journal features

movie review - Inherent Vice

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tokyo, 2015.06.22

This is a tale set in 1970 Los Angeles, in which the stoner element is strong but the old guard elements of society still remain in some force. The main character is a charming stoner who maintains some semblance of a living working as a private investigator. He's asked to investigate the disappearance of a former girlfriend. He finds her, but this semi-modern noir script does not make it remotely easy. He's arrested, beaten, tortured, threatened, and insulted. He's sent to his death on one occasion, miraculously survives, only to be set up for certain death again. The investigation leads to all walks of life from rub-and-tugs to private long-term clinics to mansions to communal homes. Even his putative client is in up to his eyes and unable to escape.

With a stellar supporting cast and some downright amazing sets and scenes that hide forty-five years of development, I was engrossed. Recommended.

rand()m quote

Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

—T.S. Eliot