This Friday the rambling, lolloping, uncategorizable “Inherent Vice” (and we mean that in the best way, it was our 10th favorite film of the year) from director Paul Thomas Anderson rolls into theaters in a cloud of pot smoke and lens flare. You can read our review here to get a flavor of the kind of offbeat, elliptical, blissed-out, occasionally impenetrable ride you’re in for, or you can mosey into your screening with no preconceptions and no particular expectations. Or there’s a third option: take a spin through some of the following films that, whether in style, substance, or spirit, provide a kind of primer for PTA’s movie.
Many of the following titles were featured in a terrific, 24-film-strong season at Brooklyn’s estimable BAM Cinematek called Sunshine Noir, whose centerpiece was a special screening of “Inherent Vice.” Indeed that might be the closest anyone has really come to categorizing the Thomas Pynchon adaptation—it has some of the trappings of film noir in its central gumshoe character and missing-persons mystery, but is planted firmly in a beachy, bleached-out LA, and owes a huge stylistic debt to the films of the 1970s from which many of these Sunshine Noirs are drawn.
Yet each of the following, like the film that inspires the list, is also its own thing. Whether a stone-cold classic or a neglected gem, whether a 1950s black and white or a 1980s neon-noir, these are ten films worth watching, or rewatching, be it in preparation for “Inherent Vice,” or for no particular reason other than the love of a good, weird, atmospheric, offbeat trip.
“Chinatown” (1974)
What to say about Roman Polanski’s best film that hasn’t already been said a million times over? Maybe a fresh approach would be to list the film’s flaws…Well, that didn’t take long. Our passion for this film is undying (even highly personal for some). It’s a true American masterpiece and one of the finest films from maybe the finest decade in cinema history. With a deserving Oscar awarded to Robert Towne for his sly, one-great-line-after-another script (though the legendary screenwriter disagreed with Polanski on the film’s eventual bleak ending and was, thankfully, ignored on that point), it’s the best kind of cinema: both artful and entertaining. The aforementioned ending really is the (rotten) cherry on top a near-perfect film, but as sad and nihilistic as it is, it is the appropriate way (and feels, in retrospect, the only way) for it all to end. What’s remarkable is how the bleakness never feels like a “fuck you” to the audience, but an entirely earned, tragic, minor-key gut punch, that is somehow exquisitely beautiful in its randomness and cruelty. Were it even a slightly lesser film, the temptation to draw neat parallels between its themes and the tragedies and tribulations of Polanski’s all-too-public private life would be overwhelming, but this is a film that transcends even his compelling biography. With a flawless, and arguably definitive, performance from Jack Nicholson (can you believe he and Al Pacino from “The Godfather Part II” lost Best Actor to Art Carney for “Harry and Tonto”?), and Polanski’s deft handling of the complex narrative, everything you’ve heard and read about “Chinatown” is true. Unless you heard it was bad.