Under the Silver Lake (2018)
Directed by David Robert Mitchell
Young and disenchanted Sam meets a mysterious and beautiful woman who's swimming in his building's pool one night. When she suddenly vanishes the next morning, Sam embarks on a surreal quest across Los Angeles to decode the secret behind her disappearance, leading him into the murkiest depths of mystery, scandal and conspiracy.
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Also casting his eye back to the 1970s—an early vision of a topless apartment dweller pointedly alludes to Robert Altman’s ’73 classic, The Long Goodbye—Mitchell is aiming for no less than to make the great modern noir and the great modern film about Hollywood.
Much like Robert Altman’s sarcastic take on Philip Marlowe, The Long Goodbye, Mitchell’s movie is a surreal, stoned portrait of L.A. that doubles as an oddball mystery.
The Long Goodbye or Inherent Vice , but blurs its edges with a vaguely unsettling surrealism, goosed by a terrific throwback score.
Mitchell has now tried his hand at an L.A. noir with Under the Silver Lake, which owes as big a debt to The Long Goodbye, Mulholland Drive, and Inherent Vice (to mention but three of the most conspicuous referents) as it does Thomas Pynchon’s labyrinthine, paranoia-laden narratives.
To a list of films about Los Angeles that includes “Inherent Vice,” “The Long Goodbye,” “Chinatown,” “Mulholland Drive” and “L.A. Confidential,” we can add “Under the Silver Lake,” which is available on VOD and has its area premiere Friday at the Brattle Theatre.
“Under the Silver Lake” unfolds in the same cinematic wheelhouse as Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye,” “Arthur Penn’s “Night Moves,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s Pynchon adaptation, “Inherent Vice,” and David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” — films in which mysteries lead only to further mysteries and the rot runs deep under sunny California skies.
It’s no Mulholland Drive, but the point of Under the Silver Lake rhymes with themes from David Lynch’s masterpiece: that lifetimes of watching others has instructed us in how to be watched ourselves.
You see, Mitchell is attempting to transform what might sound like a routine search for a missing woman into a surreal journey through a wormhole Hollywood, one chock-full of allusions to old movies, from Hitchcock and The Long Goodbye to Inherent Vice and especially Mulholland Drive (David Lynch’s presence looms over the whole film).
Janet Gaynor es la actriz favorita de la madre del protagonista de Lo que esconde Silver Lake, película que propone un viaje a través del espejo de la Meca del Cine de la mano (o bajo la influencia) de guías tan diversos como Anger, David Lynch –en particular el de Mulholland Drive (2001)-, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, Kim Deitch, Thomas Pynchon, Foster Wallace y Robert W. Chambers, entre otros.
The mix of high and lowbrow makes little sense, as if Robert Mitchell watched Mulholland Drive and Inherent Vice and his biggest complaint was you couldn’t get stoned watching them.
Easier to follow than Paul Thomas Anderson’s bumbling “Inherent Vice” but less masterful in thematic execution than David Lynch’s enigmatic “Mulholland Drive,” “Under the Silver Lake” is a mystery predicated on bored fixation.
Under The Silver Lake goes both to places other films have gone before (think: Mulholland Drive) as well as places that are definitely… different.
Whereas Paul Thomas Anderson found a kind of wisdom and humility in the random and meaningless connections of his narrative in Inherent Vice , Mitchell only validates all his fears in Under The Silver Lake.
Following on the heels of his celebrated sophomore film, the STD horror film It Follows (2014), Mitchell further defines the trenchantly white, heteronormative perspective evidenced in his earlier film with a hapless, undefined male protagonist who seems inspired by a legion of aimless literary mouthpieces (think P.T. Anderson’s take on Pynchon in Inherent Vice but with the barest wisp of a back story).
You see, Mitchell is attempting to transform what might sound like a routine search for a missing woman into a surreal journey through a wormhole Hollywood, one chock-full of allusions to old movies, from Hitchcock and The Long Goodbye to Inherent Vice and especially Mulholland Drive (David Lynch’s presence looms over the whole film).
Others compared it favorably to Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, a critically adored film that I personally loathed.
Easier to follow than Paul Thomas Anderson’s bumbling “Inherent Vice” but less masterful in thematic execution than David Lynch’s enigmatic “Mulholland Drive,” “Under the Silver Lake” is a mystery predicated on bored fixation.
Mitchell has now tried his hand at an L.A. noir with Under the Silver Lake, which owes as big a debt to The Long Goodbye, Mulholland Drive, and Inherent Vice (to mention but three of the most conspicuous referents) as it does Thomas Pynchon’s labyrinthine, paranoia-laden narratives.
Rich Vreeland’s voluptuous orchestra score goes full Vertigo, brewing a menace that Mitchell consistently undercuts with banal, dopey details: Who is the mysterious pirate in blue jeans running across a lawn?
When she and Sam formally meet, she emerges from the shadows into the light in a moment incredibly reminiscent of Kim Novak in Vertigo.
There are clear references to Rear Window, Vertigo and Mulholland Dr. but, as with the writer-director’s previous outings, the new film draws from his influences to sculpt something personal and specific.
Obstensibly a neo-noir thriller about a young man searching for woman he had a brief but apparently meaningful flirtation with, it is both an attempt at an homage to films such as Vertigo and Mulholland Drive, and yet seeks to find its own voice for a younger generation who would find themselves reflected in a more contemporary Los Angeles setting.
The first 20 minutes alone are a high-wire mash-up of two Hitchcock classics, “Rear Window” and “Vertigo,” with Andrew Garfield playing a sort of a dissolute millennial Jimmy Stewart in 2011 Los Angeles.
