The film noir has long been a way for filmmakers to interrogate and expose whatever anxieties are plaguing America at the time.
From Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, looking at the creeping paranoia, and the growing Hollywood industry that can create and break fame at a whim, to Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, taking a more aimless, wandering approach at a time when America itself was wandering through a strange period.
Every generation has their definitive noir, and the millennials have Under the Silver Lake, directed by David Robert Mitchell, and starring Andrew Garfield.
The film was panned at the time, and a total box office bust, yet its cult status has continued to grow in recent years, into an almost unheralded masterpiece.
Why is this? How do Mitchell and Garfield take the genre, continue its legacy, and also leave their own mark on it?…
Read full article