Silver Lake is Missing

Under the Silver Lake (2019) is a clever little indie by director David Robert Mitchell (It Follows) with maybe less going on than you might think.

It stars Andrew Garfield as an LA layabout. We first meet him on the balcony of his apartment, checking out the topless lady across the way through binoculars, while talking to his mother on the phone. He assures her that work is going great, but his landlord is giving him 3 days to pay the rent or get kicked out.

Garfield notices an interesting young woman with a little pocket dog and goes over to meet the dog - and her. They watch How to Marry a Millionaire and make out. Her roommates, two women and a guy dressed like a pirate, come home, and she invites him to come back the next day. When he does, she is gone and the place is cleaned out.

That’s the set up - the rest of the movie will be a Pynchonesque search for her. Pynchonesque, because his search leads through the scenes and urban legends of LA. There are signs and portents of a Dog Killer - She had a dog! An underground ‘zine tells of the legend of the Dog Killer, and of the Owl Woman, a deadly assassin who hunts nude in an owl mask. The guy who wrote the ‘zine believes that the secrets are in a map (of LA) on the back of a rare cereal box. A billionaire has gone missing, along with three women (maybe one of them is her!). The punk band Jesus and the Brides of Dracula may know something, or maybe the three performance artists who hang out with them do. And why are there so many skunks in Silver Lake?

The paranoia, mystery, specific sense of place and wildly inventive conspiracies make it so Pynchonesque (I just like that word), but I feel like Pynchon has something behind all the mysteries. I may have missed something (OK, I know I missed a lot), but I feel like there wasn’t really anything here. I guess the director, transplanted from Detroit to LA, wanted to make a movie about how weird it is, but maybe couldn’t get at the heart. Or, this is just a fun silly conspiracy movie. It is at least that.