We’re less than a week away from the madness of the fall festival season, and yet with the Venice Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival all overlapping, one of the fall’s biggest films won’t be premiering at any of those three. Instead, Paul Thomas Anderson‘s "Inherent Vice" will make its way to the New York Film Festival later in September for its world premiere, and unlike many movies coming in the next few months, all we’ve had to go on so far is one image, and the actors involved talking about how wild the shoot was. But what about the movie itself? What is it like?
New York Film Festival Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones recently sat down for an interview with Film Society Of Lincoln Center and discussed the tone of PTA’s movie (and don’t worry, there’s no spoilers). "It’s like being in a time machine, going back to the time of mutton chops and Neil Young," Jones said.
"…it’s the first [Thomas] Pynchon film adaptation, and it really catches his tone," he continued. "It really catches [his] antic nature: 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."
And Jones lavishes praise not only upon the film’s lead but also on an actress we put on our On The Rise 2014: Actresses To Watch list. "It’s an amazing piece of work, and at this point Joaquin Phoenix and Paul have something so rare between them as an actor and director, and Sam Waterston’s daughter, Katherine, is in it, and she’s riveting every minute she’s on screen. It’s quite a film," Jones said.
Obviously we can’t wait to see this. "Inherent Vice" opens in limited release on December 12th and goes wide on January 9, 2015. New image via Joaquin Phoenix Brasil.
