Under the Silver Lake

This is a 2018 movie, written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, and starring Andrew Garfield.  My quick take: interesting but unsatisfying.  It’s certainly not for everyone.  There’s a lot of assorted weirdness in the movie that many will find hard to sit through.

In its visual style and surrealism, it’s inspired by David Lynch.  In its trippiness and stoned outlook of the lead character, it reminded me of Inherent Vice.  Those references are also a good way of assessing whether one will like the movie or not.  Anyone who enjoyed Blue Velvet or Mulholland Drive, for instance, is more likely to feel at home here.  Anyone who didn’t, will have a tough time appreciating this movie.

Nevertheless, as someone who liked Inherent Vice and loved Mulholland Drive, I still had issues with this movie.  It is a gorgeous looking movie that I found very watchable.  My disconnect was with the way in which the narrative married the real with the surreal.

Here’s a link to the trailer.