Film Review: Under the Silver Lake (2018)

With the unstoppable vortex of images, sounds and patterns, constantly beaming into every single house in the developed world, it wouldn’t be such a stretch to assume that there’s a series of codes and messages buried deep underneath the senseless barrage of advertising, stories and music. Not to go down a eat-the-rich tangent, but with how characterless and palefaces the elite society is, I wouldn’t be surprised that whatever useless secret lay underneath it all is just as empty to them as it is to us. Some of us with an eye for the cryptic are tuned into this frivolous agenda better than us, and after a long, tenuous goose chase, all it leads them to is a boring dead end.

During lockdown, I took it upon myself to try and learn morse code, after 10 minutes I had a headache and quit. This goddamn world is overwhelmed with such a fusillade of symbols and signs already that willingly exposing my eyes to even more is the ocular equivalent of dumping a bowl full of mayonnaise on a plate of chips.

Anyway, long ago did I first watch the trailer for Under the Silver Lake (2018) and I was captured by its story and direction, a bit vague yet interesting. Finally, last night on a slow and quiet Sunday evening did I decide to watch the film. I must say it was pretty damn good, although I did feel like the film was losing me at times, I feel as if it’s an inadvertent reflection of its nature. What on earth do I mean by this? Seeing as though the film follows a disorganised and disillusioned young man who realises that secret messages and codes are all over the place, he follows the invisible trail of symbols and unearths something very close to an escape plan exclusively for the rich, the nature of his adventure comes with dead ends and impossibly complicated puzzles, it seems the pacing and narrative of the film comes to a similar screeching halt every once in a while. If you can put up with that, this film is a goddamn blast, pulling you along his adventure with the same zeal and intrigue for strange conspiracies that any normal person would deem a total waste of time. The main character, Sam, is blinded to all of his responsibilities that border on emergency, so he can pursue this maze of clues to figure out where his next-door neighbour, whom he has fallen for quite hard, has disappeared to. Through the vicarious capacities of cinema, I got to go along with him on this adventure that I wouldn’t ever waste my time on in real life, for the low exchange of 2 hours of my time. I got a pretty good deal because if I haven’t mentioned it before, this piece of film is quite entertaining. Let’s get into that before I go on babbling about how great it is without any real explication.

The eyes through which I was sucked into this chase wander and track through the pristine sunny neighbourhood of Silver Lake and its citizens, watching from close and afar, floating with a quizzical air, holding its gaze over all the little subliminal clues that are dotted around the frame. Visually the film is squeaky clean and beautiful to look at, all the while there’s a peculiar conspiracy flowing under its skin, dealing the films hand in this weird contrast creates these jarring instances of tonal slippage that I loved. The set design paired with sweeping wide-angle shots give the setting a bohemian feel, especially with how strange some of the characters act.

Visually what the film misses out on, the soundtrack more than makes up for it. It feels like one continuous motion of sound with peaks and valleys, accenting every single scene of the film with a sustained aural background of mystery that rises and falls with the dynamic of the action.

I’ve read in certain places, people comparing the tone and feel of the film to Mulholland Drive (2001), and though I can see that in some aspects of the film such as the LA setting and its cryptic vibrations that teeter on the perplexing, but what I think this film is lacking from Lynch’s piece is depth. Where Mulholland Drive is operating in multiple ontological planes with each narrative seeping down a vertical spiral, this film is barrelling down one linear direction, which isn’t necessarily a negative, but when you set it against something like Mulholland Drive, the differences become glaringly clear.

Forget the story and all of its cinematic lucidity, the best scene in the film is when Sam beats a little kid out of shape for keying a penis on the hood of his car. I’m probably going to get mercilessly scrutinised for typing this but kids are fucking nightmares and I hate them, so this scene was a wonderful, definitely the best in the film for me.

I should probably end on that grim note, but doing that would be journalistic suicide so let’s bury that under the conclusion. Though the film lacks the depth that such a far-fetched conspiracy theory should make me fall into, it was a superb experience nonetheless. Go watch it and forget that I said my favourite scene in the film is where a kid gets the shit beaten out of him.