Tag Archives: David Robert Mitchell

Apocryphally Weird

5*. UNDER THE SILVER LAKE (2018)

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“Well, was that weird enough for you?”–-Matt Surridge, author and festival reviewer, at Under the Silver Lake screening

“I usually like weird, but not THIS weird.”–Amazon product review for Under the Silver Lake

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DIRECTED BY: David Robert Mitchell

FEATURING: Andrew Garfield, , Patrick Fischler, David Yow, Jeremy Bobb

PLOT: Sam has two deadlines: first, figure out what to do about his “criminally” overdue rent before his eviction in five days; second, investigate the mysterious disappearance of the young woman he recently met in his apartment complex. Over the ensuing week, he explores East L.A.’s hidden messages in a quest of discovery, stumbling from conspiracy to conspiracy. Spoiler Alert: he does not solve his rent problem.

BACKGROUND:

  • The critical and financial success of David Robert Mitchell’s 2014 horror film It Follows gave the writer/director the clout he needed to get Under the Silver Lake, his passion project, made.
  • The film debuted at Cannes in 2018 to a cool reception. Distributor A24 had originally planned for a summer 2018 release, but pushed it back to December 2018, then again to 2019. Rumors circulated that the film would be recut in the interim to make it shorter and less confusing; thankfully, that did not happen.
  • The film was a financial flop, making back only about 2 million of its 8 million budget in its theatrical release.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Spending so much time looking quietly bamboozled, any shot of Sam in “investigation mode” is memorable for its combination of mystery and listlessness. The long montage of him pursuing three young women driving a white VW Rabbit convertible nicely mirrors the audience’s journey as we follow him into a dreamland of ever-so-subtly sinister machinations.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: The Homeless King; cereal clues guide you to the tomb

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: What it may lack in specifics, Under the Silver Lake makes up for in volume. At a sprawling 2-and-1/3 hours, the narrative starts at “odd” and stacks on odder and odder. The background events (a serial dog-killer, the disappearance and death of a flamboyant billionaire) are themselves strange, but merely provide the unlikely framework on which Mitchell plasters the following: animated cult ‘zine sequences, another serial killer, a spooky old mansion hiding an existentially depressing secret, and a conspiracy wrap-up beyond our time and place.

Original trailer for Under the Silver Lake

COMMENTS: Divisiveness is a sure sign of a film’s promise. Continue reading 5*. UNDER THE SILVER LAKE (2018) →

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: UNDER THE SILVER LAKE (2018)

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Under the Silver Lake has been promoted to Apocryphally Weird status. Please read the official entry. Comments are closed on this post.

DIRECTED BY: David Robert Mitchell

FEATURING: , , Patrick Fischler, Jimmi Simpson, David Yow, Jeremy Bobb

PLOT: Doc Sportello‘s grand-son, Sam, is going to be — wait, no. Disheveled loafer Sam is going to be kicked out of his apartment in five days for (criminally overdue) back-rent. Instead of fixing his domestic problem, he becomes embroiled in perhaps the biggest cover-up that has ever bamboozled the Golden State.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: A serial dog murderer, a conspiracist ‘zine drawn to life, a map in a box of “Space Nuggets,” Jesus and the Brides of Dracula, palatial tombs, the Owl Woman, symbolic Chess moves, the Homeless King, and a mysterious Songwriter all come crashing down on a shiftless 30-something loser with a knack for crypticism. Barking women, Purgatory parties, and one bad cookie lock Under the Silver Lake into a realm of supreme strangeness reminiscent of that beach dream you had after reading Pynchon.

COMMENTS: Call it poor form of me, but I felt obliged to skip a second screening to hustle back and write about David Mitchell’s newest film. During the movie, variations on what to call it skipped around my brain, but ultimately I reckoned that Inherent Goonies best encapsulates the mood. This bizarre crime drama on barbiturates; this ambling post-Slacker comedy; this magnificent quest—somehow the director weds the listless protagonist with the adolescent adventure-stylings of “The Hardy Boys.” Jammed throughout are enough threads to sew yourself a nice cardigan to protect you from the sun while you’re strolling through the over-baked landscape of sorta-now-ish California.

Perched on his apartment’s balcony, Sam (Andrew Garfield) has a good view of his attractive older neighbor—a constantly topless bird fancier. Suddenly, a young beauty (Riley Keough) with a dog and a boombox catches his eye. They meet, they get high together, and then she disappears mysteriously in the middle of the night. Quietly curious and uncannily focused, Sam pursues the mystery at his own ambling pace, encountering an underground ‘zine artist (Patrick Fischler) who sets him on the right path and a coterie of über-hipster musicians whose songs are encoded with secret messages, before meeting the benevolent Homeless King (David Yow) by the grave of James Dean. What follows is an odyssey of unpleasant discovery as Sam finds that, for the rich, the world  is a very different kind of place than it is for everyone else.

I’ve already mentioned the Inherent Vice connection, and even if it were only Andrew Garfield’s Joaquin Phoenix-channeling performance, Under the Silver Lake would still be an odd duck. But David Mitchell keeps shoveling on more ducks at every turn. I don’t know where else I’d find cryptography and Hollywood history so intertwined. I don’t know where else I’d find the Purgatory club—the kind of place you might hang out between the Black and White Lodges. And I don’t know where else California’s bright lights  and beautiful people could find themselves crashing so violently into luxuriant subterranean twilight. Mitchell even drops some suggestions that Sam could be a burnt-out, alternate time-line Peter Parker.

