I've never really considered myself much of an outsider. But I am, aren't I? I've always gravitated towards more esoteric media, and even if I'm always excited to share my obscure findings with anyone willing to listen, it does make my taste somewhat hermetic. What really makes me an outsider, though? I would never define myself by the books I read, the movies I watch, the music I listen to. I'm an outsider by nature- autistic and Jewish. No matter what media I consume, there are still a ton of eugenicists out there who would love to get their hands on me. Maybe this fear subconsciously influences my media collection- is all the paranoid content I consume because advocacy groups want to cure me and hate groups want to kill me? I wouldn't know.

I do know that David Robert Mitchell shares at least a portion of the collection with me. I know it from the Brimful of Asha needledrop, I know it from the De Palma riffs, and I definitely know it from the faux-labyrinthine plot- we've been reading the same books. I enjoyed this movie when I first saw it because it panders to me. It plays my music, it watches my movies, it speaks my language. Even then I thought it was indulgent bullshit, but coming off a first watch, it was lovable indulgent bullshit. But it nagged at me. It took me reading Ian Lindsay's magnificent review to figure out why. Let's talk Pynchon for a moment, since everyone else reviewing this seems to. The nominal protagonist of Gravity's Rainbow (a book with 400 named characters to UTSL's... 3, maybe?) is Tyrone Slothrop, a sex fiend who's map of sexual conquests (weirdo!) lines up 1:1 with rockets dropped on wartime London. Pynchon loves patterns. So does Under the Silver Lake's protagonist.

David Robert Mitchell loves Pynchon, but I'm not sure he loves patterns. He clowns relentlessly on those who seek signal in the noise, but he does so in the form of a story where there is, in fact, meaning in chaos. Thus is the contradiction at the heart of Under the Silver Lake. It's a film that makes the people who seek hidden codes look like idiots. It also makes them right. It doesn't go up its own ass as much as it spirals, contradicting itself every step of the way as it tumbles into self-defeating oblivion. It wants to tear down the media it idolizes, but it also wants to be it. It can't do both. It doesn't seem to know that.

I know the protagonist isn't meant to be idolized. At least, I figure. His behavior is poor, no doubt about it. He stinks, beats up children, hates the homeless (despite his imminent eviction), and can't keep his dick in his pants. But then why is he rewarded for it? Why does the camera leer on asses just as much as he does? Why does every new lay come with vital information? Sure, maybe it's meant to be a wish-fulfillment scenario making fun of the kind of guy who thinks he's Tyrone Slothrop, where every orgasm means something, but Mitchell splays outward with his satire, flailing at so many easy targets that any self-critical intent beyond "look how vacuous I am" is entirely lost. Pop culture is devoid of content- we've been saying that for as long as there's been a pop culture (side note- no clue why the songwriter scene is so often singled out as the highlight when it's the most obvious possible expression of the concept). Advertisements manipulate- yeah, that's the job description. Los Angeles is a hypocritical mess with no meaning or order- buddy, I live here, I know. This has nothing to say, and it prides itself on it. Why? What's the point in that other than a smug, self-satisfied sense of cool? There are inklings of good ideas all over the place, but they're all crushed by the sheer breadth of this nonsensical 2:20 turkey.

But we speak the same language! This likes what I like. Why, then, can't I just gain some simple pleasure from that (and the great cinematography, and the delightful score)? Here's the thing: for all of the wild ambition and showboaty filmmaking on display here, there's really not much going on. The scale is small, the resolution simple, the unwrapped ends numerous but performative. Maybe it knows that, maybe it doesn't. I don't care. L.A. is weirder than this. Weird fiction is weirder than this. I like the books Mitchell likes, sure, but those books were subversive, multifaceted, maddeningly massive in scope. What's subversive about this, a straight white dude fucking and stumbling his way through the world's most basic conspiracy in a Los Angeles that could be anywhere? What does David Robert Mitchell get out of these narratives we both seem to love? I want these influences in movies, but when I see Under The Silver Lake, I realize that there's nothing stopping those influences from being grabbed onto by people with nothing of value to say, people who will take what I love and make it about themselves. It reminds me that there are a lot of people like this who like the things I like. It makes me worry I'm one of them. It makes me feel like shit for liking the things I like. And what does it all amount to? A bundle of loose ends that makes fun of anyone who thinks it means anything... and yet there's still a subreddit devoted to cracking the code. There's that contradiction again. Well done, David. You proved your point and made maybe the most nihilistic, self-destructive piece of popular culture I'll see in my lifetime, a tautological nightmare that takes my passions and reflects them back on me as a protagonist I see nothing of myself in, a villain rewarded for his worst traits and criticized for his best. Pop culture is a vacuum indeed- if you need proof, look no further than this 140 minute big empty. For anyone interested in solving the mysteries left under the Silver Lake, I urge you- go outside. Take a walk. The real interesting shit's up top, not in David Robert Mitchell's wet dream.