inhabited by a Flintstone-ian flat-topped Josh Brolin, arguably born to play this squared-jaw character.

PTA defies a lot of conventions in his unorthodox movie, which of course rejects traditional three-act structure for something more shambolic. Instead of the filmmaking maxim “show don’t tell,” the mystery mechanics of the movie fire out rapidly in mumbly dialogue that requires the strictest of attention. Narration is also supposed to be 101 no-no for the refined filmmaker, but PTA leverages this technique too. But the expanded feminine narration, taken from a supporting character in the book, Sortilège (a perfectly at ease Joanna Newsom), a Sportello confidante and gal pal, allows PTA to zero in on the longing and sadness of the novel with a dreamy poeticism.

As noirs are wont do to, McGuffins abound. In fact, the entire impenetrable plot of “Inherent Vice” is one big McGuffin. Like Chandler film adaptations “The Big Sleep,” “The Long Goodbye,” etc. the mystery itself, the big reveal and the plot mechanics are beside the point. Instead, what’s paramount is mood, atmosphere and tenor, which shifts from a warm, sun-dappled haze to a one-toke-over-the-line paranoiac fear and California dreamin’ longing for less corrupt, ugly and cynical times.