Under the Ugly, Unfathomable Film Noir

Under the secondly pushed back release date, 

Under the sexual, wannabe-Lebowski, 

Under the stoner-philosophized formula for a new generation of college kids, 

There is not David Lynch, but David Robert Mitchell

(and he's trying his best)

* * * * *

Under the Silver Lake so desperately wants to be something special in its self awareness of being a hollow movie dressed up as a profound one, that it never truly explores its purpose in being so profoundly hollow. Granted there’s a legitimate depth to the self commentary of life's potential complexities, Silver Lake is still not much beyond a shell of an ode to the classic film noir, with some boobies thrown in for good measure.

  

Following up his cult-horror B-movie It Follows, writer-director David Robert Mitchell decided it was time to tackle his Big Lebowski; his magnum opus of a crime film for a new generation of stoned college kids who delve with philosophy and dream of other realms of spiritual existence. 

(LOOKING FOR CLUES BEHIND EVERY NIP-SLIP)

  In this vein, Under the Silver Lake plays out very similarly to P.T. Anderson's 2014 stoner comedy-caper Inherent Vice in the sense that a bumbling protagonist tumbles down a rabbit hole of many random characters throughout connected shady clues in order to justify some grandiose mystery. Comparisons to any nods of the film noir elements are inevitable, except where Anderson's film is filled with a brilliant levity throughout its bizarre happenings, Mitchell's film is often an empty, ugly picture filled with detestable characters.

Also, Inherent Vice features a coke-snorting Martin Short as a kooky dentist,

which instantly makes for the better film.

  To a degree there is a very meta presence to Mitchell's personality throughout the film; an incredibly self aware commentary to the scum of this generation and therefore the despicable nature of the film is tragically often accurate.

  For example, the film's Humphrey Bogart, Sam (Andrew Garfield) lives in a small suburban apartment in LA, is four months behind on his rent, and spends most of his time perched on his balcony staring at his topless neighbor with binoculars; He’s a sexually charged male who’s distracted by life’s mysteries even literally during intercourse or masturbation. When Sam isn’t stringing together conspiracy theories using old pizza boxes, he takes cool drags of his cigarettes while hanging out in baseball tees watching classic Hollywood movies, drifting through life getting stoned... 

  So in many ways Sam is not just a satire of the film noir detective, but a poster boy for the American slacker.

  Save for the whimsical storybook-like folk, Robert Mitchell paints the people Sam runs into as either clueless, caddy or mean spirited, winking at the snobbish Hollywood culture of LA. It’s only when Sam meets his enchanting blonde neighbor, Sarah (Riley Keough) when a character finally seems to be of some charm and elegance. Not in distress enough to be a damsel, nor devious enough to play femme fetale; ironically being one of the only female characters who either doesn’t sleep with Sam or isn’t trying to court him in some way, Sarah is also the character who goes missing and thus cracks the central plot of Sam’s search to find her.

  To boot, not only is Sarah a gorgeous portrait of the Hollywood blue-eyed blonde, but she also escorts a precious fluffy, white puppy on constant threat to be killed.

(Mitchell is very mean-spirited to dogs throughout the film 

so I'm not sure what kinda dude we're dealing with here)

  Robert Mitchell packs his film with every kind of nuance to something greater happening within the plot, which while his greatest advantage in keeping things engaging is also the very downfall that outweighs any of the essence as to why we should care about any of the film’s outrageous shenanigans. 

  Like any good noir, one clue leads to another and then another, and as the plot thickens and unwraps like a multilayered Christmas present there’s definitely some profound moral in the center if one is looking for it, only once this Russian doll of a mystery boils down to its last egg, there’s literally nothing inside. This isn’t a spoiler, it’s just another way of alluding to Mitchell’s cleverness at restating “it’s not the destination but the journey”, even if the filmmaker’s purpose in being purposeless is no more established than when the Coen Bros. sent The Dude on a spiritual journey to find his rug twenty years ago.

(Of course this is all just, like, my opinion, man.)

  Albeit the film is ultimately distasteful in personality, recycled in plot mechanism, and frustrating as a whole, there’s some self commentary that’s admirable if cynical of Mitchell to string his audience along for what feels like a much larger story than alluded to.

  Part of the film’s brilliance is in the way in which everything is so shrouded in mystery; every clue Sam stumbles upon documented so closely, naturally conditioning the audience to question every single frame and interaction throughout the film as some sort of connection to a divine conclusion. It’s the type of film designed for stoned college kids who will re-watch, theorize and pick apart every detail for years to come.

  Granted the elements of mystery are a little too ambiguous, perhaps all the sexual sub-plots; the dog killers, the talking parrots, the profound comic books, conspiracy theories told through records being played backwards, and moonlight assassins in the form of a naked woman in an owl mask; maybe all these things are in the most David Lynch sense bizarre for the sake of being bizarre. Except where Lynch has nuance in his asinine randomness, Robert Mitchell feels like he’s grabbing at any straw that looks strange.

David Lynch called. He wants his weird back.

  All that said, there are scarce engaging moments where the ambiguity does pay off. Where Sam uses his knowledge of pop culture and other obscure nerd references to progress in his plot, there’s one moment of fruition in the form of an old man playing piano in the third act (pretty sure it’s a young dude in a rubber mask but I digress); the character spills many dark reveals to the audience that’s not only a bleak commentary on the day and age, but almost the antithesis to this year’s Ready Player One in the sense that all these connections to pop culture in finding life’s purpose is, rather than playing out like a noble quest in a video game, is actually a horrifying lie that’s been swept under the rug for generations.

  In the end, there's lots of takeaway, even if it's just over-analyzing the use of obligatory film noir shots and dissecting the clues that may or may not be there.

  Don’t mistake the over abundant nature of Mitchell’s ambiguity; the guy’s got serious talent and there are remarkable pieces to his high horse of a wacky film noir, but he doesn’t justify why his film gets so weird and even worse what makes sitting through 139 minutes worth. There’s clear reason WHY the film will develop a cult following, but where the writer-director aims for the seductive mystique of Mulholland Drive, Under the Silver Lake lands at the muddling skull-fuckery of Southland Tales.

Take it or leave it, this is still one of the most ambitious pictures of 2018.

*10 points to DRMitch

P.S. Remember Southland Tales? 

Good LORD.