Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#251 Post by cdnchris » Wed Apr 22, 2015 10:56 am

mfunk9786 wrote:The Blu-ray looks and sounds great though - Joaquin Phoenix is still a mumbler, but aside from that, it sounds a ton better than it did in the theater.
I missed this in theaters and ended up renting it on DirecTV and Holy shiznit am I glad they had optional subtitles. The Del Toro/Phoenix scene at the peer... Good God!

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#252 Post by mfunk9786 » Wed Apr 22, 2015 11:05 am

That and the opening scene - the combination of the unusual dialogue and Phoenix's choice of speech patterns is really a bummer at times in this film, even though they play quite well once you've seen them and sort of know what's being said. I would've loved to see what Robert Downey, Jr. would've done with that part, and I think PTA's instincts were right to consider him first.

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#253 Post by Jean-Luc Garbo » Wed Apr 22, 2015 4:57 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:The Blu-ray looks and sounds great though - Joaquin Phoenix is still a mumbler, but aside from that, it sounds a ton better than it did in the theater.
That's a relief. I was a little worried when DVDBeaver said that the disc was single-layered.

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#254 Post by mfunk9786 » Wed Apr 22, 2015 9:59 pm

They must have corrected whatever info you saw...
Disc Size: 38,099,098,222 bytes
Feature Size: 35,797,106,688 bytes
Video Bitrate: 24.93 Mbps

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#255 Post by AMalickLensFlare » Fri Apr 24, 2015 12:15 am

mfunk9786 wrote:The Blu-ray looks and sounds great though - Joaquin Phoenix is still a mumbler, but aside from that, it sounds a ton better than it did in the theater.
Interesting. I don't remember having any issues with the sound or dialogue when I saw it in theaters.

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#256 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Apr 24, 2015 9:44 am

There was a major problem at the premiere at NYFF, and apparently at some other early screenings of the film, with the sound being up so high that the dialogue would overmodulate and be very difficult to hear.

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#257 Post by Ribs » Fri Apr 24, 2015 11:00 am

And, I don't know about anybody else, but when I went to see it at the Angelika NYC the week it opened (in 35mm), it was framed totally wrong (I believe it was still 1.85:1, but of the top of the frame; you could see booms and shots that are meant to be centered vertically would be focused towards the bottom of the screen as the majority of the lower half was cut off). I was pretty damned shocked to see this happen at one of only two theaters the film was playing at the time. I'd have expected a bit of quality control.

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#258 Post by domino harvey » Wed Apr 29, 2015 10:02 pm

After all the talk of the film being hard to follow, I didn't think it was all that difficult if you're paying attention (or at least no more difficult than your average noir) but apparently whoever did the subtitles struggled, because at one point the transcriber mixes up Coy and Denis. Cool IMDB-level nitpicking, I know, but here we are

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#259 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Jun 18, 2015 3:52 pm


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Re: Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

#260 Post by dda1996a » Tue Nov 21, 2017 12:08 pm

I've only read Pynchon's Crying Lot of 49 (which I love), but that book and what Anderson made out of Vice are very similar. That is focusing on ephemeral, transitory feelings and emotions using a more recognized "detective" structure (or investigative in the case of 49). I think that was what threw off so many people off Vice. It's a hazy, demanding and ultimately it seems unrewarding. But at least for me (and watching it on a big screen, where Elswit's magnificent film shot colors enhanced the film for me) there is a big, bruised nostalgic heart at the center of the film that feeds off everything in the film.
That scene where Doc goes with Katherine Waterson in the rain, only to later find a big industrial building is one of the more obvious examples. Once seen through this prism the film gets a whole new outlook (Wilson's homelife, the entire 70s counterculture, Doc's private life).
I agree that film doesn't reach the heights of everything else except Hard Eight, but I still think it's a terrific film.

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#261 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Wed Dec 12, 2018 5:44 pm

I cannot articulate why exactly, but in re-watching this recently I feel there is as much allegory to what's going on now in this, as when I first watched There Will Be Blood. In some abstract way, the higher-ups Doc constantly runs across don't seem to grasp the whole picture in the same way we are seeing with the Trump administration. A slight evil coming from desperately holding onto the old ways.

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#262 Post by palefire » Mon Dec 17, 2018 10:42 pm

I just rewatched this to do a study on one scene and before I knew it I'd watched the entire thing. It's terrific. In typical Anderson fashion, he takes a quite cynical story and ends up making it rather sweet. Joaquin Phoenix should have won his second Oscar for this one. He should have won for The Master too. There are some blink and you miss it moments of pure comedic genius. Like when Tariq Khalil mentions Wolfmann's name in Doc's office. Or the scene at the end with Japonica's dad. Phoenix gets all serious, "But if you are jivin' with me, my man..." and this face just changes back to no worries hippie. I can understand the complaints of the plot being too confusing, but it just echoes Doc's confusion about the situation(s) he finds himself in. I'd recommend anyone to at least see it twice. A lot like the Coen brothers' films, it just gets funnier every time.

