cinephiles’ love of our favorite art
form while making us feel shitty
about ourselves. Under The Silver
Lake is like Ready Player One, had
it been made by Michael Haneke.
In critiquing fanboys and male
entitlement, Mitchell forces us to
spend two hours and 20 minutes
in the presence of one of the
most unlikeable protagonists of
the sheer power of Wayne’s
clenched fist rage, wondering
what prompted this hatred that
has destroyed his humanity. When
Garfield’s Sam tells us how much
he hates the homeless, we simply
think “What a dick!” and move on
to the next bizarro sequence. It’s
also a little telling that Mitchell
spends so much time portraying
Under the Silver Lake annoyed
the hell out of me, but I’d be lying if
I said I was ever disengaged.
recent years. I get that his film is
essentially Black Orpheus by way
of The Searchers, a story of an
entitled male who descends into
an underworld to rescue a girl
who probably doesn’t want to be
rescued, but Garfield is no John
Wayne. When Wayne’s racist anti-
hero Ethan Edwards tells us how
much he hates Native Americans,
we lean forward, drawn in by
NJ STAGE - ISSUE 58
men as a horrible bunch of
bastards that he neglects to create
and female characters that are
more than one-dimensional.
Under the Silver Lake annoyed
the hell out of me, but I’d be ly-
ing if I said I was ever disengaged.
Mitchell’s filmmaking is at times
exquisite, and his movie con-
tains images that will stick with
me when far better 2019 mov-
INDEX
NEXT ARTICLE
81