Under the Silver Lake (2019) Under the Silver Lake is easy to dismiss. It's an odyssey through a Los Angeles that doesn't exist, though the film's best hook is that it acts like it's all right in front of your eyes, just below the surface. It's a mystery that you realize will never be solved, or even really explained, and there are few things more frustrating than a filmmaker jerking you around for 130 minutes with questions they don't intend to answer but instead just pile on more questions. On top of that the film is gross, with gratuitous shots of fecal matter and cinema's nastiest skunk attack, and it sexualizes nearly every women that appears in it.
And yet...
Under the Silver Lake is hard to let go. It's being called this generation's Southland Tales, and I never thought I'd see another film so soon that has the same level of ambition and bewildering moments, that feels like it's set in the same cinematic universe. A film that knows exactly what it's doing, but I can't figure out why it would choose to do it. With some minor exceptions, I despised Southland Tales, but I find this oddly compelling. I think that's due to Andrew Garfield's performance creating a solid center and a weird confidence that unlike Richard Kelly, director David Robert Mitchell knows what he's going for. Like Jordan Peele's Us, it's a film that invites a lot of perspectives, even though a lot of the content is uninviting.
The big internal debate I'm having right now is regarding the female characters. In a time when Hollywood is ever so slowly turning the ship in a more respectful direction, this movie puts women's bodies on display like it's the 1970s and the camera operator is Ron Burgundy. This isn't done for crass exploitation like Michael Bay, but a deliberate choice to show how a young adult male like Garfield's character views his world. This is set up in the opening shot, where I believe Garfield isn't looking at the graffiti on a store window but at the woman's body that moves while she tries to clean it. I don't believe the movie is sexist, but the main character can't not relate to females in this way.
★ ★ ★ - Good