Joaquin Phoenix in Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice
We've got the first image of Joaquin Phoenix in Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice, which will have its World Premiere as the Centerpiece of the 52nd New York Film Festival. Click here to see it in its full glory.
NYFF’s Director of Programming and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones described the experience of watching Inherent Vice as “like being in a time machine, going back to the time of mutton chops and Neil Young.” You can read our full interview with Jones about this year's lineup here, but here's what he had to say about Anderson's latest:
Wild movie. You know, it’s the first [Thomas] Pynchon film adaptation, and it really catches his tone. It really catches the antic nature of him: 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. He sort of did that with There Will Be Blood, but not really. It’s his own movie, inspired by the novel Oil!
I was born in 1960, but I certainly remember 1971 very well and I gotta say, from the minute the movie started to the minute it ended, I was back—way back—to the point where I was thinking “Gee, my son was born in the ’90s.” So it’s a different kind of relationship that he would have. 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.
Inherent Vice will screen Saturday, October 4, at the midpoint of this year's New York Film Festival. Check out the full lineup for the NYFF52 Main Slate here.
