4.0 out of 5 stars
Discombobulation blues
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 December 2015
Joaquin Phoenix is definitely coming into his own feral field of acting grotesque comedy(with The Master before this), with his mutton-chops sideboards and gruffalo hair(looking like a Neil Young of the mid 70s), playing out his own version of heart-broken love, pining for his ex-old lady, Shasta Fay Hepworth(Waterson). With the downfall of the hippy dream of the 60s, everyone’s world has fallen apart, though they still smoke dope, the paranoid’s last hope is to connect everything with everything. They are thrown back on dreams, psychic flashes, Ouija boards, horoscopes, seeking patterns in the chaos of reality. Of course to help us on our way we have the doper, Doc Sportello, P.I., or his yang, friend-enemy, Big Foot Bjornsen (Brolin). Phoenix’s performance is a wonder to behold, with his ‘umms ‘ and ‘aahs’ and his connecting notes to ward off his short term memory loss.He’s a kind of hero of the marginalized by the “forces of greed and fear”. Carefree beaches of the 60s have given way to the pavemented real-estate of the 70s with the commercialization of the hippy dream. ”Under the paving stones, the beach” is a tag at the start of the film taken from graffiti of Paris '68.
Paul Thomas Anderson has taken time off from his more serious film subjects to hang out with his favourite author, Thomas Pynchon, with one of his own more relaxed,successful novels(Inherent Vice),written as if out of pure pleasure.This is a breather between biggies for both artists.Paranoia is running the day,coming from Charlie Manson , the FBI,the LAPD or the mysterious “Golden Fang”. We have forebears in Hawk’s Big Sleep and Altman’s The Long Goodbye. The ex, Shasta, starts the plot rolling, when she turns up,to ask, “ I need your help Doc”. For Shasta,Doc was the only doper who didn’t use heroin and provided low rent living space.
Of course making films of novels is always fraught with danger; making films of wordy books is liable to lead the filmmaker astray, especially if he quotes from the book or has a voiceover. It’s really all about translating the words into images.This film has no plot, we are pin-balled between characters and moods. It’s like pedalling in low gear without much forward momentum with a lot of interior dialogue scenes ,together with close-up shots,everything seems flattened-out and equi-similar. There are a lot of pratfalls and jokes, each scene doesn’t build up onto the next scene,we just randomly go from one t’other. Inventing a pattern where there is none is something that stories andconspiracy theories have in common. There is no depth , characters are cartoons. It’s hard for us to distinguish between the different sets of semi- crooks, and between friends and foes.Our P.I. has to discriminate between spells of laughing gas, LSD,cocaine and cannabis, what connects all the many threads. Doc turns up to salvage his generation and guide it back, with his kindness, to more merciful shores.
Many people approach Doc , from Shasta(Katherine Waterson terrific), who’s worried about her missing lover, a property magnate, whose wife and her lover are sending to the asylum; to Hope Harlingen(brilliant Jena Malone) the ex-junkie mother turned drug counsillor to investigate her husband’s ‘death’, saxplayer Coy(Wilson), who Doc finds alive working undercover for the FBI(Coy informs Doc of the 'Golden Fang', a Chinese syndicate running drugs, a schooner, or a congress of dentists or all 3); to the Black Power militant who has been ripped off by one of Wolfmann’s bodyguards,who is protected by the Aryan Brotherhood, a gang of bikers. Doc learns Mickey (Wolfmann)was making philanthropic plans to atone for his sins by giving all his money away. This is the real problem, and the good guys and the bad guys get together to stave off this reprehensible act. The syndicates that flood LA with heroin, reel in the anti-capitalists via rehab, into conformism and conservatism.
There are two magnificent set pieces in the film,the Golden Fang headquarters,where Martin Short is a mad hatter dentist, who’s screwing his receptionist and his clients, wrapped up in a drug ring, where Doc runs into Japonica a rich runaway he’d once been hired to find; then an exclusive rehab institute, a hospital so white where he’s shown around by an unctuous doctor,where a group of patients are dressed as Tibetan monks, and the inmates watch terrible old movies all the time, in a process of brainwashing these once rich kids. One of Doc’s missions is to reunite Hope and Coy.There are some real pleasures in a scene where Doc’s reminiscence of plashing barefoot along a sidewalk in downtown LA with Shasta to the tune of Neil Young’‘Journey through the Past’, next to a vacant lot that ,when we next see it, is occupied by an ominous-looking corporate HQ. There are some great performances here from Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Katherine Waterston, Jena Malone, Owen Wilson. The soundtrack by Jonny Greenwood is Debussy-like and there’s good use of surfer tracks as well as Neil Young. This film I guarantee you will grow on you like a jazz riff or to emulate the antique,slangy prose of Pynchon, like Doc’s mutton chop sideburns.
One person found this helpful
