On the pointlessness of Inherent Vice

I don’t always follow carefully enough the plots of movies I like. That might sound strange and counterintuitive, but there are films I love even if I didn’t completely understand every plot-line.

Then, why the hell did I love them? Maybe because every scene of those films worked on a cause-and-effect basis, or maybe because the characters motivations and the underlying themes felt compelling and clear (or maybe clearly ambiguous). When the narration is honest, economic and has something to say all along, I follow it with interest even if I miss something from the actual “story”.

One excellent example that comes to my mind is The Big Lebowsky. Aside from the crazy development of the story, I love how things evolve and are connected to each other, how the reactions of the characters to those things are weird and unpredictable, but always feel authentic. Many scenes worked by themselves, with their micro-conflicts born from believable characters interactions.

Inherent Vice, well, according to what I just said, is not a good example at all. Technically, the ingredients for a good movie are all there. The crazy plot-lines, the over the top characters, the unexpected twists, the non-sense. Not even mentioning the cinematography or the performances. And yes, there’s also the whole counterculture background, which isn’t enough though, because heck, I was falling asleep, and I hated many scenes in the movie.

It’s like Paul Thomas Anderson tried to be crazy and weird and auteurish at all costs, forgetting about creating empathy towards the characters, using screen-time wisely, or making any kind of point with the film. Even not making a point is a point, but this is not the case.

I like weird scenes in movies, but at the same time I hate scenes that are supposed to make you think “what a weird scene” just for the sake of provoking that reaction. I like characters doing weird things (like in any Coen brothers’ movie), I like long pauses (I recently watched and loved every frame of Enemy), I like people staring at each other (Drive), I like everything if it has a purpose, or at least if it makes me feel like it has one.

I appreciated the direction of the film, the performances, the beautiful cinematography, the entire dialogs comprised of just one long shot… But I felt like my time was wasted, that the film doesn’t actually have anything to say, that it’s just about being eccentric and cool and creating specific moments that might work by themselves like littles poems, but that don’t fit together to make a good narration.

Film Critic Hulk in Screenwriting 101:

A good narrative is compelling to the audience, economically told, feels real either in terms of emotion, detail, or texture, and speaks to some thematic truth that you recognize in yourself or the world at large. […] Ask yourself, are you trying to be cool instead of compelling? Are you trying to be disaffected and edgy instead of authentic? Are you being disingenuous to the world you’ve created in the name of a quick fix? Heck, are you even thinking about what your story says on a larger thematic level at all? In total, are you at least trying to do all the things you need to fit our working definition of a good narrative?

Since I mentioned Enemy before, hear this: after I saw it for the first time I didn’t get the real meaning of it, so I thought “I have to search on Google or ask on Twitter what this is really about”. Nevertheless, I loved the movie because I could feel what it was about and empathise with the characters. Every frame of the movie was clearly built upon an idea. After watching Inherent Vice I thought the same: “I have to search on Google or ask on Twitter what this is really about.” But the problem is that I don’t really care, because I haven’t felt any kind of empathy watching the movie and I couldn’t relate with most of the characters and most of the situations.