FINALLY saw Inherent Vice

[John Bailey]

Which has only been out here for a week. Figured the 11.50am session
at my local cinema would be empty but was pleasantly surprised to
share the session with a handful of elderly folks.

I'm with Mr Monroe - or, at least, if that isn't Pynchon in the
background of the Topanga scene, it's at least a Pynchon figure
overseeing the exchange that holds the whole film together for me.

It's a much more coherent work than I'd expected and I think I enjoy
it more than the novel (which wasn't that much to begin with).

The Golden Fang isn't an ambiguous fog of possibility like it is in
the novel - it's a very identifiable conspiracy connecting a whole
bunch of institutions and individuals and power structures and even
though we (and Doc) only see a small corner of it, it's enough to
project the larger picture. The players don't even necessarily see
their position within it (eg Blatnoyd) but we're given more than
enough dots to join.

And the Fang is clearly a metonym for the America Coy alludes to in
the aforementioned scene, which is a vertically integrated System that
hooks its kids with mindless pleasures and then offers them relief
through equally mindless promises of redemption. Heroin (and the
Chryskolodon Inst) in the film is totally symbolic of that, as well as
being an actual part of it.

The film makes explicit how Doc's real investment in all the goings-on
is to see Amethyst get a parent back. It's the film's emotional payoff
and to me only really makes sense if the Golden Fang plays out as a
particular metaphor.

But that altering of the ending, what a misstep.
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l