Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Runtime: 117 minutes
When we throw around the term "popcorn movie," we tend to refer to larger than life spectacle that's harmless and entertaining. Maybe it's a high-level popcorn movie (Captain America 2), or something that borders on guilty pleasure territory (the Fast and Furious franchise). But the term is almost exclusively used to refer to larger than life spectacle. Yet the arthouse/international scene is equally capable of producing these types of movies, though they're often more divisive than what usually passes for popcorn moviemaking. If what you're looking for at the movies is an empty pleasure that eschews blockbuster theatrics (explosions, lasers, superheroes, aliens, etc...), then The Neon Demon is what you've been waiting for, even if you despise it. The latest from Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive) is the fried chicken of arthouse thrillers. You're left simultaneously satisfied and disgusted, knowing that you've just indulged in a treat that is absolutely horrendous for your health. Touch it, and your fingers become sickeningly shiny. But, as the saying goes...everything in moderation...
Returning to the glistening underbelly of L.A. has paid off for Refn, making a much needed rebound from 2013's insufferable Only God Forgives. That said, if you're expecting another Drive, you might be in for a bit of a shock. That film took a threadbare plot and turned it into a moody, soulful drama punctuated with flashes of exploitation-flick violence. The Neon Demon, rather than flirt with exploitation, fully embraces it with a sloppy tongue kiss. It is the unholy offspring of Suspiria, Eyes Wide Shut, and Black Swan: a delirious, sensory experience that either hooks you from the opening title cards or sends you into a defeated stupor.
The film's opening tableau, featuring aspiring model Jesse (Elle Fanning) bloodied and sprawled out on a fainting couch, captures the whole endeavor perfectly. It's exquisitely stylized, but eventually revealed to be a fake. At one point, Jesse disappears from the couch, not because she's become invisible or ascended, but merely because she's finished with photoshoot and needs to remove her make up. Everything and everyone in The Neon Demon's vision of L.A. is consumed only with youth and beauty. Most of the characters who appear on screen are young, pretty, and white (and the film's oldest actor, 51 year-old Keanu Reeves, hardly looks a day over 40). These people, even the less affluent, live in a bizarre sort of bubble. Despite occupying space in the 2nd largest city in the country, Fanning and co. seem to be living in a virtual wasteland.
Yet these aesthetic choices are hardly indicative of a film that possesses meaningful depth. It's a shallow movie about shallow people, carefully tiptoeing along the line that divides winking satire and indulgence. But that doesn't stop Refn from tipping his hat to areas the film might have explored had wanted to make something with more thematic weight. If The Neon Demon has a point, it's that L.A.'s fashion industry is populated entirely by a hierarchy of predators. These hunters come in different forms, from fellow models (Bella Heathcote and Mad Max: Fury Road's Abbey Lee), to landlords (Keanu Reeves), to photographers (Desmond Harrington). And, just to make sure you don't miss this message, Refn even includes a scene involving a lost mountain lion who breaks into Jesse's hotel room.
Refn's command over the film's look and soundscape is so intoxicating that it comes as a bit of a letdown that the performers tend to lack consistency. Fanning and co. seem to be in on the sick joke of it all in some scenes, and then minutes later become completely wooden. The only exceptions are Christina Hendricks (in a too-short cameo as Jesse's agent) and Jena Malone (as a make-up artist who befriends Jesse early on). Even through the inconsistency, though, there are moments campy magic that pop up, particularly from Fanning and Lee.
But, seeing as this is a film about models, it seems fitting that the actors are largely there to be manipulated. Everyone poses spectacularly, and the whole film looks magnificent thanks to Natasha Braier's neon-drenched photography. Cliff Martinez's pulsating electronic score is equally magnetizing, turning some of the protracted, pretentious sequences into hypnotic stretches of gorgeous nothingness. Knives are drawn, blood is spilled, and there are hints of something supernatural going on. Or maybe it's just a brush with magical realism. But whether or not even a second of The Neon Demon makes sense to the head is completely secondary when compared to whether it makes sense to the eyes and ears.
Grade: B
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Runtime: 145 minutes
Finding the right writer/director to adapt a distinctive novel is no easy task. When directors apply too much of their own vision, the original text gets lost in the shuffle (though The Shining is still an example of how such an approach can work). And if the director is too safe, the source material ends up being worshipped as gospel, often resulting in sluggish, line-by-line adaptations that fail to leap from the page to the screen. Perfect marriages of director and source material, those that complement each other rather than engage in a stylistic tug of war, are rare, but not impossible. The Coen brothers' No Country For Old Men set a high standard seven years ago, and in October David Fincher's Gone Girl joined its ranks. The latest adaptation to work so well, even if it's not quite great, is Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice.
