David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake
There are East Coast haunts, and there are West Coast haunts. On the East Coast, there are secret societies from days of old: Free Masons or Skull and Bones. We had the witch trials, the lost Roanoke colony, plantations, and the Amityville horror, and are still home to Ellis Island’s abandoned infirmary and crypts and cathedrals dating back to the 17th century. East Coast haunts are very grounded, though. They fit in with the mythological story of the birth of America. They have to do with pilgrims, religious fanaticism, immigrants, Native Americans, the enslaved, and societies of the ultra-wealthy. The west coast breeds a different kind of haunting.
Movies like Nightcrawler, Drive, Mulholland Drive, the recent Perry Mason redo, and, of course, Under The Silver Lake touch on LA’s terrifying underbelly. Are Erewhon green juices and bone broths not some harbinger of Witchery in the modern world? Or the fact that a thriving metropolis survives despite persistent drought at the mercy of a water system so complex Joan Didion herself wrote an essay on it? The metaphor of cinema describes Los Angeles best. I think often of film motifs in that city. The occident is an idea, the frontier, the Wild West. But in practice, it’s gild. A camera panning out on a shot until it reveals the backdrop being rolled away across the lot. It’s constructed, it’s false, it’s vulgar and noir.
Tinsel town glimmers on, despite the hungry mouths of the uncounted homeless, pushing carts along wide, sun-bleached boulevards where yellowed newspaper coupon sections blow in eddies over the shit-like droppings from the palm trees overhead. For a city with a curfew and no pedestrians, with the isolation of personal vehicle transport, LA brews something sinister beneath its glossy veneer.
Under the Silver Lake taps into this reservoir (pun intended), and leeches it out like a bad trip at Joshua Tree. Under the Silver Lake follows the story of Sam (played by Andrew Garfield), a young man who becomes obsessed with unraveling a mysterious conspiracy in Los Angeles after his neighbor, Sarah (Riley Keough), disappears. As Sam delves deeper into the city's secrets, he encounters a series of bizarre and surreal events that lead him on a cryptic journey of Los Angeles down the rabbit hole.
The entertainment business has always retained an air of the occult. America’s star-crossed and hungry crawl out from small towns and show up at its doorstep to eke out an existence and make a name for themselves. The sacrifices involved, expensive agent fees, weight loss rituals, plastic surgery, name changes, and living with roommates late into your thirties are their own forms of spells, potions, and sacrificial virgins. The industry also prays on those with a touch of narcissism. Perhaps A24’s recent horror breakaway character, Pearl, exemplifies this best with her bloodcurdling scream, “But I’m a STAR! PLEASE, I’M A STAR!”
Those who want to be initiated want to feel special. Or they need to believe that they’re special, to feel like Hollywood will reveal itself to them. They think they love film more, connect with music better, and understand the messages more than the next guy, and they really believe that. Andrew Garfield’s portrayal of Sam, a greasy loner who lies to his mom, spies on women, and still err “uses” Playboy, has an apartment plastered with memorabilia. He sleeps under a Kurt Cobain poster that he brags is signed by Francis Bean, his living room is rife with classic film posters, and he still has a VCR, goddamn it! Despite his declining mental health, poor decisions, and mounting schizophrenic mania, the film draws the viewer into Sam’s psyche. We begin to search for signs and symbols; it feels like Hollywood is speaking to us! Did you catch the headstones of Hitchcock and Wells? Did you recognize that part of the reservoir or that artsy cafe in Silver Lake? You want to turn to the person next to you and say, “Hey! I’ve been there!” As if that makes you important, as if you connect to the film better, you understand more, you’re going to have the secret of it all revealed to *you* because you’re special, and oop there you go, you’re right where the director wants you. In his pocket.
The movie was long, too long, but it was effective for wearing the viewer thin by the end. I felt as disheveled as Garfield and as if I, too, had been taken down the rabbit hole of LA weirdness. In my initial Letterboxd review, I said, “I want my brain back from before I watched this movie.” This is also what I said upon my first view of Blue Velvet, which has gone on to become one of my favorites. These movies both tap into psychedelic horror, something that really crawls under the skin. Though a bit sloppy, with untied ends or meanings that sometimes get lost, some messages within the movie are crystal clear.
Perhaps one of the most memorable sequences is that of the Songwriter, or “the piano scene.” A man who looks older than time itself sits among his treasures in a mysterious home full of objects belonging to the rock gods. Perched at the piano, he plays through generation-defining hits, saying he’s penned every. single. one. As the Songwriter plays Smells Like Teen Spirit, Sam breaks. The Songwriter says to him, while never lifting a finger from the keys,
“I wrote most of the music your dad grew up on, half of what you sang along to as a kid, and I'm still doin' it. . . These teenagers are dancing to my music. . . That’s pop culture, isn’t it? It floats away like tissue paper, and I blow my nose. . . I don't care what's fashionable or cool. It's all silly and meaningless. I've created so many of the things that you care about... the songs that give your life purpose and joy. . . When you were fifteen and rebelling... you did that to my music. . . The real message was never intended for you. It's better if you just smile and dance. Enjoy the melody. . . Your art, your writing, your culture is the shell of other men’s ambition. Ambitions beyond what you will ever understand. . .”
This is the point of no return. It left me, an utter worshipper of the arts, dumbfounded and empty. I don’t believe its message to be true, but if it were, that would be my worst nightmare realized. That every artist, musician, poet, and author was a lie, and the media I built my life, personality, and obsessions around are false prophets. This scene is particularly effective in this film because it is so meta. A film like this, from a studio with a cultish following, about a self-important hipster neighborhood where everyone is “so unique”, set in the city of stars, starring the granddaughter of Elvis, slapped its audience across the face with this sequence.
The message here was, “Do not become Sam.” Do not search too deep for meaning so that when you find it all is lost and empty. Enjoy the mystery and know that some things are not meant for you. Remain curious and remain interested, but do not seek what you shouldn’t know, and don’t project your fantasies onto others. The classic, “Don’t meet your heroes.”
In its exploration of the dark undercurrents beneath the glitz of Hollywood and the allure of its mysteries, 'Under the Silver Lake' serves as a cautionary tale. It reminds us of the danger of losing oneself in the pursuit of hidden meanings and the obsession with being 'special.' Through Sam's journey, the film warns against the pitfalls of projecting our fantasies onto the world around us and the artists we admire. Perhaps, in the end, it's best to embrace the mystery, enjoy the art for what it is, and resist the urge to unravel every enigma, lest we find ourselves lost in a labyrinth of our own making.
