Pynchonesque

Programmed by Jesse Trussell

To read the work of literary enigma Thomas Pynchon is to enter a world of paranoid conspiracies, globe-spanning histories, and oddball characters with even odder names. With his affinity for slapstick, silly songs, and bumbling detectives—even as he charted power in the postwar global order and the afterlives of 1960s leftist counterculture—it’s little wonder this movie-mad writer went on to influence generations of filmmakers. Our wide-ranging series gathers films that could be called “Pynchonesque,” spanning 96 years and orbiting his signature obsessions. Replete with rockets and musical numbers, hidden truths and shadowy organizations stretching from Europe to California and beyond, these films—whether predecessors, contemporaries, or tributes—offer a cinematic map of the writer who most cogently predicted our fractured modern world.