![]() ![]() What’s so remarkable, given this staggered chain of influences, is how warmly and pleasurably the film emerges as Anderson’s own: his cockeyed humour and more solemn humanism make absorbing work of the roundabout search undertaken by stoner PI Larry Sportello (a delightfully bemused Joaquin Phoenix) for his ex, her supposedly endangered lover and, in time, any kind of exit strategy. The result is a spiritual bookend to the obtuse California noir of Robert Altman’s Chandler adaptation The Long Goodbye, with that film’s updates here converted to melancholy, amber-hued nostalgia for bygone hedonism. ![]() ![]() Like Thomas Pynchon’s source novel, Anderson’s film channels the intricate, mood-led bluffery of Raymond Chandler. The kind of film one looks forward to watching again even before the first viewing is up, it sometimes rewards untangling only with winking voids. Paul Thomas Anderson’s woozy 1970s shaggy dog mystery takes a cut in the smoke-screened, sun-baked west coast atmosphere that proved so enveloping in cinemas, but its diffuse, distractedly woven storytelling straightens out a little in the process. A s much is gained as lost when revisiting Inherent Vice (Warner, 15) on DVD. ![]()
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