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#263 Post by dda1996a » Tue Dec 18, 2018 2:12 am

I'd say reading Crying Lot of 49 made me love this film a lot more (and Pynchon)


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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#265 Post by mfunk9786 » Sun Jul 12, 2020 1:18 am

Viewed on an edible.

This has grown on me like moss since I saw it for the first time at its NYFF premiere and didn't like it so much, squinting my ears at the often mumbled dialogue and feeling as though it just went on and on.

It is a mysterious masterpiece, beautifully existing in the space of its characters - understanding as much as they do, but still much more than we do. Awash in regret and melancholy.

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#266 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Jul 12, 2020 2:26 am

I had a similar experience, seeing it twice in theatres- where after an initial puzzlement the second time clicked, and every revisit only gets better. I think I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but digging into Pynchon between viewings was key for my appreciation. Although I only got to reading this one’s source about two years ago, his style of writing in other works were enough to see how PTA somehow captured Pynchon’s aura woven onto the screen. The running theme of featured protagonists stuck in their search for meaning, by getting swallowed up in a haze of paranoid fusion from the enigmatic space between the self and the outside world, is translated in a way that I would have assumed to be impossible even in PTA’s hands. The novel is one of his least-great, but it’s a perfect adaptation of the mood of one of the greatest authors’ oeuvre.

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#267 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jul 12, 2020 2:40 am

Liked it the first time, but thought it was one of the best films of the year on revisit. I do think the last ten minutes don’t quite feel like the ending it needed and are a bit anticlimactic, but not to any degree that it matters much overall. Martin Short should have been Oscar nommed

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#268 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Jul 12, 2020 2:44 am

The anticlimactic ending is perhaps the most “Pynchon” thing about the movie!

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#269 Post by The Narrator Returns » Sun Jul 12, 2020 3:03 am

I love how the last 10 minutes narrow this very plotty movie back down to a movie about loneliness, and specifically about how, when you know how grim the world seems around you, the best thing you can do is have a relationship with someone else and be in it together with them. This is why the Harlingen family reunion is so moving and why Bigfoot's final scene is so heartbreaking (in addition to being laugh-out-loud funny), an equivalent to the "Slow Boat to China" scene from The Master where somebody wants to reach out but can only push back and further isolate themselves.

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#270 Post by HinkyDinkyTruesmith » Sun Jul 12, 2020 3:24 am

I don't think it's at all a Pynchon-esque ending, but I think it works well enough for the film. I'm glad to see everyone's come around on it: I loved Pynchon before I loved PTA, and I remember watching the film and simply being perfectly content. I've continued feeling that way as I've rewatched the film: it's a lovely, leisurely, languorous work, that yes, does very well capture that sense of loneliness and desperation for another (making it very much of a piece with Phantom Thread and The Master). It's a very funny movie but I'm always struck by how unfunny it is compared to how PTA talked it up in interviews at the time.

One of my favorite moments that I don't think I've ever seen anyone comment on, is the climax (more or less), when Doc gets high on PCP, and has to get his way out of the handcuffs. The razor sharp cuts, the contrast between the wide shots from outside the cell to the details inside (the Shasta credit card), the brutality of the resolution to that scene: really just marvelous filmmaking.

Anderson really only fits with Pynchon in that they are both rigorous formalists with an affection for strange people. The cartoonish quality to Pynchon's novels, the political foregrounding, the breadth of history all but vanish in his film: Anderson telescopes all these things in a way that keeps them visible but doesn't preserve their original importance. Like Kubrick, he's one of the few filmmakers who can, whether being faithful or inventive, transform the material of another author into his own work. But the silly songs, the John Garfield stuff, the expansiveness of Pynchon's ideological quandries––I do miss them! Anderson merely gestures, in a way that only becomes more apparent in Phantom Thread, whereupon the gesture is but several touches, when the journalist asks about the Jews, and when people refer to 'wherever Alma came from'––truly the lightest of touches.

But, when it comes to documenting the strange emotions we share for each other? Nails it.

