Review: Inherent Vice

Year: 2014 (U.K Release 2015)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Katherine Waterston, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio del Toro, Jena Malone, Joanna Newsom, and Martin Short.

Synopsis is here:

I don’t know where to start or what to say. Inherent Vice; Paul Thomas Anderson’s seventh feature film, is scuzzy, meandering and near meaningless. It’s a shaggy dog story, which is even less accessible than Anderson’s previous film; The Master (2012), which had many screaming in maddening frustration. I say this as if I had an issue with the film. I write those words as if I had hated my time I spent with Doc Sportello and the gang of misfits we’re introduced to.

I didn’t hate Inherent Vice. If anything I may have already found my first favourite film of the year. By the time Vice had its final credit run up the screen. I had myself having to convince myself that I didn’t have the time to watch the film again. I went to the nearest retail store and brought the soundtrack instead, to tide me over until I have the space in my schedule to for some more cinema time, or even worse, wait until the Blu-ray. I just wanted to spend more time in this world, with these characters immediately. I loved the film that much.

If anyone was going to create a rambling, blissed filled homage to the noirs of old, it had to be Anderson. Inherent Vice maybe an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s equally as wandering novel, but it’s also another chance for Anderson to let his shoulders droop, reference his favourite influences and get a little loose after two of his most austere features to date.

It may be a cop out to say this, but Inherent Vice is a film about mood and character rather than story. It's a film dictated by its time and location as opposed to anything else. A world of mumble mouthed hippies, jive talkers and dopers, whose time is spent stumbling around looking for what they've lost. Plot flitters into view and yet remains out of reach. Red herrings swerve manically into view, taking time to roll up some grass and talk about nothing. This is a vacuum left by the death of the swinging sixties. The revolution lost by the dreamers and won by the squares. It’s a tad silly to try and pinpoint the logic of these people and the shaggy dog tangents they cook up. Spend enough time with these guys and you release: “What makes sense to these guys?”

“We blew it” was the hotly contested line of 1969’s Easy Rider. Often considered as a remark that hints at the end of the counterculture lifestyle enjoyed by Billy and Wyatt. Vice often feels like we’re watching the walking dead of that culture, looking to soak up any remnants that may exist. Doc (yet another superlative Joaquin Phoenix performance) appears to be taking case after case to fuel his drug habit more than anything else. Yet the real drive of the story is the disappearance of his girlfriend Stasta, who originally sets him on his merry way of missing real estate developer, shady crime syndicates and new age cultism. Each “case” shows at least one aspect of how the hippie culture slowly began to eat itself. As does the recurring talk of Charles Mansion, whose crimes linger in the air like a sour stench. Once Stasta disappears, we nearly only ever see her again in hazy flashback and drifting transitions, almost as if she was a dream and that as an actual entirety, never really existed.

Younger, alleged film writers like myself can only really dream of this era, but the way Anderson and cinematographer Robert Elswit capture the sun kissed beaches, creepy upscale asylums and run down brothels is so remarkably textured and authentic that it makes a strong impression. Yet despite its lazy, slightly woozy surroundings, a strong element of farce and slapstick often pervades and punctuates scenes. Much Like Elliott Gould in Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973), Doc is a private eye whose street smarts give him high cultural currency, yet his cluelessness about just how the strings of his cases are being pulled, allowing a large amount of comedy at his expense. For a film which is often at times highly melancholic, in a genre that was always considered to be grim, it’s refreshing to see just how often Anderson (a big SNL fan) goes for hard laughs.  Gleefully aiming at the sheer preposterous of it all.

