Under the Silver Lake
Under the Silver Lake

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Under the Silver Lake

There’s plenty to say about David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake, a kind of film-noir-Old-Hollywood-mashup-mystery movie characterised by its deliberate double-down on the plot’s central conspiracy. Following the disappearance of his (beautiful) neighbour Sarah, Sam sets off across LA, to find her. Rather than disavowing his growing obsession, Silver Lake allows a character trait – Sam’s desire to uncover conspiracies, and find the world latent with hidden connections and profound meaning – to take hold: clues appear in cereal boxes and comic books, and obscure symbols begin to reveal themselves as more than the sum of their parts.

Clues appear in cereal boxes and comic books, and obscure symbols begin to reveal themselves as more than the sum of their parts.

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Image courtesy of MUBI

There’s tension in trying to decide whether objects are MacGuffins driving the plot or cathected symptoms embodying Sam’s mental decline – until ineffably, tension turns to tedium; a boiling pot, suddenly cold. The stark drop-away of viewing investment comes from the film’s blatant disinvestment in its female characters, who seem a neat encapsulation of both good and bad in the world they flit through. Certainly, each is more plot device than person in our 2 hour 20 minute romp through Hollywood, led by (un)lovable weirdo Sam: the sun around whom girl-planets circle.

So. Sam doesn’t work. Sam can’t pay his rent, but Sam doesn’t care. Sam, until a sequence of interchangeable girls (one in particular) prompt his gallant, breathless unravelling of Silver Lake’s most-unravellable mystery, doesn’t do much besides perv on his neighbours. This is not, necessarily, what is objectionable about him; I’m all for difficulty and unlikable characters and, for the first hour or so, it’s a pleasure to follow him as a complex and flawed protagonist. For now, at least, there’s a sense that he’s heading somewhere worth arriving at: buffeted from beautiful girl to groovy party and back on a sea of phone calls from his panicky mother, Sam The Magnetic is acted upon rather than active. His moral failings are drawn starkly, neither underlined nor underplayed, as Silver Lake’s opening unspools. That’s not an easy feat, and Andrew Garfield plays him as beautifully as anyone could; meanwhile, the cinematography is marvellous, soundtrack exceptionally well composed. It was all going so well!

Looking back, as if on a photo of a much younger self, change is visible. Gosh, is that what this – my face, gender politics – used to be like?

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Image courtesy of MUBI

Wildly ambitious, wilfully dense and oscillating between compelling mystery and masturbatory passion project, Silver Lake verges on both ‘excellent’ and ‘insufferable’. Its critical reception has been mixed, eliciting either rapturous praise or searing take-downs with very little ambivalence to be found in its reviews. I’d wager that its polarised reception is down to the splitting of critics into two loose camps: Aspiring Sams, and Those They Exasperate. Under the Silver Lake was written before #metoo and #timesup, and the impact of those tidal waves on the landscape of cinema has never seemed so stark as when settling into a film written on one side and released on the other. Attitudes change slowly, shifts only recognisable in hindsight: looking back, as if on a photo of a much younger self, change is visible. Gosh, is that what this – my face, gender politics – used to be like?

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Image courtesy of MUBI

The first time a woman speaks, it’s Sam’s girlfriend arriving in an Oktoberfest-cum-porno outfit – think plaits, corset and thigh-high socks – as The Actress, interrupting his voyeur binocular session with sushi. Her costume is explained away as something she wore to an audition nearby, and whether that’s meant to give her character depth (she’s a working woman, guys!) or tie in to a later inference in the film’s central mystery, it’s a terribly convenient way for the presumed male viewer to get a good ol’ look. It sets the tone, certainly, for a film which shows us three pairs of breasts in the first 15 minutes. Sam is wrangling with id and super ego, unpicking mysteries, beginning his decline into obsession, thinking and speaking as a human being might. He’s more than watchable – compellingly flawed, hewn in strong relief from the bedrock of suspended disbelief. Meanwhile, his landscape is pleasingly decorated by The Actress and her Lovely Hair.

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Image courtesy of MUBI

A quick scan of the cast list tells you that we won’t be passing the Bechdel test here. Nameless Wonders like The Girlfriend, Balloon Girl and 2 x Shooting Star (so called for the escort agency they work at) flit in and out, each played beautifully and written terribly. All speak with the same voice, as though Mitchell – who wrote the screenplay as well as directing the film – can envision one woman, and one alone. Perhaps the word is fantasise rather than anything more concrete or consistent; Mitchell’s girls are sexy and funny, dutiful and mysterious, straight forward and obtuse by turns. Sometimes, Sam hallucinates their snarling and barking like dogs. While neighbour Sarah has a name, that’s about all the substance she’s permitted beyond a white swimming costume and Marilyn hat; she goes missing almost immediately, generously generating a trajectory for hitherto directionless Sam whilst avoiding the need for any character development.

All speak with the same voice, as though Mitchell – who wrote the screenplay as well as directing the film – can envision one woman, and one alone.

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Image courtesy of MUBI

Just as its female characters are a patchwork of convenient and attractive – if conflicting – qualities, Mitchell’s dream gal viewed from different angles, so Silver Lake’s protagonist drifts closer and closer to avatar-hood: Flawed Leading Man dissolves into Teenage Fantasy Hero, persecuted for his idiosyncracies and finally vindicated. Tidy your room! Pay your bills! Call your mother! I’m busy. Sam’s paranoia is recast as intelligent perseverance, obsession as tenacity, fecklessness as cool remove as he’s proven right in his convictions and rewarded accordingly. As the film reaches a crescendo, we’re introduced to a couple more genres of women: escorts, sister-wives, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl and a supernatural sex demon. None of them will revolutionise the way we write women on screen, I’ll tell you that, but maybe they could constitute one whole woman if we added them together. Meanwhile, as the film literally loses its plot, Sam’s initial magnetism is sacrificed at its bonkers altar. Our hero is increasingly painted as flatly as any of his harem – inconsistent, if holding on to flashes of brilliance.

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Image courtesy of MUBI

The cult of male genius leaves a lot of room for error. Once the status has been attained, we forgive auteurs almost anything – and David Robert Mitchell seems to have been green-lit since the success of It Follows, 2014. As such, plot holes are glossed over as deficiencies in our own thinking rather than any fault of the person who left them glaring in the first place. 2D characters are satirical rather than lazy. Misogyny is societal critique, rather than bald prejudice. What seems to be missing from the discussion around Silver Lake is its exceptional ability to be many things at once – infuriating, and intoxicating. Beautifully directed, and terribly composed. Simplistic and convoluted, naïve and cynical. Stupid and smart, embodying the dual clarity and idiocy of something like adolescence. Sam functions, at his core, as a kind of aspirational-autobiographical character, an auteur if ever there was one. Permitted deviance, inconsistency and human error, he’s granted all the space in the world to disappoint himself and others; to fuck up, and be forgiven. That’s a glorious freedom to give a character, making for compelling cinema and a human kind of watchability; if the gift of three dimensions had been granted to the film’s women, the scales might have tipped in its favour – uniting the Sams and their Exasperated Counterparts once and for all.

By Emily Watkins.

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