The film noir has long been a way for filmmakers to interrogate and expose whatever anxieties are plaguing America at the time. From Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard,looking at the creeping paranoia, and the growing Hollywood industry that can create and break fame at a whim, to Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, taking a more aimless, wandering approach at a time when America itself was wandering through a strange period. Every generation has their definitive noir, and the millennials have Under the Silver Lake, directed by David Robert Mitchell,and starring Andrew Garfield. The film was panned at the time, and a total box office bust, yet its cult status has continued to grow in recent years, into an almost unheralded masterpiece. Why is this? How do Mitchell and Garfield take the genre, continue its legacy, and also leave their own mark on it?
The History of Noir Protagonists
The noir has long been a genre known for its slacker leads. In a way, it pioneered the sort of "alienated young man" films that people like Paul Schrader would come to make a career out of. In Sunset Boulevard, it's failed screenwriter Joe Gillis, who cons his way into a relationship with fading star Norma Desmond and winds up floating face down in a pool for his troubles. In The Long Goodbye, Elliott Gouldportrays a Philip Marlowe out of his time, ambling his way through a Los Angeles racked with a Bohemian lifestyle that seemingly lacks any meaning, while he just tries to find food for his cat.
If these characters were emblematic of the men of the 50s and 70s, then Garfield's Sam is the perfect portrayal of the 2010s man. Sam is someone who has these delusions of grandeur, yet never really tries to do anything, is obsessed with pop culture, and the supposed hidden messages it contains, and spends most of his days watching old movies, drinking beer, and spying on his neighbors. He seems to be terminally stuck in the past, with a Kurt Cobain poster being a defining decoration of his apartment. His conspiracy-addled mind never really progresses into thought beyond the "Paul is Dead" phase, never really making a critique beyond "secret messages from elites." Combine that with the transactional view he has towards women, both objectifying them through an increasingly sexual gaze and mindless sex, and also making them this object of intense meaning that defines all his goals, and you've got a guy that checks all the boxes for a modern man in the worst way possible.
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Yet, the film moves beyond this critique of the millennial slacker, into something much more interesting. A defining theme of a lot of noir films is this intense critique of Hollywood, and Los Angeles in general. Wilder and Altman both engage in it. Altman ending The Long Goodbye with the song "Hooray for Hollywood," and his later film The Player both show how critical of Hollywood these films can be. Mitchell moves in a very similar way. He portrays Los Angeles as this sprawling city with nothing really in it. Full of vapid parties featuring strange, meaningless themes, Los Angeles seems like a city of rich kids partying at the end of history. The Hollywood system seems intensely focused on this exploitation of young women, with many young actresses being trafficked for sex via affiliated escort services. When Sam seemingly grabs onto something meaningful after following the mysterious disappearance of his neighbor, and becomes engulfed in this world of actual conspiracy, murder, and secret forces pulling strings from an unseen place, it collides with his life in a way that is incredibly compelling to watch on screen.
'Under the Silver Lake' and Conspiracy Films
The conspiracy that drives Under the Silver Lake may be the film's most popular trait, with many people attempting to decipher the hidden messages and meanings contained in the film. In many ways, Mitchell almost validates the conspiracies that Sam clings to. In the defining scene of the film, Sam encounters a mysterious, seemingly eternal songwriter, who says that he has in fact, written all of these songs, and there are messages in them, not among the wealthy, but instead subliminally to the consumer. This is a key insight to understanding the film. Mitchell is saying, yes, these shadowy forces are pulling the strings at the fringes, exploiting young women, and even killing people who get close to the truth. However, this is all just to make them money, so they can go and try and transcend life itself as we see at the end of the film. The conspiracy Sam believes in is just a distraction from the real issue at hand here, that the people in charge actually do not have anything to say beyond squeezing as much money possible out of this thing as they can. They exploit these women because it will make them money, and they will use that money to try and escape the crumbling world they have created by any means necessary, like sealing themselves in an underground bunker for the rest of eternity. The obsession over the movements Vanna White makes on Wheel of Fortune is simply a distraction.
In the current moment, conspiracy theories are something that slowly tears away at the fabric of reality. What people fail to see is that conspiracy really comes from the failure to cope with the reality that we live in, because the events and conditions are simply too traumatic to look at without some sort of protection. Sam is living in abject failure, lacking ambition, and is incredibly misogynistic and alienating to those around him, but to acknowledge that and improve himself would be too traumatic, so he clings to these theories. If this sounds familiar, it's because it is.
Under the Silver Lake takes aim at the current feeling of anxiety combined with malaise that plagues many people, and exposes it for the self-fulfilling prophecy that it is. The real issue is being abstracted by these obsessions over culture, and Mitchell captures that brilliantly. It is not surprising that the film failed at the box office. It is a dense, weird, film, filled with all sorts of references, hidden messages, and a performance from Andrew Garfield that is as repellant as it is compelling. Yet, the reputation of the film continues to grow, seemingly as things get worse and worse in the real world. A perfect noir for our times, Under the Silver Lake is aging beautifully, and more than worth your time watching, and all the time it will occupy in your mind after you finish it.
