Saturday, May 04, 2019

Under The Silver Lake (2019)


Under the Silver Lake is the latest movie by It Follows (which is also excellent) writer/director David Robert Mitchell. It's a weird, meta, superficially entertaining, deliberately derivative work of a mad genius trying to pull together a message about Hollywood, culture and art. Everyone who enjoys movies or music should watch it.

I loved the movie, it's my favorite of 2019 and one of my favorites in years. The movie pretty much defines my movie-viewing wheelhouse.

So while I think it's really a shame it was dumped onto streaming without a lot of fanfare, it's best enjoyed on streaming. I found myself rewinding again and again, jumping around and trying to make sense of it. Though, it probably would have been fun to watch with a good audience.

I'm not going to go over the plot of the movie, you can read that in the many reviews that panned the movie. AO Scott is a really good reviewer, but he can't seem to look past the references to see what the movie's about.

So, I'm going to try to explain what the movie is about, but there are a few spoilers. But if you want to go in completely cold, then don't read the rest of this review yet. (And it goes without saying that you should never read reviews until after you watch a movie)



The premise gets set up in the very first shot:



Why is there a dog killer in Silver Lake? Why should we be afraid of him?

Well, a classic moviemaking truism is that you should never kill a dog in a movie unless you want the audience to hate you. Spielberg was one of the first mainstream directors to break the rule in Lost World, and it was so memorable at the time that I easily found this article about it 22 years later.

Mitchell is telling the audience up front that he's going to kill the dog, literally and figuratively, in this film. You're going to hate him for ruining not just this movie, but all movies, and all culture, after he's through.

As AO Scott points out, the film is full of references. Many, many, many are Hitchcockian. Rear Window, North by Northwest, Vertigo are all there (and probably more I missed).  Hitchcock is arguably the most influential director of all time. All mystery movies -- maybe all movies at this point -- are influenced by Hitchcock. Mitchell goes so far as to show Hitchcock's actual grave in this movie. Mitchell isn't just paying homage here. He wants you to know he's ripping off Hitchcock so badly because it's meta.

Several times in the movie, Mitchell refers to Hollywood tropes and then puts those into the movie and right up in your face. Many have to do with sexualization in pop culture: the male gaze, blonde/brunette/redhead.

So what's the meaning of all this? The good news is the point of the movie is delivered to you, the viewer. The character looks into the camera to tell you exactly what the movie is about. The character is The Songwriter (also another trope), an old recluse who has created all of the world's most loved music for generations.



And this is, like, a real thing. Consider Max Martin. But The Songwriter has a bigger point though. He tells you -- yes, you -- "Your art, your writing, your culture, is the shell of other men's ambitions". The Songwriter is both talking to the audience and the director. Mitchell wants you to know his success is built upon the shoulders of Hitchcock, and the many other things he referenced in this movie.

The concept is not unlike this fantastic music video by Hot Chip. I'm always left wondering, are any of my ideas actually my ideas, or a fraud based on hidden figures like the Songwriter, which culture consumers have no idea actually exist? My reaction is always like this girl in the music video, when she sees the actual singer of the song:


Anyway, Mitchell made this movie with so many pop culture and ripped-off tropes to drive home this point. Mitchell also spends a lot of time in the movie dwelling on hidden clues. The Songwriter mentions this a few times ("the song was not for you"). And, of course, the main character follows his own hidden clue trail to the big reveal.

But in a final chef's-kiss of meta, random things happen in the movie, like someone announcing a code aloud, or a squirrel falling out of a tree dead. I'm left wondering if these clues are the final dog killed. Mitchell wants you to waste your time trying to find hidden meaning for everything in this movie, when actually, there is none.

So good luck with that. You've been warned... though I'm not sure I'll be able to obey my own warning.


JSS Rating: Good / Good. If you are a cultural robot like me, this movie should be both entertaining and have meaning for you.