Summary:
A directionless young man living in LA meets a girl whom then mysteriously vanishes overnight, prompting him to embark on a quest to find her. As he quests, he finds himself wrapped up in a bizarre conspiracy.
My Thoughts:
I feel like anyone who follows cinema culture closely probably knows a little bit about the weird trip this movie went through before its release. This film is David Robert Mitchell’s follow up to “It Follows”, a movie that we at TMM frequently tout as one of the smarter horror films to come out in the last decade. As I am a huge horror fanatic, you could probably surmise that I was pretty excited for this film. I remember first seeing the trailer months ago, and getting even more excited… but then, this film sort of fell by the wayside. It received middling reviews at Cannes, and then it was kicked around movie-purgatory for the better part of a year, before finally just getting dumped on demand. My want to see this movie had greatly diminished, and, were it not for a recommendation from a cinephile friend whose taste in film is nigh impeccable, I probably would’ve been content to let this fade into the past unseen. What a travesty that would’ve been.
I’m sure this film will only appeal to a narrow audience. Why? This movie is freaking weird; it’s aimed at people who like to pick apart movies and discuss deeper themes. I wouldn’t be surprised if everyday moviegoers- the kind that visit the cinemas twice yearly for a Marvel movie fixes- would not only be confused by this film, but they’d probably be bored and, quite possibly, irritated by what they see. This isn’t a simple black-and-white-good-vs-evil story where we watch “Ant-Man” fight a bunch of baddies; this is a movie that takes place in a world comprised of countless shades of grey. You need to be willing to think, and also, you need to be able to accept things the way they are in this world; don’t fight it, or you’re going to have a bad time. Some things wont make sense, but that’s part of the charm of the world. I’m sure this film is more densely packed with messages than I could find in a half dozen viewings; it’s inevitable that the first time through I’ll miss a few.
I personally loved sinking into the world “Under the Silver Lake”, but I know it will be quite polarizing.
“Welcome to Purgatory.”
Sam (Andrew Garfield, “Silence”) is a young man living in LA whose life seems utterly devoid of meaning. He spends his time smoking cigarettes on the porch, spying on his middle aged neighbor (whom likes to feed her bird on her balcony while topless), and occasionally having meaningless sex with an unnamed struggling Actress (Riki Lindhome, forthcoming “Knives Out”). He meets a mysterious but intriguing girl named Sarah (Riley Keough, “The House that Jack Built”), who then mysteriously vanishes overnight. Sam becomes convinced that she was caught up in a conspiratorial web. As Sam uncovers more and more secrets he wonders if he’ll ever find an answer to his questions.
So first and foremost, let’s get my only qualms out of the way. Some of the special effects and sets looked a little cheaper than the rest of the film. I realize that this movie, though it stars an A-list actor, was made for a relatively small budget ($8.5 Million- that might seem like a lot, but compare that to “Avengers: Endgame” with a budget of $356 Million). The concept is quite heady, and there’s a ton that goes into this film, so honestly I’m not too surprised that a few of the effects and sets looked a little chintzier, but it always bugs me when quality isn’t consistent. Again, that’s not a huge qualm; it has no overall effect on the overall story or the feeling it evokes; it simply is a comment on the technical elements, and those small details should not be enough to deter someone from watching this. My issues with the film were enough to bump this down from a perfect score to an almost perfect score. It’s still a pretty great movie.
Now lets get into the thing that I like most about this film: the overall complexity of the story and the themes that the story comments on. I’ll try my best to avoid giving away many spoilers near the top, as I think this is a film that benefits from knowing little about it (spoilers do follow towards the end). In a way, this movie was a very Lynchian (specifically “Mulholland Drive”) odyssey with notes of Gilliam (specifically “The Fisher King”). This film also reminded me greatly of a slew of other films I’ve seen lately, like “Sorry to Bother You”, “Us”, Mike Leigh’s “Naked”, and it even reminded me a bit of the “Suspiria” remake. All of those films wade into surrealism, and I personally love surrealist cinema. These films address issues and themes in a way that makes them open to multiple interpretations, and that really adds to their rewatchability.
