When I saw Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice at the New York Film Festival a couple of months ago, I stumbled out in an appropriate but not entirely enjoyable haze. I liked so much of what I just watched, but I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it as a whole—and this coming from someone who loves movies about unlicensed private detectives and had no real trouble with PTA’s more superficially mysterious The Master the first time around. I almost always see Anderson’s movies a second time theatrically, and then a third or fourth or fifth time on DVD, but while I wanted another hit of Vice for the sheer enjoyment of its celluloid cinematography, Joaquin Phoenix slapstick, and Anderson eccentricity, I also felt like I needed another go-round, just to try to wave through the fog it left in my brain (and I saw it stone-cold sober)—that the movie demanded another viewing.
It’s a demand I tend to resist, at least on principle.
