‘Inherent Vice’, a film about the days after the hippie dream died, turns 10

Paul Thomas Anderson’s period L.A. detective story is a stylish triumph, in which nothing makes sense.

Inherent Vice, which was and remains the first and only movie adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel, belongs in the fine tradition of Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye and the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski, in placing an addled detective at the center of a sprawling Los Angeles mystery.

The film, Paul Thomas Anderson’s seventh feature, arrived on December 12, 2014, ten years ago today. It was my favorite film of 2014, and remains near the top of my personal list of PTA films, behind only Boogie Nights and Licorice Pizza.

Set in 1970, the film is at a very specific moment, shortly after the Manson murders when Nixon was in office, the reactionary sentiment was ascendant, and it was clear that the dreams of the hippie counterculture weren’t going to come true.

Inherent Vice would make a fine double feature with Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, another film about the side of L.A. that found itself on the opposite side of the counterculture.

The film stars Joaquin Phoenix, in my favorite-ever performance of his, as Doc Sportello, a drug-addled, mutton-chopped private detective in LA., who’s at the center of a complex mystery involving a missing real estate magnate (Eric Roberts), his hippie girlfriend (Katharine Waterston) and a mysterious entity called The Golden Fang. In this, Doc’s frenemy is"Bigfoot" Bjornsen (Josh Brolin), a square-jawed “renaissance cop.”

A long time of recognizable actors show up for brief performances at the periphery of this world, including Martin Short as a scummy dentist, Michael K. Williams as a Black Guerrilla Family member, and Hong Chau as a massage parlor employee. Benicio Del Toro, much like in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, plays the stoner hero’s lawyer. And Joanna Newsom is so great as the narrator that I’m surprised she didn’t end up getting tons of voiceover work.

Here’s what important about Inherent Vice: The plot doesn’t matter. I’ve seen it between 5 and 10 times, and I’d probably have to write a diagram to actually explain what happens in the movie. It’s the atmosphere and character that matter, as well as a wildly witty script that adapts a writer who’s otherwise been unadaptable.

And the film is full of laughs, too. Individual lines crack me up every time, especially Jillian Bell’s diner waitress declaring “And to drink, gentlemen? You're gonna want to get good and fucked up before this meal.” Or one line, “from the desert to the sea. technically Jewish but wants to be a Nazi,” that hits very differently in 2024 than it did a decade ago. And the character names, mostly straight from Pynchon, are first-rate- Shasta Fay Hepworth, Sauncho Smilax, Petunia Leeway, Puck Beaverton, Japonica Fenway…

The music, too, is amazing, including an early score by PTA’s go-to composer, Johnny Greenwood. But CAN’s “Vitamin C” is one of those songs that gets in my head the moment I hear the name of the movie:

Inherent Vice barely made any money — it was not in the top 200 movies at the box office in 2014, and having been released in December, it made less than $7 million in 2015, good for 153rd place. It was only nominated for two Oscars – Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Costume Design — and won neither.

But the film was loved by critics and has mostly endured; you can stream it on Max today.

As a bonus, I give you my review from 2014, from the now-defunct TechnologyTell.com: