Object #21 - Pancakes - Inherent Vice (2014)

Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

For this one I'd recommend watching the trailer first just so you get an understanding of the vibe of the film, as well as getting a nice glimpse at the pancake scene. Also it's a really good trailer. Perhaps not the most accurate for the actual tone of the film, which is a lot less...is flashy the right word? Nonetheless you'll get some understanding of the overall plot, but as is clear to see at the end of the film, the labyrinthine plot really isn't the point of the film. 

Anyway, before I end up writing a whole review let's focus on the pancake scene. 'Bigfoot' Bjornsen (Josh Brolin) is a funny old character in Inherent Vice, described as having a "John Wayne walk and a flat-top of Flintstone proportions", he's 'The Man' of the film. There are FBI agents, Bigfoot, and everyone else is either a hippie or a rich entrepreneur, or dentists...yeah it's an interesting film. The pancake scene comes relatively near to the end of the film, and yet it tells us a lot about Bigfoot that we haven't seen elsewhere in the film. First of all, let's not overlook the fact that he's in a Japanese restaurant/take-out, and he's eating pancakes. Clearly, he has enough pull in this place, and enough balls, to have the cook make him an American dish. 

I saw this film yesterday and I literally couldn't tell you what Bigfoot and our protagonist, PI, stoner 'Doc' Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix)  are discussing. The plot is so convoluted and dense that they could be talking about nearly anything. In all likelihood they're talking about the Golden Fang, a drug cartel operating in the film. That isn't a spoiler because, trust me, you won't understand the plot anyway. Spoilers would probably help! What is important, and what does stand-out, is this quote from Bigfoot: "Pancakes aren't like mothers, but what I really come here for is the respect...the respect." 

Let's look at the first half. "Pancakes aren't like mothers.", I have two interpretations for this. The first is that Bigfoot sees the pancakes as cheap things, not like mothers who have value, raising children the American way. This implies either that Bigfoot was raised right by his mother, and enjoys this aspect of the American dream-idea; or that Bigfoot had a troubled past, and thinks of them as a whole, as part of the American dream. Now you may be wondering what the hell I'm talking about? And honestly, I find it hard to justify what I just said. Yet that's the things about this film, the way it's paced and plotted gives this air of being high, confused, making big things out of little things, and little things out of big things. Either that or I'm a pretentious dick! It's probably that. Anyway, the next half is better.

"what I really come here is for the respect...the respect". Now this tells us a lot for certain. Later in the film we see that Bigfoot has a troubled domestic life. He's on the phone to Doc frequently throughout the film. In the later scene, Bigfoot's wife complains about him focusing on work duties on his 'one day off' of the week. He's clearly a man who focuses on his work, his entire demeanor tells us that. So here, in the restaurant, he can come and escape from his unhappy domestic life. Despite the fact he is almost a symbol of the proud American, wife, kids, police job, square hair-cut, he has to come to this restaurant, boss the staff around to make him American food, just so he can feel respected. 

We get this impression throughout the film that Bigfoot sides with Doc, the hippie, more-so than with his uptight police colleagues. He seems to be treated far better by Doc than any other character in the film, despite the fact that they go against one another due to the plot, and in a broader context, by the very fact that he's a cop and Doc's a hippie. So the scene has a certain irony, Doc doesn't need to boss people around to feel respect, he doesn't need respect, and yet doles it out fairly, to hippie or cop alike. It's the hippie that is conforming to the status-quo. The other funny thing is that Doc is a PI, a job so heavily tied to the 30's and 40's with the Sam Spades that he's out-of-date in the early 70's. The cops will soon be the heroes of the media, already starting with Bullitt, you get films like Dirty Harry, and The French Connection, then in the 80's as you look at films like Lethal Weapon, Police Academy, hell, even Predator 2! The only bit of renaissance noir and PI stories get in the 70's is Chinatown and The Long Goodbye (which I've written about here), themselves part of the neo-noir genre. 

So what we have is a reversal of positions with the consensus of the time. Doc, the out-of-date PI is on top, as Bigfoot feels disillusioned with the soon-to-be popular straight cops. The final thing this scene does is be funny. It's a great moment in the trailer as we get Bigfoot's orders for more pancakes, in Japanese: "Dozo, motto panukeiku. Motto panukeiku! Motto panukeiku! Hai? Hai? Hai?”. Brolin has fine comedic chops and they're put to great use here. It's just plain funny to see him strut his 'power', ordering in a language that, actually, he isn't using incorrectly, but we know he doesn't understand. The scene ends with Doc leaving, a close-up (not a surprise for this film) of Bigfoot's face, as he thinks, and then "MOTTO PANUKEIKU!". It's a funny end-note to a scene that has a lot of sub-textual things going on, furthers the plot, and is funny to boot!