Review of Under the Silver Lake (2018) by Jordanlayton — 30 Apr 2020

Under the Silver Lake is an ambitious, long-winded, dense, fantastical, unique gem. It boils down to the modern attempt at finding meaning in the world/life but it has many more themes and takeaways than that. The flippancy of millennial romance, the increasing paranoia about the world as it becomes more connected, the known marketability of humility and genuine artistry leading to faking those two things, the capitalization of media industries on the people with celebrity aspirations that those same industries ingrained into them from childhood, and the commonality of media industries chewing up and spitting out 99% of people interested in working in those industries - women in particular. The repetition of Garfield's character searching for hidden codes in an abundance of different types of media, nearing on an obsession of pop culture across mediums hit particularly close to home for me. Like I said, dense. Even for a 2.5hr run time. How does it pack so much in to one feature-length project? Symbolism, non-literal scenes/imagery, and a respect for the intelligence of the audience. 3 things that have tanked movies in the past. Sorry to Bother You is a recent example. Divisive among audiences that are unable/unwilling to go along for the ride or that were just plain mismarketed to.

On less meta notes, Andrew Garfield fully embraced this role and I was surprised by his ability to do so in this film. Between this performance and that of his role in Silence, I hope to see more of him in the future. And despite this film's underwhelming box office performance, I hope the director, David Robert Mitchell, gets more work. I thought he significantly improved in his style and craft since It Follows, even though I can't imagine there was much increase in budget between the two films. This movie criticizes the film industry, the music industry, and pop culture as a whole. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that's why it didn't get a wide release. The realist in me knows it probably just wouldn't do well with general audiences (see Sorry to Bother You; Climax; Synechdoche, New York) and A24 knew that. Ifs just ironic that this mindset of a big production company and the movie's themes and messages are very nearly mirrored in some ways.