Inherent Vice - The Movie vs. the Book

     In the past 24 hours, I've both finished Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice and watched the Paul Anderson film adaptation. The movie features quite the cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Reese Witherspoon, and Martin Short to name a few. Despite the many accolades those involved received, I was a little underwhelmed.  

Before diving into the movie, I'll talk a little about the the book. 

Written in 2009, Inherent Vice is the second most recent publication by the elusive Pynchon. While it is not as surreal/"postmodern" as his other works (or at least the one other book of his I read), the plot is still quite convoluted and I won't pretend I didn't got lost trying to figure out what was going on. 

This being said, I think I eventually understood everything by the time I got to the end. 

In my opinion, where the movie failed was pulling everything together. Obviously, cuts to the original story had to be made for runtime's sake (and it still ended up a whopping 2hrs. 20 mins. and some change), however if I had not had the context of the book, I don't know if I would have followed what was happening.

For instance, they cut the whole Trillium plotline which I think helped for understanding of Puck Beaverton, and they cut Fritz's character besides an offhanded comment by Adrian Prussia in regards to where he knew Doc from. 

I could also see how the narration would be confusing given that Sortilege is not properly introduced. Our first time seeing her is in the flashback scene and it wouldn't be obvious to a fresh viewer that the narrator and this woman are the same person.

Another problem I had with the movie was the internal structure time. The movie could've definitely benefitted from some quicker cuts. It would've worked better if it was edited more so to go with the goofiness/surreality of the content.

Along these lines the film was a little too washed out when a more vibrant/psychedelic color pallet would've matched the theme. 

As an example of what I mean, the picture above is a scene from the movie. Based on the trailer, I thought the entire movie would look like this with the contrasts/colorful lighting. However, most of the shots are colored like the picture below:

It's a very bland color palate if you see what I'm saying. I suppose this critique could be a little nitpicky and I am very far from being a film expert, it was something I noticed while watching. 

In summation, I don't necessarily think Inherent Vice was a bad source material to adapt. The story has some elements that I think play out interestingly on the screen but this movie didn't quite hit the mark.