Early Prognosis On “Inherent Vice” Is Good

As we near closer to the New York Film Festival world premiere of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice on October 4th, critical word is beginning to gather on Anderson’s eagerly anticipated adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel. NYFF Director of Programming Kent Jones got to catch the film and shared some of the experience in an interview with Film Society Lincoln Center.

“Wild movie. You know, it’s the first Pynchon film adaptation, and it really catches his tone,” Jones says, discussing Inherent Vice. “It really catches the antic nature of him: the crazy names of characters, the nutty behavior, and then also the emotional undertone. It has the flavor of Pynchon. It has this Big Lebowski element to one side of it, but the emotional undertone, the desperation, the paranoia, and the yearning in the film… [Paul Thomas Anderson’s] an absolutely amazing filmmaker and it’s incredible to see him responding to someone else’s creation and then building his own creation out of it. He sort of did that with There Will Be Blood, but not really. It’s his own movie, inspired by the novel Oil!”

There hasn’t been a single bit of footage revealed to the public, but if this line by Kent describing Vice as “like being in a time machine, going back to the time of mutton chops and Neil Young” doesn’t seal the deal for viewers, I don’t know what will. I’m keeping my fingers crossed some footage debuts along with Interstellar in November.

Inherent Vice plays at the NYFF October 4th, for the rest of us, the film is in limited release starting December 12th.

Source: Film Linc/The Film Stage