It's understandable that it's taken so long for a Pynchon adaptation to reach cinemas. The reclusive author's works are characterized by dense, head-spinning prose wrapped around byzantine plots. Inherent Vice, as a novel, isn't as overwhelming as something like "Gravity's Rainbow," however, which makes it a smarter pick for a silver screen debut. In Anderson, Pynchon's novel has found an artist perfectly adapting to its pot-smoke flooded atmosphere and shaggy dog storytelling.
Set right at the end of the 60s, Inherent Vice, like the novel, wastes no time in getting started. The instant drug-fueled detective Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) wakes up, he's confronted by his ex-girlfriend Shasta (Katherine Waterston), who's come to beg for help in the dead of night. Shasta's new boyfriend, land development millionaire Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts) is in danger of being thrown in a psych ward so that his wife and her lover can claim his fortune. It's a classic noir opening, albeit dressed up in 60s threads and surrounded by LA surf culture and neon lights instead of venetian blinds.
But it's not long after this encounter that Doc finds himself in way over his head and the plot starts to snowball into a web of alliances, double crosses, and conspiracies. People show up out of the blue with cryptic warnings, and somehow everyone he meets, no matter how different, is somehow connected. Everyone, good, bad, or in between, has an agenda except for Doc, who wanders through the story like a confused extra rather than a true protagonist. If you come into Inherent Vice expecting answers to all of your questions, you're out of luck. Doc barely understands everything going on, and Anderson keeps the film rooted in his perspective. There are so many angles in Vice's story that it can be dizzying to keep them all together.
Even so, Anderson's ability to capture the tone of Pynchon's overall story as well as his prose is commendable. Clocking in at two and a half hours, it's quite the long trip down the marijuana-scented rabbit hole, but the contact high Inherent Vice provides is often a pleasurable one. Though often quite funny, there's a pointed commentary on display about how those in power co-opt counterculture movements that gives the film just enough of a point to justify its narrative ramblings.
Though Phoenix is the story's only true main character (everyone else drifts in and out of the story at a moment's notice), it's the massive supporting cast that really owns Vice. Josh Brolin is an early standout as Lt. "Bigfoot" Bjornsen, a straight-laced cop who enjoys nothing more than making Doc's "hippie bullshit" life hell. His interactions with Doc bring out the film's off-kilter humor in both dialogue exchanges and weird visual gags. Waterston is an effectively alluring and conflicted surfer femme fatale, and makes her relationship with the considerably older Mr. Phoenix believable. Though underused, Benicio Del Toro is spot on as Doc's lawyer, while Owen Wilson and Jena Malone turn in memorable work as a missing musician and his wife, respectively. A somewhat unrecognizable Eric Roberts is also quite good as the missing Mickey Wolfmann, once the character finally surfaces.
Despite the characters who pop up across the entire film, the most memorable performance comes from one of the story's one-off characters. As a corrupt, drug-addled dentist, Martin Short delivers an arrestingly gonzo performance that marks Inherent Vice's comedic high point. To see his character leave the story so quickly is a bit of a disappointment. Other characters have plenty of spark to contrast with Doc's mellow attitude, but the dynamism Short brings to the film is often missed during other key scenes.
Perplexingly, the cast member who is least consistent is Phoenix. Though his look and mannerisms are spot on, the actor's delivery is wildly inconsistent. Even when his face is glazed over, there's a sharpness to Phoenix's eyes and features that never quite sinks into Doc's mindset. Similarly to his work in The Immigrant, Phoenix sometimes just feels too tightly wound and modern to fully immerse himself in Doc, who's the epitomization of a very specific subculture and time period. Phoenix certainly has his moments in the role, but just when he appears to have fully clicked with the character, some piece of dialogue or interaction comes along and rings false.
Phoenix may be inconsistent, but at least the storytelling and tone are set on the right path. Anderson holds keeps the pieces of the story together, at times just barely, ensuring that enough of it makes sense while leaving plenty of connections skimmed over to the point where the film practically demands a second viewing. Anderson's longtime cinematographer Robert Elswit allows certain images to look grainy or rough, further drawing one into the story's representation late 60's Los Angeles. Composer Jonny Greenwood contributes a moody, accessible score that nicely contrasts with the purposefully eerie themes written for Anderson's previous two films (There Will Be Blood & The Master). Other production details are excellent across the board, though special mention should be given to the hair and makeup team for putting so much personality in each character's coiffure.
Though Inherent Vice's longwinded structure can lead to sporadic lulls in pacing, it's still an engaging trip through the mind of one of the most important writers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Vice is not regarded as one of Pynchon's greatest works, and the film isn't one of Anderson's finest, but both work as engrossing pieces of entertainment that finely straddle the lines between high and low culture. It's proof that one can create a perfectly successful and satisfying adaptation of a novel without straining to find a hidden greatness that was probably never there in the first place. And even if it was, it would probably just go up in smoke anyway.
Grade: B
