Under the Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell, 2018) (Patreon)

David Robert Mitchell is not an intuitive filmmaker, but that is no vice in itself. It Follows demonstrated that, if he had a single strong idea, he could track it to its logical conclusion. But that single guiding idea is what he lacks in Under the Silver Lake, a film that, whatever one may think of it, carries the pungent aroma of great ambition. 

Another way of putting it is, there's good sprawl and bad sprawl. Bad sprawl tends to liquify into a kind of gelatinous ooze. There are so many finer examples of this kind of picture -- Mulholland Dr., Inherent Vice, I ❤️ Huckabees, even Southland Tales for god's sake -- that there should have been some clues along the way that this just wasn't working out. But mileage will always vary, and I'm sure this will become a cult favorite among a select few who believe they can see what the rest of us are too brainwashed by the Man to suss out.

Andrew Garfield's "character" is little more than a randy audience substitute, a kind of human camera who radiates mundanity. That's us, you see. We are supposed to be both dazzled by the funky intrigue that Riley Keough's MPDG represents, and frustrated when it's taken away. So we follow Garfield on a kind of pseudo-Rivettian penis-quest that leads to a proposition: the world is filled with signs and wonders, but only for those in the know. Like a downmarket Bill Harford from Eyes Wide Shut, Garfield sleuths his way into the upper echelons of bizarre rich-people shit. The codes come together, everything has a purpose, and we are all largely controlled from the top down.

Granted, I would dislike this proposition, even if it were handled skillfully. I hate to see paranoia justified, because it lets us off the hook. If there's no free will, then fuck it, we didn't start the fire, let's party like it's 1999, with the lights out it's less dangerous. But Mitchell wants to have it both ways. The culminating revelation of UtSL is an intellectual detumescence, a giant shrug. If some people are willing followers, who are we to stop them, and besides, you hardly know me, what do you care... It's a colossal copout, one that is presented as an ironic, self-abnegating gesture of radicality. The final shot seems to hark back to Altman's The Long Goodbye, Garfield's investigator brought back to where Philip Marlowe began. A nihilistic reversal, a backwards quest.

So Under the Silver Lake blows itself up, but does it blow up in a funny shape?

Not unless round is funny.