In a new series of articles, I talk every week about which films and TV series have impressed me.
I recently discovered that I don't remember the plot of the movie "Congenital Defect". I remembered the characters, individual scenes, replicas, but I could not link them into something unified. When I reviewed it, I realized why.
"Inherent Vice" is a detective puzzle that lacks details. While watching, it always seems as if I missed or forgot something ‑ sometimes transitions from one scene to another look illogical. Imagine a novel from which a quarter of the pages were accidentally torn out — you will get a "Congenital defect".
If you describe the film in one word, you will have to choose "absurd". "Congenital defect" constantly reminds us that this is a detective story, but the causal relationship is regularly violated. Even funnier are the clues that allow you to solve the case: once the main character Doc talks to a random person, valuable information pops up.
However, this is not a boring and predictable film, rather the opposite — the hero studies too wild things, and the characters are too strange, so their actions are not always explained by logic. It's terribly interesting to watch the development of events, even if you don't always understand what exactly is happening.
If the plot of "Inherent Vice" is strange and incomprehensible, then everything is great with the visual range of the film. In the first scene, the director mixes the red‑orange light of a desk lamp, the blue jeans of the Dock and street lighting. It turns out a psychedelic mix of "Fear and Hate in Las Vegas", "Remember" and neon visions of Nicholas Winding Refn. Given the surrealism of the plot, the opening scene serves as an ideal entry point into the strange world of the film.
Fans of noir or its elements "Inherent Vice" will be pleased with a kind of rethinking of the genre. Here is the neo-noir of new Hollywood ("Chinatown"), and the black humor of the early Cohen brothers ("Miller's Crossroads"), and the mobile psyche of the protagonist in the spirit of post-noir ("Remember" Nolan). If you really want to dig into references and references, then you can review the film endlessly.
Well, who played Doc Joaquin Phoenix in "Inherent Vice" is a genius. This is not the expression of the "Joker" or the cold "You've never been here" — he just brilliantly merges with the general absurdity, simultaneously studying and personifying it.
