Review of Inherent Vice (2014) by Kendall P — 14 Jan 2015

The PI of the golden age of film stayed a step ahead of the police at all times, so it comes as a shock when Joaquin Phoenix is caught with a lit spliff in his own apartment as Josh Brolin kicks down the door.

This example, late in the film, is just one of many moments in Inherent Vice during which the audience's point of view (Phoenix) is as confused as we are, leading us on a journey of constant displacement.

As with Pynchon's novel, Anderson's film seems preoccupied with the state of the Private Investigator in a postmodern world. Phoenix plays Doc Sportello with a perfect hazy paranoia, seeing clues in everything but following all his leads to dead ends.

The criminals stay ahead of him while the police use him as a pawn and, as the 70's begin, his hippy way of thinking is engulfed by post-Manson Family terror. As with the modern PI whose work has become little more than marital cases and money issues (solved for the most part by online resources), Sportello represents the eventual end of the classic detective era of Spade and Marlowe.

The man who works outside the law can only do so much in a system that has advanced beyond its Luddite days and becomes obsolete alongside the more highly trained police. Anderson's film seems lost, but only because it's trying to tell us to move on as our heroes try to find a place for themselves in the 21st century.