Movie Review: Under the Silver Lake

Under the Silver Lake **** ½ / *****

Directed by: David Robert Mitchell.

Written by: David Robert Mitchell.

Starring: Andrew Garfield (Sam), Riley Keough (Sarah), Rikki Lindhome (Actress), Callie Hernandez (Millicent Sevence), Topher Grace (Bar Buddy), Zosia Mamet (Troy), Grace Van Patten (Balloon Girl), Jimmi Simpson (Allen), Annabelle Dexter-Jones (Fannie), Laura-Leigh Claire (Mae), Wendy Vanden Heuval (Topless Bird Woman), Deborah Geffner (Mom), Rex Linn (Manager), Luke Baines (Jesus), Allie MacDonald (Meek Bride), Victoria Bruno (Clara Bow Bride), Lola Blanc (Reading Glasses Bride), Patrick Fischler (Comic Man), Bobbi Salvor Menuez (Shooting Star #1), Sydney Sweeney (Shooting Star #2), David Yow (Homeless King), Jeremy Bobb (Songwriter), Don McManus (Final Man).

 

The hero – and I use that term loosely – of David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake stumbles across Los Angeles looking into a mystery that he isn’t qualified to look into, and which few others seem to care about. There is something unique about Los Angeles that gives rise to these types shambling, rambling detective stories – I think of films like Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye or the Coens’ The Big Lebowski or Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice as other examples – detective stories about people who seem out of sync with the time and place they are in, and maybe operating under the influence of something – which seeps into the style of the movie as well as our main character’s psyche. And yet, Under the Silver Lake is its own thing as well – in part because Mitchell is seemingly aware of the time and place that his movie is set in, and doesn’t overlook it. His hero is Sam (Andrew Garfield), a white man in his 20s, who is undeniably bright, but also doesn’t seem to do much of anything, but stumbles his way through life without any real problems. In some ways – many ways, most ways – Under the Silver Lake is a straight faced satire of white privilege, whose main character is, in essence, an asshole. And yet, the questions he asks – and his existential yearning for something more is still real. It is a tricky thing Mitchell is trying to pull off – perhaps that’s why many seem to think he didn’t really pull it off. There is a reason the film was delayed more than once, than dumped into a couple of theaters right before its VOD release nearly a year after its Cannes premiere. That says more about the film industry than it does about this film however. Under the Silver Lake doesn’t fit into a neat little package of any kind – so it isn’t likely to find a huge audience. It will find the audience who deserve it sooner or later however.

 

Sam seems to basically drifting through his life in L.A. Unlike many people in the city who are un-or-under-employed, Sam doesn’t seem to have ambition to do something else. He’s not, by the looks of things, an aspiring actor, writer, director, musician or much of anything else either. He sits on his apartment balcony – one that reminds you of Marlowe’s apartment complex in The Long Goodbye – watching the topless bird lady across the way, until his sometimes girlfriend (played by Rikki Lindhome) – an actress – comes by with sushi. As they have sex, they discuss the signed Kurt Cobain poster on the wall. Sam’s life is interrupted when he meets Sarah (Riley Keough) – who also lives across the way. They hang out, laugh and flirt one evening – and make plans to hang out the next afternoon, and then she’s just gone. Sam doesn’t want to let this go, and so he starts digging. And digging and digging. Sam is already a conspiracy nut in the first place – and he starts to find more and more angles to his conspiracy as he moves along. There is an emo band whose music may have hidden messages. And that leads him to one thing after another after another. The film becomes about media, meaning, how Hollywood uses and discards young actress and lots of other things.

 

Do all these threads in the movie come together? I’m not entirely convinced that they do – at least on the first viewing. Is this film a cohesive statement on Hollywood – like David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. – or a mess of ideas that play out in fascinating ways but never cohere – like Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales (another film I like a lot more than most people do, so I guess you can take that as a warning if you want – but I really do think Kelly’s film is a messy, ambitious film that only someone immensely talented could have come up with, making me incredibly sad that he hasn’t made a film in a decade now).

 

What I do know is that I loved every second of watching Under the Silver Lake. It is the best work yet of Andrew Garfield, who turns has an incredibly tricky role as Sam – as he is both likable, and yet objectively, a complete asshole. You wouldn’t want to get stuck next to him at a party, because he’s talk your ear off about whatever conspiracy theory he has recently read about online. And yet, even if you were trapped with him, you’d end of smiling more than truly angry, because he’s kind of charming. Mitchell – and Garfield – realize that Sam’s way of thinking is poisonous more than anything else – and perhaps ruining America. Under the Silver Lake is hardly an endorsement of this Alex Jones-dystopian world Sam seems to think we are living in – and uncovers in the movie. It is a poisonous way of thinking, and ruins everything. If nothing means what we think it means, and it’s all some cover for something else – does anything mean anything? Even the things that move us are not what we think they are. If we think that way, we end up like Sam in the last shot in this movie.

 

Under the Silver Lake is not a perfect movie. But as I grow older, I get less and less interested in perfection, and more interested in a film like this that searches for something, that lashes out in many different directions, and comes up with imperfect or no answers at all. This is a film that recalls many films – the ones mentioned among them, and one where every reference has a hidden meaning. I’m not sure that Mitchell fully achieves what he wants to achieve here – and I know that people are going to completely misread the film. This will be one that will have sponsored content at the bottom of every movie article for years advertising that this is what “Under the Silver Lake really means”. Which is exactly the type of thing the movie is satirizing, and finding fault in. This film is being buried a little by A24 – normally a studio who specializing in finding an audience for films that aren’t as easy sell. That should tell you everything you need to know about the film. If it excites you, then this is a film for you.