Inherent Vice (2014)

There was a point in the midst of Inherent Vice, PaulThomas Anderson’s latest examination of recent American history, that I began to wonder if he’d made the film just for me. I loved every single second of it, but listening to various (considerably younger) fellow viewers’ comments as I left the screening, realised just how much baggage you need to carry to withstand the two and a half hours of screen time. Dripping with authenticism and almost hermetic in its depiction of a very particular moment in the USA’s road to post-‘60s cynicism, Inherent Vice demands that you know your stuff, counter-culture and politics-wise, not to mention musically.  

(I apologise wholeheartedly if that last paragraph sounded like some pompous way of saying I liked this film and therefore I know a lot of stuff and you will only like this film if you are clever like me. What I’m actually trying to say is that I liked this film so much that I want everyone to like it too, and I worry that it may be a little too niche for many peoples’ tastes.)

Thomas Pynchon’s typically character-rich, absurdist view of the West Coast in 1970 is both dreamily nostalgic (in a good way, says Anderson) for a lost era and the closest equivalent to Chandleresque as he ever got. The shaggy dog tale of Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello, a dope smoking P.I. in requisite khaki combat jacket, shades and sandals, simultaneously chasing a missing construction magnate, an ex-husband, a drug cartel and a lost love.

The oddest thing about Anderson’s film is that, for the first time that I can remember, it bears comparison with and references other films. Of course any circular tale filled with great cameos, stoner logic and an impenetrable mystery is going to make anyone think of The Big Leibowski, and the plot tangles give the whole piece a doper-grandson-of-Chandler dynamic. At about the halfway mark, pretty much as in The Big Sleep, you give up on any kind of grasp on who has done what to who. Apart from the other Altman/Chinatown/Long Goodbye etc. etc. allusions there’s a whole Hunter S. Thompson Gonzo section featuring Martin Short as the superbly deranged dentist, Dr. Rudy Batnoyd. And if that weren’t enough, here’s Benicio Del Toro… as a lawyer! This attorney is, however, an endearing marine law specialist with a taste in deep fried steak. Come to think of it, just about everyone in this film is in some way endearing. Even the villains are acceptably erudite.

Somewhere in between good and bad is, naturally, the policeman nemesis to Doc’s P.I.: Detective Christian ‘Bigfoot’ Bjornsen, played by Josh Brolin (above), channeling his inner Tommy Lee Jones again. The love/hate hippie/pig relationship is superb, especially as half of their exchanges are by telephone, showing the hilarious juxtaposition of the straight and far out lifestyles of our protaganists. Other turns by Reece Witherspoon as Doc’s Deputy D.A. sort-of main squeeze; Katherine Waterson as Shasta Fay, Doc’s ‘ex-old lady’ who leads him into the labyrinth, and even – wow- Eric Roberts(!) as the missing Mickey Wolfmann are all suitably on the money.

In tone (as you’ll undoubtedly expect if you’ve seen the trailer below) the film is Anderson’s lightest for years. It’s not the slapstick-fest you may be expecting from the trailer, but its central performance by Joaquin Phoenix as Doc contains a vast amount of physical comedy. Phoenix has always been a deeply physical actor, but here his facial mugging almost steals the show. An inveterate stoner’s habits mean that dialogue comes thick and…err, thick. More than one reviewer has pointed to one scene between Doc and Owen Wilson (as it turns out, the real point of the movie) as junky sax player and snitch, Coy Harlingen which is all but unintelligible. But when it comes to Inherent Vice, it’s appropriate that it’s the vibe which pervades the entirety which is the most wonderful thing. Not since Boogie Nights has the director been this jolly.

As mentioned above, the numerous Black Panther, Manson Family, Aryan Brotherhood, Vietnam, L.A. music scene, Nixon etc. references mean that maybe this is just a film set to entrance only the likes of me and my crazy ‘niche’ tastes. But I’d like to think not.

When it comes to the music, I can take or leave the Debussy-liteisms of Jonny Greenwood. It works just fine. But the other stuff is a whole heap of ‘60s and ‘70s goodness. Any film that opens with Can’s ‘Vitamin C’  and also features some Les Baxter already has me halfway there. But as Anderson has said in recent interviews: the real musical inspiration of Inherent Vice comes from Neil Young; in particular, his three post-Harvest era masterpieces. Two numbers (Harvest and Journey Through The Past) feature prominently in the soundtrack.

The yearning in Neil feels just right. If there was an NY album that Inherent Vice put me in mind of most, it was On The Beach. The mellow but wary-as-fuck, post-Manson killings vibe is all offset by endless sea and sunshine or twinkling beach front cafes and faux-medieval Topanga mansions filled with tanned ‘teeners’ as Shasta Fay describes them to Doc. But there’s already a sense that the good stuff happened long ago, there are too many memories, too many ex-old ladys, too much paranoia. The lost love does finally come home, but only to tell Doc that she’s not back. And the nemesis pops round to knock down his door, apologise and finally eat his stash. Bummer.

How much of this feeling is from Pynchon I have yet to discover. I feel the need to read it. Any regular readers will know that I raved about Anderson’s last work: The Master. And while Inherent Vice immediately resides inside me in a place that’s closer to my heart, that’s weighed against the fact that The Master had life-defining performances by Phoenix and the late Philip Seymour Hoffmann. Time will tell no doubt tell which film wins, but in the meantime, if you want to see one more film about the death of the hippie ideal, make it this one. It’s brilliant.

Inherent Vice is released in the UK on 30 January.

