Title: Inherent Vice
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Katherine Waterston
Runtime: 2 hr 28 mins

What It Is: Well we’re in the thicket explaining this one. Larry “Doc” Sportello (Phoenix) is a private investigator looking into the dissappearance of his ex-girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth (Waterson) who had just hour before her disappearance clued Doc in on a misdeed that was about to be committed by herself, her boyfriends wife and that woman’s boyfriend to kidnap him. After Shasta vanishes Doc knows he needs to find her and make sure she’s safe. Along the way he’ll run into trouble from Lt. Christian “Bigfoot” Bjornsen (Brolin) an embittered member of the pristine Los Angeles Police Deprtment.

What We Think: This thing is a mess, elegantly wrangled by P.T. Anderson. As the film descends into madness and the script starts to look and sound like a Phish concert gone amok. From the nonsensical narrative driven by Joaquin Phoenix posturing through a very vibrant 1960’s Los Angeles to the eerie and almost poetic narration provided by Sortilege (played wonderfully by Joanna Newsom). She serves as a sort of backbone for the puzzle this becomes and if you put the pieces together…it all makes no sense. However if you read the film as many different adventures in Doc’s world it different. Almost like a reefer filled version of The Odyssey. Even the name Sortilege has a clairvoyant back story. From a storytelling perspective this is the best I got at explaining whatever the heck this film is. One thing you cannot overlook is longtime Anderson collaborator Robert Elswit’s beautiful shots. It paints Los Angeles as this oasis in the middle of Hollywood’s desert of human emotion.    

Our Grade: B-, Struggling to make sense to a vast majority of your audience isn’t something PT Anderson is unfamiliar with. In fact a great deal of his charm is his precise vision and steady hand behind the lens. Here that is apparent even if his script (which he penned with Novelist Thomas Pynchon) doesn’t deliver the goods. He gets the most out of a stellar cast, but one can’t help but think what a more focused approach would have presented itself given a different hand. That would be an intriguing toss up!