Subtitles:

English (SDH), French, Portuguese, Spanish, none

Extras:

• Los Paranoias (1:59)
• Shasta Fay (1:11)
• The Golden Fang (2:11)
• Everything in this Dream (5:49)
Includes Digital HD UltraViolet so you can enjoy the film on many different compatible devices

Clearly, if anyone were to even attempt to bring Pynchon to the screen, they would need to be someone whose cinematic concerns were along the same lines as his literary ones and who also possessed both the talent to pull off such an achievement and the sheer chutzpah to even attempt such a thing in the first place. In terms of talent and chutzpah, Paul Thomas Anderson would have to go to the head of the list--over the course of his first six films--"Hard Eight," "Boogie Nights," "Magnolia," "Punch Drunk Love," "There Will Be Blood" and "The Master"--he has taken some of the most unlikely conceits imaginable (a sympathetic look at the porn industry, a portrait of an exceptionally callous oil baron, an arty take on a typical Adam Sandler premise complete with Sandler himself in the first serious role of his career) and made them pay off with some of the best and most audacious American films of our time. With his latest film, "Inherent Vice," Anderson has taken the bait by bringing Pynchon's 2009 detective novel to the big screen and once again, he has gambled much on his enormous talent and has somehow come out a big winner. This is a gloriously whacked-out and surprisingly touching crazy-quilt of a movie that works both as a cinematic translation of Pynchon and as part of Anderson's distinct filmography and is not just the best film of 2014 but Anderson's best work since "Magnolia" and one of the most impressive literary adaptations that I have seen in a long time. 

 

Mr. Anderson, a Los Angeles son and its reigning cinema laureate, knows California’s plagues and pleasures well. His films are filled with its light and malevolent forces, its faith healers and dream peddlers. Bodies writhe like Cecil B. DeMille extras in “Boogie Nights,” in which a pornutopia is found and lost, while a prophet rises in “Magnolia” with a Kubrickian flourish. In “There Will Be Blood,” an oil speculator who sounds like John Huston (it’s Chinatown, Jake) gushes crude and blood; in “The Master,” a religion is born on the bodies of broken men. (Psst, it’s Scientology.) Like some filmic equivalent of Kevin Starr, the pre-eminent historian of California, Mr. Anderson tells the state’s story with big-picture sweep, intellectual cool and unforced sympathy.

He’s a good fit, in other words, for the site-specific “Inherent Vice,” Mr. Pynchon’s third novel set in California. Mr. Anderson has condensed the book with surgical precision, ditching certain subplots, characters and locales while retaining the novel’s sociopolitical tug, barbed asides and chokingly funny details. In a nice genre twist, he has also added a female narrator, Joanna Newsom as Sortilège, who helps offset all the peekaboo miniskirts. Mr. Phoenix’s note-perfect performance flows on the story’s currents of comedy that occasionally turn into rapids, as the funny ha-ha, funny strange back-and-forth abruptly gives way to Three Stooges slapstick: a bonk on the head, a kick in the rear, a fired gun, a busted-down door. Mr. Anderson’s softly lighted close-ups of Doc’s face dovetail beautifully with Mr. Phoenix’s astonishing gift for heart-heavy vulnerability.

NOTE: The captures below are courtesy of our friend Erik Hundland on his site HERE (Thanks Erik!)

CLICK EACH BLU-RAY CAPTURE TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION

 

Gary Tooze

April 12th, 2015