What Classics Did You See Last Week, Oct 15 to Oct 21
Oct 22, 2023 5:04:27 GMT
petrolino and timshelboy like this
Post by Fox in the Snow on Oct 22, 2023 5:04:27 GMT
Weekly Viewings :
'Under The Silver Lake' (2018 - David Robert Mitchell)
Here's a startling admission that actually depresses me. The last film I saw in a cinema that I outright loved was almost a decade ago. I've been to a few blockbusters since then, but generally feel my days of cinemagoing are over as I don't like multiplexes and the cinemas local to me are ridiculously expensive. The film I loved was 'It Follows' (2014), directed by David Robert Mitchell, which really struck a chord. It was a supernatural horror movie shot in both suburban enclaves and condemned neighbourhoods in Detroit, Michigan which created a striking polarity, it utilised a visual technique borrowed from adaptations of Minnesotan cartoonist Charles Schulz's work in which adults were carefully reframed out of the picture (a la Edgar Degas), it was shot by the talented cinematographer Mike Gioulakis and it created an audio-visual landscape fuelled by dream logic. For me, it was a low budget gem, one which I greatly enjoy to this day.
I'd wondered what happened to director David Robert Mitchell from time to time, and now I know. He stepped away and developed the ambitious neo-noir 'Under The Silver Lake' (2018). Now this is a tougher sell as film noir is the enemy of youth, a subgenre typically built on the stories of jaded cynics. Rian Johnson found a novel way to counter this with 'Brick' (2005) but I did not like the film. Mitchell's approach is to fully embrace surrealism and I'd say it produces mixed results.
I enjoyed 'Under The Silver Lake' as a shaggy dog story. It's beautifully filmed, and as with Damien Chazelle's 'Babylon' (2022), it shows a genuinely gifted film stylist probing cinema's past. Robert Altman perfected the shaggy dog neo-noir and it's a place I like to be, but Mitchell's mis-step for me is that 'Under The Silver Lake' goes from being a labour of love to being too long and too indulgent. It also lacks bite.
So, this isn't a movie I'd include on any lists of favourites, but I enjoyed it and would immerse myself within this world again, I just hope David Robert Mitchell has more fuel in the tank. He's talented and it'd be sad to see his career go the way of Richard Kelly, an "insanely creative" director as Kevin Smith so rightly puts it, but one who struggles to get a gig.
# Classic movie lovers will hopefully enjoy seeing the roles of Janet Gaynor and Marilyn Monroe carefully positioned within the "plot" of 'Under The Silver Lake'.