Despite the talk of the film’s murky and multiple plot lines, I found the main intentions of the film to be abundantly clear (in my eyes). Of course, while the actual message of the film lie within the eye of the beholder, I feel it’s safe to say Inherent Vice is a wistful film about loss. Every character is found wanting and chasing for something that either no longer open to them or disappearing in front of their eyes. Like all of Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest period of films, Inherent Vice has its director peering into both the deaths and beginnings of eras and revolutions and observing the fallout through their failed relationships. Vice is not only is the most nostalgic of Anderson’s recent endeavours, amusingly harking back to the heady days of Boogie Nights (1997). Looking at Vice with all its exasperated plot strands, paranoid theories and generally warming glances back at nostalgia, manages to help establish Anderson as one of the most entertaining chroniclers of modern American history currently working.

Review: Sound of my Voice

Year: 2012
Director: Zal Batmanglij
Screenplay: Zal Batmanglij, Brit Marling
Starring: Brit Marling, Christopher Denham, Nicole Vicius

Synopsis is here:

There is a certain something that peaked and kept my interest about Sound of my Voice. I think much of it stemmed from Brit Marling's unnerving performance as a leader of a pseudo-scientific basement cult. Her role as Maggie is a charismatic one in a similar way to John Hawkes' role in Martha Marcy May Marlene. Their soft spoken voices are laced with a sensuality that makes it very easy to understand why young intelligent people, fall deeply under their charms. The waif like Marling isn't some drop dead stunning starlet, but there is a temping allure in her voice that attracts you to her. You want to tell her secrets. When one character exclaims that their partner gets an emotional orgasm when speaking to her, it doesn't sound as absurd as when written on paper. The reason why cults are so scary is that they seduce the mind. The body falls quickly afterwards.

Oh, if only all of the movie was as enthralling as this. Sound of my voice gets you going with a teasing prospect and then leaves you by the way side. Part of the problem is that compared to other recent movies about cults, it doesn't have the energy. Compare this to the aforementioned Martha Marcy May Marlene, and you realise that the performances of the protagonists just aren't up to scratch. Place it side by side next to The Master, and you see that no scene matches the same kind of intensity or foreboding. Some scenes ignite interest, some drag, but at least the film gets points for reaching. I didn't find myself as distanced as I did in Martha Marcy May Marlene. Maybe because it didn't feel as much as an exercise.

Unlike the Manson folk edge of Martha Marcy May Marlene, and the Scientology leanings of The Master,   Sound of my Voice seems to take a more direct sci-fi route, which may remind some the Heaven's Gate cult.   Our protagonists infiltrate the group in order to try and make a feature film exposing it. The leader; Maggie, claims that she is a sickly time traveller, who is preparing them for an upcoming "event" that will reshape the earth radically. The group meet up repeatedly and prepare with cleansing rituals, purging "intellectual bullshit" metaphorically through spewing up apples and other oddball exercises which remind me slightly of the episode of Peep Show where Mark joins the Rainbow Rhythms dance class to try and pull Sophie. There's a more than a small amount of silliness about one or two of the exercises, however, they do help show just how deep these people are involved and how willing. A scene in which our male lead, Peter, is subtlety broken down by Maggie is a pivotal and telling one. Maggie's ability to say just the right things to stimulate him is quietly troubling.

Unfortunately, it's not surprising, as the route in which our leads go, is telegraphed quite quickly. The scenes between them do little to elevate the story emotionally, mostly because while these characters are vulnerable, they're not particularly interesting. The film lacks the forcefulness that comes into play in other cult movies. Because of this, it imbalances the films climax, I didn't actually mind but yearned for more punch. If only everything was as compelling as Marling. A co-writer of the film, it feels a little like she wrote the best parts for herself.

Review: The Master

Year: 2012
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Laura Dern

Synopsis is here:

To many, The Master is a difficult film to love or even like. The characters we meet are not ones we would want to be cornered by at a dinner party. We observe within the film, more than enough scenes of these people gatherings just to be sure. And yet, the film, even at its most obtuse and surreal, remains utterly compelling. If one thing is for sure, it shows again that Anderson is obsessed with trying to charm us with charlatans and fallen angels.