There are times when I think of this as a reconstruction of Vertigo, right down to the way Sam follows (ahem) someone in their car.
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But in terms of awkward career progressions, it seems inevitable that the lurch from It Follows to this swollen dramatic sprawl will draw comparison to Richard Kelly's banana-peel slip from the mesmerizing genre-bending of Donnie Darko to the overreaching mess of Southland Tales, which also premiered in competition at Cannes.
Moments like that make the Southland Tales comparison apt.
It’s very reminiscent of what happened to director Richard Kelly when he followed cult favourite Donnie Darko (2001) with the ambitious but convoluted Southland Tales (2006) and singlehandedly ended his promising career.
(Richard Kelly, for example, has managed to make only one film in the 13 years since Southland Tales .)
Mitchell’s work here could be most easily compared to that of gonzo auteur Richard Kelly, the man behind Donnie Darko (which I can’t stand), Southland Tales (which I find crazy in all the right ways), and The Box (which I have no opinion of).
Writer-director-producer David Robert Mitchell, who revolutionized the modern horror genre with his 2014 feature It Follows, was ambitious to the point of rashness with his neo-noir mystery Under the Silver Lake, which glimmers with nods to many noirs past: the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski, Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice — plus Vertigo… and Rear Window… and Richard Kelly’s post-Donnie Darko incoherent slog of a feature Southland Tales.
But in terms of awkward career progressions, it seems inevitable that the lurch from It Follows to this swollen dramatic sprawl will draw comparison to Richard Kelly's banana-peel slip from the mesmerizing genre-bending of Donnie Darko to the overreaching mess of Southland Tales, which also premiered in competition at Cannes.
It’s very reminiscent of what happened to director Richard Kelly when he followed cult favourite Donnie Darko (2001) with the ambitious but convoluted Southland Tales (2006) and singlehandedly ended his promising career.
Mitchell’s work here could be most easily compared to that of gonzo auteur Richard Kelly, the man behind Donnie Darko (which I can’t stand), Southland Tales (which I find crazy in all the right ways), and The Box (which I have no opinion of).
Writer-director-producer David Robert Mitchell, who revolutionized the modern horror genre with his 2014 feature It Follows, was ambitious to the point of rashness with his neo-noir mystery Under the Silver Lake, which glimmers with nods to many noirs past: the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski, Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice — plus Vertigo… and Rear Window… and Richard Kelly’s post-Donnie Darko incoherent slog of a feature Southland Tales.
In the interim, Mitchell’s trippy, self-reflexive hipster “Vertigo” has become one of the most intensely debated and hyper-analyzed films among young cinephiles since “Donnie Darko.”
It’s an homage to the side of David Lynch that works better in theory than it does as flesh-and-blood cinema, and it may also remind you, at times, of “Southland Tales,” the three-hour pile of pretension that Richard Kelly made after “Donnie Darko.”
And the film’s barrage of dream-logic surrealism should pay royalties to the Lost Highway-era David Lynch.
But the comparison comes with a major qualifier: There are moments when “Under the Silver Lake” evokes David Lynch the tranced-out Hollywood Babylon yarn-spinner of “Mulholland Drive” — but mostly, it’s an homage to the Lynch who gnaws on the weirder fringes of the everyday-surreal, the Lynch of “Lost Highway” or even, at times, the reboot of “Twin Peaks.”
Her room is full of Hollywood memorabilia, a poster of How to Marry a Millionaire on the wall.
The women in Under the Silver Lake are all presented as items of consumption, the most prominent being Riley Keough’s Sarah, a blonde temptress who lures Sam into an underworld vortex when she suddenly disappears after a stoned viewing of How to Marry a Millionaire.
When he finally meets Sarah, the breathy blonde invites him in to get stoned and watch How to Marry a Millionaire, establishing a Marilyn Monroe link that will resurface in Sam's dream of Sarah in the famous Something's Got to Give nude pool scene.
Sam and Sarah get stoned and watch How to Marry a Millionaire; R.E.M. plays at a party; in Sam’s bedroom hangs a poster of Kurt Cobain; an NES, vintage Playboy, and vinyl player all feature prominently.
When Sam spies an unknown young woman, played by Riley Keough — who is in real life a descendent of none other than Elvis — he is smitten, and once she lets him inside her apartment, her film obsession turns out to be “How to Marry a Millionaire.”
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Coppola’s “One From the Heart,” Spielberg’s “1941,” Michael Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate”).
From the Oscar-winning triumph of the gut-wrenching The Deer Hunter, he found himself at the mercy of the movie-going world upon the release of the hilariously catastrophic Heaven’s Gate, the closest visual representation of gluttony before the guy who ate himself to death in Se7en.
With binoculars in hand and slumped in a chair, he starts spying on his neighbors à la Rear Window.
We don't need to see the Rear Window poster on Sam's living-room wall to get the homage as he trains his binoculars on a topless neighbor feeding her parrots before settling his gaze on new resident Sarah (Riley Keough), rocking a white bikini down by the pool with her dog.
There are clear references to Rear Window, Vertigo and Mulholland Dr. but, as with the writer-director’s previous outings, the new film draws from his influences to sculpt something personal and specific.
The walls of his apartment are covered with movie posters, including an expensive one for Hitchcock’s “Rear Window.”
The first 20 minutes alone are a high-wire mash-up of two Hitchcock classics, “Rear Window” and “Vertigo,” with Andrew Garfield playing a sort of a dissolute millennial Jimmy Stewart in 2011 Los Angeles.
He lives a lackadaisical existence ambling about a motel complex that has “Rear Window” views; across the way a comely occupant coos to her parrot, sans top.