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#271 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Jul 12, 2020 3:41 am

I think, like Pynchon’s work, the film navigates between that cartoonishness and groundedness, absurdity and intensity, etc so perhaps we’re just noticing different things about his work because I see a strong versatility present, and balanced, in both. I see what you mean about some tonal changes, for example the Shasta sex scene, which arguably works better in the film- but I definitively recognize the playful silly Pynchon in the film beyond a “gesture.” Also, the very end, like the last scene, isn’t Pynchon- but the way by which the narrative fizzles into the void seems about right to me. Agree to disagree I guess

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#272 Post by Persona » Sun Jul 12, 2020 10:56 am

I was enormously disappointed with this back when I saw it in the theaters but I have to wonder if a lot of unfair expectations were playing into that. PTA was coming off The Master, easily my favorite film by him. I loved Pynchon's book. I thought it was an adaptation match made in heaven.

But I felt like the film, while fairly faithful, didn't capture the tones of the book nearly as well. The humor, the mystery, the melancholy... all of it felt so diluted to me from what my experience was with the book. PTA chooses to focus on the unfocus of the book, rather than focus on the way that unfocus comes from its characters and why and how. And I get why he does that: the film's nihilistic brand of existentialism is meant to outweigh any possible reason or even thought process, or at least that's how I interpret its intent. But in the end the book entertained and resonated with me so much while the film fell really flat in those areas.

But like I said, I was so amped going in, I probably have not given this a fair shake (it is the only PTA film besides Hard Eight that I have not revisited). The one part that I remember loving was "Vitamin C," probably just cuz I am a huge Can fan.

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#273 Post by HinkyDinkyTruesmith » Sun Jul 12, 2020 11:29 am

therewillbeblus wrote:
Sun Jul 12, 2020 3:41 am
I think, like Pynchon’s work, the film navigates between that cartoonishness and groundedness, absurdity and intensity, etc so perhaps we’re just noticing different things about his work because I see a strong versatility present, and balanced, in both. I see what you mean about some tonal changes, for example the Shasta sex scene, which arguably works better in the film- but I definitively recognize the playful silly Pynchon in the film beyond a “gesture.” Also, the very end, like the last scene, isn’t Pynchon- but the way by which the narrative fizzles into the void seems about right to me. Agree to disagree I guess
I didn't say Anderson wasn't playful or silly––I said he wasn't cartoonish. I understand how that can come across as synonymous with those other words, but I meant it quite literally. While the film is indeed playful and silly, there's only a few moments I would call 'cartoonish'––Bigfoot literally kicking down the door, for example. A moment from the novel like Doc singing "Fly Me to the Moon" when he asks the federal agents if he can be Frank for a minute doesn't feel congruent to the film, even if the agents are picking their noses half the time.

I've never perceived as much of a tonal shift in the Shasta sex scene as I've seen people remark: obviously we, as reader, dictate much of the tonal quality of literature when we read, especially if it's largely in dialogue rather than narration, but I always found the sex scene in the novel to be full of anguish, and was surprised when I read one reviewer who remarked that (I can't remember who, apologies) Anderson took a "funny" scene from the novel and made it very dark: perhaps it is funny in the novel, but I never thought it wasn't dark!

I don't think either the book or the film fizzle into a void––I don't think any Pynchon novel does, except for Gravity's Rainbow, which doesn't fizzle, but explode––I think they both move uneasily and unclearly into the future. For Anderson, who has reshaped the narrative to be primarily about the book's key interpersonal relationship, the future is Doc and Shasta's future. How will these two people, once in love, move forward? (And what of that white light in the rearview that attracts Doc's attention? The past?) In the novel, Doc moves off into the fog, trying to get home, but not worrying if he will; the fog takes on metaphoric proportions, historical and societal, blurring not only the future, but pathways home, pathways to other places, the borders of nations, the ethnic differences of individuals––and it's a fog that prompts, as Pynchon writes, people to help each other out by forming a caravan, "one of the few things he'd ever seen anybody in this town, except hippies, do for free."

This change is, of course, totally in keeping with Anderson's last four films: from There Will Be Blood onward, he has constantly submerged history in narratives of relationships: foes, friends, or lovers as they may be, the characters have always overwhelmed history, whether it's oil prospecting, the postwar, or the failed counterculture revolution. The Master makes this clear, as Lancaster Dodd describes knowing Freddie in past lives, and predicts meeting him again in future ones (Alma makes a similar remark in Phantom Thread). History disappears under the intensity of emotion in Anderson's films, I would argue, quite literally.

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#274 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Jul 12, 2020 12:19 pm

I actually agree with all of that, even if I can think of more cartoonish moments (Martin Short, for one) though they are all infused with more melancholic shades rather than the way Pynchon generally alternates between tones in his novels. As for the Shasta scene, I actually read it like you did- my friends who read the book prior to the movie always said it was a hilarious scene made serious, and while I do think PTA made changes to shorten it and make it darker, it’s not that much different. My point was more in line with subtle mood changes that you were getting at rather than reworking Pynchon completely, which I don’t think either of us are saying.

