Under the Silver Lake | Little White Lies

Under the Sil­ver Lake

12 Mar 2019 / Released: 15 Mar 2019

Young person in orange top standing near tree with lost dog poster
Young person in orange top standing near tree with lost dog poster
4

Anticipation.

This always looked like it was going to be seriously fun. Garfield is the cherry on top.

4

Enjoyment.

A wackadoo trawl through LA cultural history. Cereal boxes will never look the same again.

4

In Retrospect.

Bravo to David Robert Mitchell for having the guts to make this mad mongrel of a movie.

Andrew Garfield dis­ap­pears down the rab­bit hole in David Robert Mitchell’s zany LA noir.

What­ev­er your thoughts on this film – and thoughts so far have ranged from the ador­ing to the eter­nal­ly per­plexed via the sto­ical­ly out­raged – you have to admit that it feels good to live in a world where an art­work of such couldn’tgiveafuckery could be fund­ed, pro­duced, pre­miered at a film fes­ti­val and then released into the world, like an over-talk­a­tive parakeet.

It’s like when an archi­tect has sen­si­bly plowed their fur­row as a builder of office blocks and schools, and then as a reward for their toil, final­ly gets to pro­duce a fol­ly that is a pure expres­sion of a per­son­al vision and which sits out­side the bounds of con­ven­tion­al application.

Under the Sil­ver Lake is the third fea­ture by David Robert Mitchell, fol­low­ing the utter­ly delight­ful teen rela­tion­ship ron­de­lay, The Myth of the Amer­i­can Sleep­over, and the exis­ten­tial hor­ror-chiller, It Fol­lows. The indus­tri­ous writer/​director lays down a set-up that is plucked from the heart of the stacked shelves of genre fic­tion: let’s look for the miss­ing damsel.

Andrew Garfield is a scruffy gad­about named Sam with noth­ing bet­ter to do with his time than to search for Riley Keough’s Sarah, one day seen strut­ting around his apart­ment com­plex in a reveal­ing white bathing suit and wide-brimmed sun­hat, the next day, gone. All she leaves is a shoe­box con­tain­ing some Polaroids, mod­i­fied Bar­bie dolls and a vibrator.

Despite a clinch which just about counts as roman­tic, Sam bare­ly knows Sarah, and yet feels enough respon­si­bil­i­ty to risk life and limb to track her down. Maybe it’s love? Or maybe it’s about find­ing an excuse for adven­ture and run­ning with it? Maybe it just rep­re­sents the down­sides of old fash­ioned chivalry?

A woman with blonde hair and a radiant smile leaning on the edge of a swimming pool.

What ensues is a gar­ish LA picaresque in which Mitchell appears to be stack­ing up both pros and cons for the city he cur­rent­ly calls home. There is a dog killer on the loose who adds a fris­son of men­ace to any night sequences. Zines are being dis­trib­uted about arcane local lore and night­time prowlers. And there’s a guy dressed as a pirate who crops up all over the place.

The sto­ry begins as a com­pelling and eccen­tric detec­tive yarn, as Sam just fol­lows sus­pects around and picks up on obscure leads. Garfield plays the lead as a gan­g­ly doo­fus with an obses­sive streak. Ear­ly on he is sprayed by a skunk and his foul odour makes him seem like less of a threat among poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous com­pa­ny. The film reach­es a point where it breaks from its teth­er and and starts to oat freely.

There’s an earnest affin­i­ty for the genre films of clas­si­cal Hol­ly­wood, with most rooms plas­tered in antique movie posters, and Sam’s moth­er con­stant­ly ring­ing her son to dis­cuss the silent era star (and week­end painter) Janet Gaynor. Female nudi­ty is lib­er­al through­out, though used as a cheeky throw­back to ideas of lib­er­al utopi­anism which are dealt with more force­ful­ly in the film’s auda­cious (though pos­si­bly exas­per­at­ing) final reel.

With each cyn­i­cal lit­tle jab, Mitchell coun­ter­bal­ances with a moment of sweet nos­tal­gia or per­son­al rec­ol­lec­tion – of the tumult of cul­tur­al ref­er­ences, most cer­tain­ly hark back to the director’s for­ma­tive years. If crack­pot ideas and cracked ide­al­ism are your bag, then you should most def­i­nite­ly take a dive into the Sil­ver Lake.

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