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I don't know that it's less accessible than The Master. The Master is very off-putting, odd, and unsettling from the get-go. Inherent Vice eventually becomes that, but it's also very funny for much of it's run-time and plays off of classic detective tropes. Phoenix plays Doc as very "Dude-like" but it'd probably double-feature better with The Long Goodbye than it would The Big Lebowski.
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Jan 10, 2015 07:24
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I was surprised by how much of the film was just close-ups.
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Jan 10, 2015 07:55
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:yeah i was real excited when i saw that but then deflated when they cut the line. maybe in the deleted scenes *sigh* I feel like for as funny as the movie still is, PTA cut a lot of the humor from the book. One of my favorite gags was Denis and Jade in the back seat of Doc's car talking about eating pussy. Doc asks a question and Jade just yells "He's busy!". Was sad that got cut.
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Jan 11, 2015 06:20
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:I thought she cleaned up quite nicely. A hell of a lot more natural than James Deen or Sasha Grey. I didn't know she was a porn star until just this minute and I never would have guessed it. PTA has a tendency to work magic when he casts porn stars, eh?
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Jan 12, 2015 03:51
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dtkozl posted:I would disagree really. I don't think the movie is about the hippie "age" at all, it was just the setting. There are no long drawn out monologues like in fear in loathing about how they are in a special time or thought they were, or were actively trying to subvert the status quo. The movie specifically states what inherent vice is, how things just tend to break on ships. America is the ship, and doc, bigfoot, and owen wilson are all generally good men that were broken on it. The whole idea is just that money and power are always evil forces, not always unified which is shown by the many different factions all trying to get their hands on wolfmann, the lapd, the fbi, the golden fang, etc. They do however unify when it comes down to suppressing the masses, like at the end at dinner when the lawyer dude says you lost my respect when you paid rent. The renting class will always be the victim no matter the age or the setting, and this is what breaks good men. Also like Fear & Loathing it's about the failure and death of the hippie movement and revolutions. Except Fear & Loathing paints the failure as a result of the hippies themselves and that Nixon's Silent Majority simply kept moving forward and growing more powerful as if they didn't even exist (Duke in Vegas, getting a glimpse of what mainstream America is really like, and how Duke is basically just an oddity or a curio for them to glance at as they continue to go about their lives). Inherent Vice depicts the failure as a result of actual conspiracies, government suppression. Notice how with all the drugs everybody's doing no one ever gets picked up or arrested for them (actually, in the book, Puck Beaverton is the one character who gets arrested for drugs, and it's on a bullshit charge about finding a marijuana seed in his vacuum cleaner bag. More as a way to get rid of him than it is as punishment for possession). The drugs keep the hippies from ever truly mobilizing, which is how the government wants it. When a billionaire land developer starts "going hippie" is when the government steps in and puts a stop to it. The status quo must be maintained. With all this fear of cults and Manson, the worst cult of all is the FBI. They induct actors by blacklisting them and then turning them "straight" by putting them in anti-communist propaganda films. They abduct capitalists with regrets and brainwash them. And this is what Doc saves Coy from. Coy was brought in as a mole, he was inducted by the cult of the mainstream, and Doc buys him his freedom. The fact is, that it is about the hippie age. But it's about revolutions in general. And revolutions have an inherent vice in them. They're almost destined to fall apart. To drugs, to in-fighting. "You lost my respect the moment you paid rent." That's inherent vice.
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Jan 12, 2015 19:48
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dtkozl posted:Yeah that is sorta my point. There is nothing unique to the hippie age in this story, it is just another failed revolution and there were ones before and there will be ones after. Just because it's universal doesn't mean it isn't also directly about the sixties. And also, I may be going a bit off the book here, but all the specific references to Nixon and then-Governor Reagan. The sheer dedication to building an authentic atmosphere for this very specific year (1970). In order to understand our own time, and all the times in between, we have to look to the sixties (just as the sixties have to look to the fifties and so on and so on). Pynchon and Anderson are pointing to this era, and really this particular year, and saying: Look. This is what has been going on forever. This is one specific example of it happening. The "straights" in this story are the ones who elected Nixon, and they went on to elect Reagan. The government squashed the hippies, they squashed the Black Panthers. The hippies gave way to the yuppies and they all either went straight or OD'd. It's a good companion to Fear & Loathing. F&L was written in 1971, and Thompson reported what he saw and felt. Inherent Vice takes a look back and tells us what we know now. What the real takeaway from that time was.
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Jan 12, 2015 20:18
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They form a nice little trilogy.
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Jan 12, 2015 21:11
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:I forgot how badass the then unknown Arnie with the mustache looked. I had no idea he was in it when I watched it. Still one of the best surprises of any movie I've seen.
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Jan 13, 2015 00:05
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:I'm wrong, at the time he would've been well known as Mister drat Universe. He had already done Hercules in New York at that point. 
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Jan 13, 2015 02:41
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Leon Einstein posted:This movie, in my opinion, was all style with no substance. The story was very hard for me to follow, and the pacing was not my cup of tea. You should read this thread then.
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Jan 20, 2015 07:04
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Leon Einstein posted:A movie shouldn't require further reading to make sense. Most of us have only seen it once and we've had good discussions about it, what happens, and what it all means. Just because you couldn't figure it out doesn't mean there's no substance.
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Jan 20, 2015 22:36
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It felt to me like Inherent Vice was a natural evolution from The Master. Hazy, free-floating, oppressive, terrifying, dreamlike. While there's a strong Altman influence I wouldn't say PTA is just aping him. I feel like that ended with Magnolia and everything from Punch-Drunk Love on has been Anderson really finding his own style. morestuff posted:Even the establishing shot of the whole setting is just a hint of the beach cramped in-between some bungalows. "Under the paving stones - The Beach!"
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Feb 10, 2015 07:06
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