Directed by:
David Robert MitchellScreenplay:
David Robert MitchellCinematography:
Mike GioulakisComposer:
Rich VreelandCast:
Andrew Garfield, Riley Keough, Grace Van Patten, Riki Lindhome, Jimmi Simpson, Zosia Mamet, Bobbi Salvör Menuez, David Yow, Callie Hernandez (more)VOD (2)
Plots(1)
33-year-old Sam (Andrew Garfield) discovers a mysterious woman frolicking in his apartment’s pool. When she vanishes, he 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. (MUBI)
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Reviews (9)
Considering I once coughed up a script about something similar, it's safe to say that the film should speak my language, except that's exactly the aspect where Mitchell and I are terribly at odds. Mainly in the way the film constantly tries to create that surreal atmosphere of meta-time, but permanently undermines it with constant specific pastiches and quotes that go to such extremes as to use painted canvases as backgrounds. And yet he still couldn't get his way and shoot on film, so we're watching self-conscious references to noir practices in ugly and unforgiving digital, where the paltry budget (8 and a half million) stands out several times worse. In a world populated with Inherent Vice, Brick, or David Lynch, Under the Silver Lake is not worth considering at all.
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An entertaining modern film-noir that’s subversively playing with the viewers and their attempts to decipher possibly undecipherable hidden messages. Talented David Robert Mitchell recounts an odyssey full of pop culture references leading to a dead end, while, at the same time, quoting Alfred Hitchcock heavily in many scenes and populating the enigmatic Los Angeles settings with hordes of weird characters. Andrew Garfield very skilfully handles the tricky storyline and delivers. Personally, I would have happily watched another hour of Mitchell’s frisky tale. [Sitges 2018]
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A hallucinatory neo-noir that pokes fun at audiences who revel in solving unsolvable movie puzzles, conspiracy theories and the internet generation's unhealthy obsession with pop culture. How much you enjoy it or get bored with it depends on how much you accept its absurd logic. It's reminiscent of the logic of the old adventure video games from the 80s and 90s, in which you as the player explored different locations collecting various items and had to figure out how to combine them to progress further. The way you combined them was often illogical, which drove you insane with an obsessive urge to constantly combine everything with everything (“is this old magazine a regular magazine, or can it be used for something important?”). But you didn't rest until you found out, for example, that if you scratched the James Dean statue, the King of the Homeless would appear and lead you to a mysterious underground. So does the protagonist of Under the Silver Lake, whose search for a missing neighbor leads him to unravel a pop culture super-conspiracy behind the curtain of picturesque Los Angeles. After he starts discovering coded clues all around him (in commercials, songs, and movies), he can't help feeling that everything is connected. David Robert Mitchell, the director, deliberately frustrates his audience with the aforementioned absurd logic, but manages to reward them with an immersive atmosphere and an entertaining play on audience expectations and genre conventions.
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Hobo´s ///. Mulholland Drive 2018 or WTF³, which will for couple of decades stimulate discussions, analyzes of God knows what including slow-motion sound recordings of a neighbor's parrot played backwards. But in contrast to similar self-serving onanist mindfuck's elusive super weirdness, this one has an insurmountable advantage that puts it alongside the aforementioned best lynch or Donnie Darko. It works on its own, without any effort on the part of the viewer to discover the encrypted meaning of the universe, purely as a hypnotically captivating expedition into the depths of fantasy madness / raised middle finger to all (everything). If you still wanted to know what the hell it's all about, I'd probably tell you “(im) perfection + pothead comedy + paranoid schizophrenia + Henry: Portrait of a murderer = a tribute to classic Hollywood and noir", but much (really much) more apt would be just to bark ... I mean woof, woof!
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Comparing the atmosphere of this film with David Lynch is a bit off the mark. The movie is actually not as strange as it looks at first glance. It’s rather a wannabe thriller with noir elements where people behave in strange ways mainly because they are simply weird. Andrew Garfield plays probably the weirdest role in his entire career and it would probably be better if he didn’t have it in his portfolio. For over two hours, something is going on that portrays the human vanity in Hollywood and it does so in such an inconspicuous manner that I don’t think the locals will understand that the movie is referring to them. The entire time, I was waiting for something a bit more meaningful to come out of it, but the good-for-nothing ending cut that off and essentially confirmed what this movie is about. It’s actually about nothing at all.
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