Fortunately for us, our knight-errant keeps it together on his perilous mission seeking the maiden fair. The movie is epic in length and epic in scope, unveiling new side roads for Sam to shuffle along: sometimes in jeans, sometimes in pajamas. When an ultimate truth is discovered, Mitchell isn’t satisfied, and somehow manages to unveil an even ultimater truth. For reasons beyond my understanding, Under the Silver Lake was poorly received at Cannes. Perhaps it’s just not their kind of movie. Thank the heavens above for Fantasia: Mitchell’s latest effort found just the right kind of people there. With Under the Silver Lake, we fly very close to the sun; but unlike Icarus, we manage to crash comfortably on to our hot neighbor’s bed.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…[a] glib, weird hybrid comedy rife with conspiracy theories… what first seems a goofy light foray into pop culture slackerdom with a hefty added dose of voyeurism, becomes a down-the-rabbit-hole exploration of the fantasy geography of an L.A. undermined by subterranean caverns and tunnels, and inhabited by cultists, theorists, ethereal female escorts, and homeless shamans, as coyotes roam freely.” -Barbara Scharres, RogerEbert.Com

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

THE WITCH & IT FOLLOWS (2015)

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With the release of The Witch and It  Follows, 2015 was an exceptional year for the horror genre. The Witch, Robert Egger’s directorial debut  proved to be the more provocative of the two; not surprising, given that Puritan oppression as horror strikes close to home. Even more predictable is the expansive hatred for such an original film by formula horror fans. They’re a tribe of Neanderthals, too obtuse to recognize one of the ballsiest film of the last decade.

The Witch‘s subtitle tells us it’s “A New-England Folktale,” set in the mid-seventeenth century. It opens with family patriarch William (Ralph Ineson) banished from this Puritan paradise for unclear reasons. Like Adam and Eve, William and his wife Katherine (Kate Dickie) are forced to flee to the wilderness, a forest setting that recalls numerous fairy tales. With them are their children, Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), Mercy (Ellie Grainger), Jonas (Lucas Dawson),  Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), and the infant Samuel.

Like most evangelical sects, William’s religion practices a type of anti-ritualism (setting them apart from liturgical competitors); but, as we see from his dialogue with Caleb, a ritualistic anti-ritualism ritualism sets in. Caleb is a willing subscriber.

Along with the rituals comes Puritan oppression, and a superstitious anti-superstition soon rears its horrific head. Thomasin, left in charge of Samuel, entertains him with a game of peekaboo, but on the fourth uncovering of her eyes, Samuel has vanished.

Still from The Witch (2015)Did a scarlet witch abduct Samuel? Or, is Thomasin guilty of witchcraft herself? Initially, each family member professes guilt over the disappearance of Samuel, but true to the tenets of Puritanism, the antagonists—or imagined antagonists—take feminine forms.

In sharp contrast, Caleb, the male child, is his father’s candidate for godly martyrdom. The proof is in the pudding when Caleb’s holy innocence is tested, aroused by Thomasin’s cleavage. Taylor-Joy and Scrimshaw lead a cast that gives stunning performance, restoring our faith in acting.

The film is replete with beautifully horrifying imagery, including a blood-spurting black goat and one of the most unnerving finales in recent memory; straight from bowels of a Goya canvas. Eggers’ sense of period detail, as impressive as it is, is topped by his finding the pulse of the Puritan mindset. The eye of his hurricane is Taylor-Joy who, abandoned by God and family, spans a range in a single film that most actors can’t accomplish in an entire body of work.

It Follows is the second feature effort from director David Robert Mitchell, who impressed with his debut film, The Myth of the American Sleepover (2011). Teen Jay (Maika Monroe) has sex in the back seat of her car with current beau. Since the setting is the horror genre, we all know from the much-quoted Scream (1996) that this means certain death. Sort of.

Many commentators have honed in on the sex and death equation and see It Follows as a parable about STDS. Sort of.  Cool and kinetic, It Follows revels in its paradoxes. When Jay’s boy toy copulates with her, he passes on a stalking demon that can take any form. It’s slow but lethal, and the only way to rid oneself of this shape-shifting ogre is to copulate with someone else before it turns you into beached leg of lamb. Sort of. There’s a catch, of course. If your victim doesn’t pass it on, It will return to Follow you.

and Howard Hawks were mightily offended by Carl Foreman’s script for High Noon (1952), which depicted a narcissistic community refusing to help their neighbors. In response they made Rio Bravo in 1959, then remade it twice. It Follows has it both ways. To prevent her own demise, Jay has to play the narcissist, but she does so reluctantly, and depends on her community of friends for help (parents are out of the question, as it should be).

Still from It Follows (2015)Mitchell chooses his predators smartly, ranging from a child to a naked old man perched on a roof. He clearly has fun pulling from a bag of personality types, embracing the genre tropes, and playing with them like silly putty. References to Val Lewton and ‘s Cat People (1942) abound, along with John Carpenter (including Rich Vreeland’s score) but, like Lewton, Mitchell is not content to merely repeat the past. He’s too progressive for that, and for conservative horror geeks.