IV movie

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Much to my surprise I really liked it. And my wife, not easy to please 
in terms of movies, she did so too. Actually we had a swell time. It 
took me a couple of minutes to get used to Doc's carpet-sized 
side-burns, especially in combination with that bluejeans shirt, but 
that was just me. Soon I was all in and enjoyed the ride wholeheartedly. 
For PTA the movie definitely marks a step forward; with his heavy 
patriarchal dramas, first 'There Will Be Blood' (rather good) and then 
'The Master' (not so good), he had moved himself into kinda blind alley. 
And for Pynchon, or perhaps rather for my understanding of Pynchon, the 
movie does something good too. IV isn't his greatest novel, to put it 
mildly, but by this movie adaptation it is in a way rehabilitated for 
me. At least my feeling towards the book has changed since yesterday 
profoundly: I now accept IV as a legitimate part of Pynchon's work and 
can see the interesting things in it. Is there more a movie adaptation 
can achieve in terms of adaptation? What I like especially about the 
film are the interactions between Doc and Bigfoot which belong the 
funniest scenes I've recently seen in movies. Joaquin Phoenix and Josh 
Brolin play together here with real esprit. Brolin is very funny, and 
Phoenix, with his wild starring stoner eyes, gives the schlemiel a 
touching dimension that I couldn't feel when I read the book. What I 
also love are the interior decorations which partly - Doc's green 
telephone! - remind me of my childhood. And then there's the light, this 
incredible light! I don't know enough about cinema to tell how Anderson 
did this, but was truly enchanted by it. We did bathe our eyes in this 
light ...

Thank you PTA, thank you Pynchon, thank you PTA!


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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l