During the psychedelic 60s and 70s Larry "Doc" Sportello is surprised by his former girlfriend and her plot for her billionaire boyfriend, his wife, and her boyfriend. A plan for kidnapping gets shaken up by the oddball characters entangled in this groovy kidnapping romp based upon the novel by Thomas Pynchon.
It’s as if Anderson and Pynchon have teamed up to grow something new under arc lights and plastic sheeting, like a cortex-manglingly strong hydroponic version of the dope on the page. Anderson has tweaked the seriocomic register and ensemble staging of his own earlier pictures such as Boogie Nights and Magnolia, and with cinematographer Robert Elswit, production designer David Crank and composer Jonny Greenwood, devised something intensely pleasurable to watch and listen to.
It is a riff on freaks and straights, counterculture and counter-revolution, conspiracy paranoia and drug anxiety. It toys with the concept of noir incomprehensibility as a form of dope disorientation, and indulges an unfathomable Christian theme of resurrection. There is a very real interest in spanking and oral sex.
dir: Paul Thomas Anderson
Year: 2014
country: US
run-time: 2h 28mins
rating: 15
Full £6.00
Concession: Pay What You Can
Doors 18:30 - Film 19:00