The Duke Of Burgundy (2014)

One of the natural by-products of a post-feminist world for old codgers like myself who did most of their ‘growing up’ in the ‘70s and ‘80s is that you often end up watching a film and not being sure if you’re even allowed to enjoy it. Remember that lesbian love scene in Mulholland Drive? I’m still not entirely certain that David Lynch should have got away with it. And there’s a moment about 15 minutes into Peter Strickland’s latest film, The Duke Of Burgundy, where you begin to question your own motives in watching the film as well as the (male) director’s for making it. But rather than leaving you about to vacate your seat Strickland pulls an almost genius trick which completely reverses your preconceptions of what, until that point, seemed dangerously close to exploitative. 

Rather childishly referred to as either ‘mucky’ in the Guardian’s review or 'kinky' in the Telegraph's, The Duke Of Burgundy actually examines a rather touching lesbian S&M relationship between Cynthia and Evelyn. The most notable immediate fact about their mannered, repressed, corseted world full of display cabinets filled with butterflies and moths is the fact that there are no men in it, whatsoever. The two women inhabit a huge villa in some academic town in some unknown country (actually Hungary), and appear to be spending the summer/autumn months pursuing a shared interest in entomology, studying in a dusty old library and attending lectures along with a whole crowd of what can only described as similarly attired MILFs. Strickland uses these lectures to up the weirdness factor (for some unknown reason, one of the attendees is a lifeless mannequin – presumably to highlight the film’s dressing-up subplot). One of them involves the entire audience of women listening to a field recording of an insect’s stridulations (I never thought I’d ever use that word): all them staring vacantly ahead, like some insect-worshipping cult.

Together the pair explores the notions of power, control, fetishism and role-playing within a love affair. Their games initially entail aspects of humiliation that quickly reach levels that, as mentioned above, will undoubtedly test the endurance of the un-kinkier members of the film’s audience.

Yet, suddenly the surface is stripped away to reveal the mechanics of exactly how such a sado-masochistic relationship can function. At its heart the film pokes away at the glossy surface of lingerie and bondage to ask questions as to how you maintain such a peak of erotic play while keeping both partners satisfied. It’s basically an extremist examination of the old cliché of ‘how to keep your relationship fresh.’

There’s an imbalance born of age difference that inevitably sees the ‘games’ become increasingly strained in their artifice. But the film’s masterstroke is in not doing what last year’s Blue Is The Warmest Colour did with its supposedly ground-breaking depiction of gay love, and resorting to an inevitable decline and break up. Just as you think you have figured out the imbalance of power in the relationship (the film’s focus of power is always ambiguous despite the pair’s well-defined ‘roles’ in their games) it takes a new turn and we’re returned to the possibility that just maybe these two women can make their very special form of foreplay work, despite the effort and commitment required. On top of this it’s a heartening depiction of an older woman as sexual and real.

This isn’t to say that that the film’s narrative, like Strickland’s last offering, the excellent Berberian Sound Studio, ever strays too far from the psychedelic/experimental (contrasting ‘70s film effect tropes with digital technology). In fact Strickland’s modus operandi, on the surface can often seem to be a homage/resurrection of ‘70s film genres (not unlike producer Ben Wheatley, whose own next project in retro fetishism after A Field In England is a promising adaptation of J. G. Ballard’s High-Rise). Here in The Duke Of Burgundy, the source visual material is a disconcerting blend of the same Hammer/Giallo horror that drove his last film, along with distinct nods to perhaps the last taboo from my formative years: arthouse soft-porn. The opening credits ape the style of early ‘70s adult flicks, meanwhile the spirit of Ingrid Pitt constantly lurks, especially during Evelyn’s nightie-clad, candelabra wielding, night time walks.

Post-production dubbed dialogue and use of prismatic filters all add to the Emmanuelle-reborn ambience, but The Duke of Burgundy’s often cold, formal tone and mannered performances - not unlike Peter Greenaway’s best work - is also offset by humour: for example, in its opening credits for a perfume manufacturer. It’s also possibly the only film you’ll see this year that has closing credits that include the species of insects in order of appearance (trivia fans note: the film’s title is a species of butterfly) as well as notations of the exact locations and equipment used for sourced field recordings. Chris Watson would be proud. It’s also a nod to Berberian Sound Studio’s Gilderoy and his recording equipment fetish. Whether this highlights Strickland’s own, more masculine fetishes to offset the feminine plotline remains unclear.

But in fact the film seems to act as a rejoinder for all the women who are so murderously exploited off-screen in Berberian Sound Studio, with the film’s main female protagonist, Fatma Mohamed reappearing here as ‘The Carpenter’, a woman who wields a tape measure like an instrument of pleasure and supplies not only bespoke fetishist’s furniture but also the film’s funniest line (about a 'human toilet' - don't ask...).

Such an audacious attempt to map the perverse means that The Duke of Burgundy is a film which tries, almost too desperately sometimes, to defy description or pigeonholing, as if Strickland wants his audiences to go back to friends and family to gasp, ‘that was bonkers!’. Well, it IS bonkers but as a protracted exercise in weirdness it falls slightly short of the mark, mainly because the trick of maintaining an hallucinatory quality alongside an almost scientific examination of the strains attendant to such a depicted relationship is an almost impossible one to pull off. Strickland still remains one of our most promising directors, despite all of this.

Perhaps most importantly, as a depiction of the possibilities of mutually agreed levels of punishment and ritual as sexual it’s undoubtedly streets ahead of this year’s most eagerly awaited piece of populist schlock erotica, 50 Shades of Grey. In fact I’d challenge any independent cinema owners out there to show the two in a double bill. While I’ve no idea (or interest, even) in how the latter will play on the big screen, I’m 99.9% certain that it won’t approach The Duke of Burgundy’s level of intelligence, daring or transgression. 

The Duke Of Burgundy is released in the UK on 20th February