seen 5 February 2015
This film, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, has been adapted by him from Thomas Pynchon's 2009 novel of the same name, the first time the author has sanctioned a film adaptation of one of his works. It stars Joaquin Phoenix, with Josh Brolin, Reece Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Benicio del Toro, Joanna Newsom and others.
The film, like the novel, is a homage both to the noir thriller and the late and by then disillusioned hippy era of California in 1970. The period detail is immaculate - costumes, hairstyles, songs played, idioms used - but not ostentatious. The plot is bewildering, not least because 'Doc' Sportello, the private investigator played by Joaquin Phoenix, is almost always stoned and unable to make sense of his lines of enquiry. But this is part of the point, so it is fruitless to complain about loose ends or improbabilities.
Phoenix gives a compelling performance, flickers of alarm or puzzlement widening his eyes (when we can see them), occasional shafts of insight managing to pierce the fogs of confusion both within his mind and in the corruption and cynicism all around him. He is rarely stirred to energetic action, so that when he does express his stronger emotions the effect is disquieting after the long passivity. Even the most laid-back guy is revealed to have fiercely angry sexual urges, and a capacity for violence when under threat. The supporting cast invest what could have been cardboard stereotypes - the LA detective, the flighty ex-girlfriend, the assorted drifters and band players of the time, and the morally bankrupt 'straight' and wealthy types - with sufficient depth and interest to hold our attention in what would otherwise be an incoherent mess.
The Pynchon prose style, so vital in creating the atmosphere of the novel, has been retained in much of the dialogue - though that is necessarily elliptical and idiomatic, and occasionally hard to follow in the mouths of its stoned speakers. But the more elaborate effects are cleverly enshrined in a voiceover which goes some way to setting the scene and explaining or pointing out to us some of its oddities, even if only by way of ironic comment. The voiceover is of course a staple of noir, though usually it is the main protagonist who appears to be commenting retrospectively on the action. Here, it is a minor character Sortilege (Joanna Newsom) who speaks after the event, and though it is by no means clear how she could know so much or articulate it in such style, her comments are a vital means of giving shape to the film.