And so your interpretation of what Pynchon novels do in the end is fair in its specificity, but I don’t believe that your thesis is mutually exclusive from my point. In fact it feels like a reframe rather than a negation of my vague words. By “fizzle into the void” I mean a few things - first, the central mystery or direction of control the characters and story has been moving to is often abandoned in favor of what I perceive to be a (not necessarily even) mixture of acceptance, change in interest/perspective, and disillusionment. I should have been clearer, but the “narrative” I’m referring to isn’t Pynchon’s getting away from him, but the one attempting to be made tangible- the “preferred narrative” to use a therapeutic term. When this cannot be realised, and the paranoia turns into anti-paranoia, there’s a natural change prompted in the characters. They can either go crazy, become apathetic, have an existential bout of self-evaluation, and/or turn outwardly to another enigmatic space or recontextualized tangible idea for solace and confusion (the paranoia being good in giving life an opportunity for meaning, rather than destroying it). I think Inherent Vice does both, with Shasta as a person being, in a sense, more tangible than some great mystery beyond reach, as well as a sobering reminder of what we can control by initiating compassion within reach (though this too isn’t concrete and must be taken mindfully in the present).

The “void” though is the future (and the general nebulous truths of our experience we feel ill-equipped or afraid to face), and while there is some acceptance involved between one’s coping strategies to move away from preoccupation with the past to look toward the future, that ‘future’ and ‘history’ and ‘change’ is all a void that’s just as scary and uninviting as it is exciting and welcoming simply by being organically inclusive, so the attitude shift in the characters is what drives their stance towards the enigma that is magnetically pulling them. The mysteries are an attempt to distract, tread water, find meaning, against the reality of time, history, culture - those inevitable, far more mysterious shifts than cannot be grasped. So forgive my broad semantics, but the fog- and Doc’s change in response to it- as a way to stray from the central mystery of the novel/film, is all part of that movement from a fizzling narrative that was a side project from the real narrative which is far more elusive and real.

I think these sobering, ‘spiritual’ (or anti-spiritual, however you define it) moments occur throughout Pynchon’s work as the initial narratives/mysteries both elude and are surrendered as the characters awaken to what they’re hiding from, ignoring, or struggling to give their full attention. Even though the books are very different, I recall reading the ending of The Crying of Lot 49 between theatrical screenings of the PTA and suddenly “getting” why I felt the ending was anticlimactic, and how it actually was climactic in an acknowledgement of a more vulnerable core narrative of life beneath the superficial one all along.

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Re: Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

#275 Post by Nasir007 » Sun Jul 12, 2020 12:28 pm

Persona wrote:
Sun Jul 12, 2020 10:56 am
I was enormously disappointed with this back when I saw it in the theaters but I have to wonder if a lot of unfair expectations were playing into that. PTA was coming off The Master, easily my favorite film by him. I loved Pynchon's book. I thought it was an adaptation match made in heaven.

But I felt like the film, while fairly faithful, didn't capture the tones of the book nearly as well. The humor, the mystery, the melancholy... all of it felt so diluted to me from what my experience was with the book. PTA chooses to focus on the unfocus of the book, rather than focus on the way that unfocus comes from its characters and why and how. And I get why he does that: the film's nihilistic brand of existentialism is meant to outweigh any possible reason or even thought process, or at least that's how I interpret its intent. But in the end the book entertained and resonated with me so much while the film fell really flat in those areas.

But like I said, I was so amped going in, I probably have not given this a fair shake (it is the only PTA film besides Hard Eight that I have not revisited). The one part that I remember loving was "Vitamin C," probably just cuz I am a huge Can fan.
This film confounded me but slowly unspooled itself to be a masterpiece in my consciousness. I now think of it as a great film.

What initially tripped me up was that the plot didn’t add up. The story is absolutely confounding and I am convinced that you cannot really understand it by just watching the film. It’s The Big Sleep basically. But as I went back to the book and started reading about it, the story does add up but you have to go beyond the movie to comprehend it.

So then what are we left with. In essence the chaos of a bizarre world that is by turns revolting and confounding and unsettling but one in which Anderson finds glimmers of beauty and meaning and moments of clarity that make it worthwhile.

You follow Phoenix in an outstanding performance by him as lovable chump through this mad adventure and come away with an appreciation of decency and the fleeting connections between people that seem like the very point of life.

All the while - as you appreciate the extraordinary craft of Anderson’s direction and editing and writing, an ace team of actors and spectacular period detail and lensing. Overall the film leads you on, so you gotta surrender but it gets you home alright.

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