Saw Inherent Vice, an adaptation of the Thomas Pynchon novel of the same name which I just finished reading. The film was directed by P T Anderson and seems like an examination of the tail end of 60s counter-culture. There are hippies and G-men and Nixon and talk of the Manson family murders, but there are also murders by speedball and paid informants infiltrating communes. Paranoia and confusion seem to be the mood, more than love and peace.
The plot of the film is laid out as a mystery, with the main character being a bleary-eyed drugged up private eye, competently and ably chasing down leads and finding out information, but somehow the information never gels. It just leads to deeper mysteries, connections are made that don't explain anything. The film is almost perverse in the number of plots that build up and intertwine. This is not a film for folks who like neat conclusions. There are none here.
This film seems to be more interested in the various characters and their reaction to the mounting confusion they find themselves in. There's serene hippy chicks, but there's also increasingly unhinged cops and FBI agents. At one point a character seethes at the thought of his daughter having sex with one of the other characters. He's not seething about the sex really though, but about the tacky décor of the hotel rooms they'd use for their trysts. Weird.
Anyway, this was an okay film. I preferred P T's other films better: There Will be Blood and Punch-Drunk Love. This one was very knotty however, which I think is the point, and is satisfyingly ambiguous in its action. It was okay.
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