Inherent Vice (2015)

It has me going back because I’m after what Doc is after and none of us know what that is.

We must be getting somewhere.

The camera movement is telling us as much. Slow push-ins over minutes-long conversations imply the truth is just around the corner if only we follow the leads that this guy is giving us. And the leads that follow those leads.

1970 LA is the perfect time and place for a noir. Hippiedom is over. What about it that can be used to sell stuff is being rapidly assimilated into popular culture, whether that be a buzzword like groovy, a fashion choice like shoulder-length hair or a recreational drug like the weed that Doc’s nemesis, LAPD Detective Bigfoot Bjornsen, quaffs at the film’s coda. Anything else countercultural is disposable as a creeping paranoia sweeps through the Californian beach communities soon to be demolished and replaced by high-rises.

If anything makes sense, it’s that a stoner would be trying to make sense of his place in a world on the cusp of leaving him behind.

Inherent Vice drips and aches nostalgia. That’s where it starts and that’s where it lands. Everything that happens in between is a magic trick, precision-engineered to entice you into a riddle you think you can solve even though one jigsaw piece is always missing. Then at your wit’s end, you’re abandoned, and you’re Doc, and you might walk out of the cinema but Paul Thomas Anderson has you where he wants you. Turns out you weren’t here to work out whodunit but to spend 150 minutes feeling both warm and sad and not knowing why.

And you can break it down technically, if you like. You can examine the direction, cinematography, costume, music and performances and find it flawless, if you like. But once you add it back up again, there’s always something extra, extra and elusive, that wasn’t on the ingredients list.

It has me going back and back because I don’t know what it is.

Side Effects (2013)

All artists – directors especially – run the risk of becoming too precious with their output. Reticent to send out into the world something that doesn’t exactly embody their style/outlook or fully display their talents, they can find the gaps between pieces of work starting to increase. Years soon pass with no new releases. Eventually, if the one film every six (or more) years isn’t gold dust, it can just about finish a perfectionist off.

Steven Soderbergh, it seems, experiences no such creative block. Side Effects is his 5^th film in 2 years and it isn’t bad either. If nothing else, Soderbergh deserves credit for the solid consistency of his work and the drive and ambition with which he dives into each new project.

This said, there is often a feeling of slight disappointment upon leaving most of Soderbergh’s recent films. They seem to promise something special and original before settling into one of many well constructed but well-worn narrative paths about halfway through.

The Side Effects trailer invites one to expect a scathing attack on the pharmaceutical industry and a story that perhaps focuses on the negative consequences of prescribing brain chemistry-altering drugs to depressed individuals. The film does begin with this set up but somewhere along the way abandons any serious agenda in favour of the twists and turns of a traditional thriller. It gives the impression of being through composed from start to finish, with writer Scott Z. Burns unable to follow through on his original idea so juicing it up with one shocking revelation after another for his own amusement.

Acting is typically dependable from stars such as Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Channing Tatum. The screenplay is a little hammy and much of the dialogue doesn’t ring true but the cracks are capably papered over by the cast. Given what seems like the fewest lines and handed the arguably easy task of looking distraught for much of the film, Rooney Mara gives the most believable performance. She plays Emily, a woman prescribed ‘Ablixa’, a trial antidepressant with some undesirable side effects. As a tragedy unfolds, Emily’s doctor Jonathan (Jude Law) faces charges of negligence and the motives of everyone involved are gradually untangled (then re-tangled and finally re-untangled).

The thing that holds Side Effects together once its narrative begins to slip is Steven Soderbergh’s workmanship as a director and editor. The film is well put together by a man who knows how to tell a story. This makes it enjoyable long after you realise that the controversial issue-based drama you were sold isn’t quite what is being delivered to your eyes and ears.

Whatever genre it begins in, the film ends up as a sort of neo-noir with yellow (not black) washing out all else in the colour palette. I quite like this. Soderbergh did the same thing with Contagion, using some sort of filter throughout the film to jaundice almost every shot. It makes the film look ill and is very effective although not necessarily appealing to the eye. Its phlegmy aesthetic is just one of I’m sure many little tricks the director uses to give the film its shape and consistency.

Side Effects may not be the film you were expecting to see, but it is a good watch. Although the themes it touches upon may provoke an afternoon on Wikipedia, the film itself doesn’t clarify or engage in such debates as “how to treat depression” or “who benefits from prescribing certain medications – the patient or the pharmaceuticals?” It simply exploits this subject matter to fuel a thriller – albeit an enjoyable one.

The Third Man (1949)

Such is the iconography and conventions of the genre that even before watching a single noir film, the mind associates the term with shadowed alleyways, slick verbal exchanges and the navigation of an innocent man (for it is always a man) through a world of crime, corruption and a cast full of the most secretive of characters.

In The Third Man, these alleyways belong to Vienna – a city divided into four quarters, each presided over by a different nation. The double-crossing climate of this post-World War Two arrangement offers up the perfect noir setting; there is always a place to hide for those who might need one and plenty of language barriers to afford them protection.

But it is the confusion caused by the smattering of German – which seems to be the official language of mediation between the occupying forces – which makes the city such a baffling challenge to hapless American writer Holly Martins who finds himself stranded when the friend who offered him work, Harry Lime, is killed in a car accident just hours before his arrival. Martins is soon acquainted with Anna Schmidt, who doubles as the interminably melancholy lover of Harry Lime, and Martins’ translator as he attempts to shed some light on the mysteries surrounding his friend’s death.

Watching this film over 60 years after it was made, the thing that stands up best is the atmosphere conjured by the set and its framing by the director. Ancient architecture looms above empty midnight squares, grand staircases separate characters and their fractious dialogue and a maze of sewers ensure that only echo and shadow are aids in the search for both friend and foe.

Another highlight is the physical (especially facial) acting on show, particularly that of Ernst Deutsch (Baron Kurtz) and Orson Welles. When Welles finally appears, the film has been rolling along nicely for about an hour in a self-contained little world. His charisma and wit injects momentum into the narrative which takes it hurtling through the final third with style.

One last note on the music, which at first seems to clash painfully with the visuals. Anton Karas wrote and performed the score with a single instrument, the zither – a kind of many-stringed lap guitar/tiny harp. It has widespread acclaim, being described as ‘unique’[1] and ‘a hallmark of film music composition’[2]. Yet on first listen, the theme (which I’m sure I’d heard somewhere before) seems strangely jolly.

You can imagine it accompanying a comedy farce and suspect that if a similar film were made today, it would be scored with a brooding full orchestra. For me, it took a third viewing to appreciate its value, which is as much about establishing location (the zither is eastern European) as anything else. With just one instrument, Karas prevents the music from becoming attached to any specific character. Instead it provides a jarring unsympathetic backdrop for the sinister exploits of the plot as a whole.

---

[1] The Third Man Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_third_man)

[2] Good Information on the score. (http://www.soundtrack.net/albums/database/?id=3273)