In The Master we are given Freddie Quell (A career best Phoenix), a man who would have been completely swallowed up by his surroundings, if not for his violent and drunken outbursts against them. The film's beginning, we find Freddie; simulate sex on a sand woman made on the beach. One could say he's literally fucking Mother Nature. Of course the question is why would you do that, if you weren't quite right?

Quell sticks out. Is he mentally ravaged by war? Has destroyed his faculties with those poisonous (made with paint thinner) brews of his? Did he spend too much time away from his sweetheart? We are never given solid grounding on his ailments and yet we are shown enough to show how damaged Quell has become since the war. A blanketed statement mentions early on that those returning from the war should be able to start small businesses and perform labour, in spite of what they may have seen. But what of those who have lost more than others? It's clear from Quell's posture alone that he is a misshapen man. The erratic episodes and outbursts we see only solidify our thoughts.

By chance, Quell meets the enigmatic Lancaster Todd, leader of "The Cause", a bizarre quasi religion based around a glut of peculiar principles and rituals that are never truly explained to us. Todd is a classic Anderson character; a father figure who promises atonement with words as sweet as syrup. No different from The Porn Mogul (Boogie Nights), or The Oil Man (There Will Be Blood), Todd is so wrapped up in his words, he believes he could sell brimstone to Satan. Todd decides to take Quell on board as a protégée, as clear testament, that the teachings and practices from his book can cure even the most distraught.

Hoffman plays Todd as smoke and mirrors personified. All darting eyes and false grins and much like Quell, he is quick to anger when tested. Although they meet by chance, there is a feeling of fatalism about the situation. We delve very little into his past and yet when he states that he's seen Freddie before, the empty spaces begin to fill in. It's interesting to observe how both Todd and his wife Peggy (an exemplary Amy Adams in full Lady Macbeth mode) look at alcohol. A small bathroom scene involving the Todds shows that despite the grand gestures, Lancaster is ruled by the same masters that rule many of us.

These are primal men ruled and controlled by their urges. While Todd tries to internalise and intellectualise his baser appetites, Quell spills his out on the floor like Freudian vomit. Together their fragments complete a damaged father-son relationship Anderson's films often feature. Quell seeks guidance, Todd wishes to be that superior leader that fathers may wishes to be, the raconteur at the family wedding, the all knowing and great auditor. And yet, the two of them being together, tugs at both of their frayed edges. Many scenes bind the stress in stifling close up. Mihai Malaimare's arresting cinematography and Jonny Greenwoods hypnotic score create a sense of unease that travels from scene to scene. Like a car crash, there's something so hauntingly beautiful about the ugliness of human behaviour is captured in the film, it's hard to turn away when the spinning tops clash.

Much has been said about the films references to Scientology, as well as how damning its statements are. While the film isn't a glistening expose of all things bad about the religion, I'm in no way shocked at the reaction of a certain practitioner of the faith. The Cause's processing appears very similar to auditing, while a tense sequence, involving Todd's son in law throwing Quell's personal problems (extracted from the process) back at him, illustrates the type of fears brought up by many when the mentioning of auditing arises. What makes these moments of the film so appealing to me is in how non-judgemental the film is towards the faith.  The film holds a mirror to the audiences’ thoughts of not only The Cause, but the self help/spiritual courses that The Cause picks from.

Does this all add up to a great film? To many, they will see nothing and the film is more basic that it leads on (certainly in its narrative form). The Master at times can appear as much of a muchness. Anderson's films of the past may have been more forceful in their eras and the film is so wrapped up with these people and their vulgarities, it feels sparse and at times distancing, while its main message doesn't feel as complex as suggested.

However in the opinion of this blogger, the film is a truly exciting work of craft. A character piece in which its mesmerizing visuals are punctuated by its blinding tension. The Master is a tale of damaged men searching for inner peace in all the wrong places. To wonder why it doesn't all "fit in" to a comfortable narrative space, almost mimics why the hunched and sick Quell does just "fit in" with all the rest of Middle America. The Master takes a while to state it's case, but Anderson's execution of material is absorbing throughout.