This movie in particular has a few storylines and all of them seem to weave together into a conspiracy that doesn’t make a ton of sense if you think about it logically, but thematically, it works on almost every level. This film works as a scathing indictment of Hollywood and Hollywood culture; it works as an indictment of toxic masculinity and objectification of women; but it also works as the story of a struggling artist having a mental breakdown. In truth, I’m sure there are other ways to interpret this film too; I’m already eager to go back and rewatch it, because I know I’ll catch more the second time through.
I think one of my favorite scenes is when Sam meets “The Songwriter”. And from here on out I will through a little spoiler warning, just because I want to discuss the themes a little more in depth.
When Sam gets to the Songwriter, it is revealed that a single man has written all of the popular music and had a hand in all popular culture since the beginning of time. Sam asks what the hidden messages in the songs mean, and the Songwriter starts talking about how every song has hidden messages, but in the end it’s all meaningless. All that people look up to and idolize- all of the art: movies, music, paintings- all of it- is all meant to make money, and glorify the creator. But, the Songwriter cautions, to what end? We all end up in the ground. What purpose does it serve glorifying people like Kurt Cobain or Janet Gaynor? Do they get some kind of special death? No. We’re all the same; we all have the same value on the other side of the dirt, despite what Hollywood tries to proclaim.
This kind of look at life- that whatever we work towards and whatever we achieve is meaningless, and ultimately just a way to make money- is pretty pessimistic, and here is where I picked up on notes of Mike Leigh’s “Naked”. It seems David Robert Mitchell is trying to get us to take a step back from the mania of our daily lives, and understand that the whole system is just a rigged social construct, and in the end, none of this really matters.
I feel like Mitchell gets his themes across, and those themes work on a completely separate level while the real story (as in, what is actually happening to Sam) is hidden beneath the craziness. Again, there’s so much going on in this movie that it’s really up to the viewer’s interpretation.
Here’s my theory: Throughout the film we get references to the Dog Killer (in fact, in the first shot, “Dog Killer” is spelled backwards on a window). The Dog Killer is going around LA going around killing people’s dogs, but we don’t know why. That storyline never really comes into play, but it does keep getting mentioned. My theory is that Sam is named Sam in reference to the Son of Sam killer, who thought that his neighbor’s dog was telling him to kill people. Sam is probably the Dog Killer, though he doesn’t fully know it because he’s having a full on mental breakdown. Most of the stuff that we see in this film could be explained by paranoid schizophrenia, and I think that we can even pinpoint the moment that broke Sam: when his girlfriend broke up with him. After his GF breaks up with him, she gets a billboard and in a sense, she has made it to the world that Sam wants to be in. The billboard proclaims that she has a sense of purpose now that she has succeeded. “I can see clearly now”, the billboard says. I think Sam snaps seeing that his ex-GF made it while he didn’t. Because he believes, so strongly, that he was meant for something (“That’s basic narcissism 101,” says Sam’s friend (Topher Grace (“Blackkklansman”)), he tries desperately to make connections where there aren’t any, further digging himself into his world of delusions. But at the end, when he uncovers the conspiracy, he gets a sense of closure in knowing that all of Hollywood is a lie, and he seems to recover a bit from his breakdown, and simultaneously recover a bit from his break up.
Do I know for certain that my theory here is correct? Of course not. In fact, I’d be happy if I was completely wrong in my analysis. This is the kind of film that, because it has so much craziness, it can be interpreted so many ways; after one viewing, that’s what I got, but I know I’ll be back to this movie again. My second viewing my completely change my perception.
Verdict:
I absolutely recommend this film. I think its one of the smarter genre-defying films I’ve seen in the past few years, and I honestly can’t wait to see what comes next for David Robert Mitchell. Both this film and “It Follows” really impressed me.
Review Written By: