Inherent Vice (2015)
After 3 or 4 attempts in the past, I finally "suceeded" in sitting through all of Paul Thomas Anderson's 'Inherent Vice'. A film noir movie transposed to the sunny 1970s. All the recognisable components of the genre are there but the twist is changing the private eye character from a hard-drinking tough guy, to a drug addled hippie. I've watched several OG detective noirs this past week, so it was a great time to experience this update.
There are several elements that make it hard to watch. There are (almost) no establishing shots, sometimes we cut from closeup in one scene, to a closeup in another scene. When Zack Snyder did that in BvS, I put it down to incompetence but with PTA, I'm unsure if it was deliberate but ill-advised choice. Whole scenes are done in one fixed medium-shot, with no other footage to further our understanding of what is going on. Characters endlessly talk about other characters that are not in the scene we are watching, that we haven't met yet, that we will never meet, or that turn out to have no real importance to the story. Characters constantly ramble on about inconsequential things, or do inconsequential things. The little nuggets of important info, neccessary for undertsanding the convulted plot are sprinkled into those ramblings, daring you to miss them. Joaquin Phoenix mumbles, slurs and whispers all his dialogue, so again not receiving important plot info is all too easy. The voiceover by another Hippie, sometimes explains things for us but is often just new-age nonsense about signs of the zodiac.
One part stood out for me as emblematic of the film-making in general: We glimpse a couple of Polaroids of a character called "Coy", then much later Coy approaches on a foggy night so we cannot really ever see his face but we hear his voice. The only way the audience is able to know that this guy is the same one from the photos is if they already recognise actor Owen Wilson's face and voice (he plays Coy). Admittedly that's highly likely but it's still sloppy film-making.
On the positive side, Phoenix's central performance is really wonderful. The sun scorched 35mm photography looks stunning. The ensemble cast is execellent. There are loads of hilarious moments like Phoenix suddenly screaming at a disturbing photo, Josh Brolin performing fellatio on a frozen banana, or Martin Short's whole turn as a loopy dentist. 'Inherent Vice' is worth the watch if you have the patience.