Paul Thomas Anderson
Vizio di forma

Ok, in the short span of three days I watched, in chronological order:

1 - the day before yesterday There Will Be Blood from 2007 (and I wrote a semi-review),

2 - then yesterday The Master from 2012 and I commented on a review already written here on Deb

3 - and finally today Inherent Vice from 2014 (which I am, uh, writing about...)

Films directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, a director I promised myself a full immersion in and whom I had mentioned not knowing anything about, but I was wrong because I had seen his film “Magnolia” many years ago, of which I don't remember a blessed thing except that Tom Cruise worked on it (hence I will have to watch it again for sure to get a more precise idea about PTA).

The three films (uhm, the last three I've seen) have some constants, they are quite long, all over two hours (and they didn't bore me even a bit and I didn't find them tedious as someone else wrote), they have first-class actors and they are very nice (in my opinion, of course), beyond that they are very different from each other, even though many actors seen in different of his films appear in them (which seems to be one of his prerogatives or preferences).

Here in “Inherent Vice”, a maritime contractual term that has to do with ensuring even what is not contemplated in the contracts stipulated (at least that's what I understood) we have as the protagonist a private investigator (Larry "Doc" Sportello brilliantly played by Joaquin Phoenix), somewhat unconventional, who visually presents himself as a cross between Lapo Elkan (sigh...) and John Lennon (RIP), but who reminds me in some ways of Jack Nicholson in “Chinatown” and in other ways of Humphrey Bogart (RIP), when he worked in films based on the hard-boiled novels of Raymond Chandler (RIP).

I'm not going to tell you the plot that you can find everywhere, just like the fact that this movie was adapted from the homonymous novel by Thomas Pynchon written in 2009. I will just say that among other songs, there are two great tracks of Neil Young in the soundtrack, one is Harvest and the other I can't remember the title and I don't feel like looking for it.

I'll just close by saying that in the movie “each character already has what they want or finds what they want”, all set in a late '60s or early '70s atmosphere in a California still colored with hippie or stoner vibes as they say in the movie and that's it...