Under the Shoplifters' Vice
What else am I doing with my life?
There is something despicably satisfying about enjoying a piece of culture that someone else finds repulsive. Not so much in regard to the quality of the work, but more in terms of the feeling of exclusivity and self-satisfaction that comes hand in hand with taste politics. It feels good to experience a work though a medium (art, music, film, etc.) that feels tailor-made for us. Sometimes the fulfillment that comes from being on the positive side of a polarizing subject, the idea of looking down on those who are not as “informed”, is an emotion that transcends into a spiritual, elitist realm.
Under the Silver Lake features Sam, a disheveled and highly unlikable version of Andrew Garfield feverishly carving out his makeshift (not manifest) destiny— a self-constructed importance to find a girl after she disappears. Why? Because he's not doing anything else with his life.
The film takes the form of an Angeleno find-the-girl neo-noir, and boy, does our protagonist know it. Like a real sleuth, he wears sunglasses while following people. Like a private investigator, he jots down clues. All girls are Bond girls, and everything is evidence. Too cool to even raise his arms to run, Sam waddles his lanky body across LA landmarks, propelled forward by procrastination (not like there's rent to pay or anything).
When things really start kicking in during his quest, we are presented with two kinds of lifestyles: Conspiracy and Ignorance. The former is a world that Sam spends much of the film in, chasing ideas that he creates— always staying busy, never staying productive. The world of ignorance, on the other hand would, in any other movie, be called the “real world”. It is a world where Sam doesn’t have a job; where he needs to pay his rent; where his mom is constantly calling him. A world where missing girls remain missing, and hidden messages remain hidden.
Would you rather participate in adventure for adventure’s sake, or would you rather be society's blind and blissful participant? This is the choice that the movie gives both its protagonist and its audience. From early reviews, it seems like many are opting out of conspiracy. That is perfectly reasonable. We like our movies soundproof; We want them to make sense. This not a film for watchers. It is a film for seekers who have the desire and, most importantly, time for pretension. And honestly, most people are not in the position to do that. Many WANT to pay rent, WANT to get jobs, WANT to know our mothers are somewhere existing in the world. To me, that's understandable but not, how do you say it... fun.
Ending in a fashion that is aggravatingly fitting for the film that came before it, Under the Silver Lake acts a double, triple, quadruple, nth-uple agent constantly shifting its agenda. It feels like its trying to be smart. This would be a critique in any other movie, but in this one, it only adds to the experience. The film tackles the idea of ambition and drive in a way that I haven’t really seen before. It is so disingenuous and so frigid in its convictions that, whether you like it or hate it, you will feel the chill.
The labyrinth within Under the Silver Lake is optional— and I’m just curious enough to tumble into its rabbit hole. I mean… what else am I doing with my life?
The Roles We Play
In this latest installment of merry misfit masterpiece theater, we are treated to Hirokazu Kore-eda’s pseudo-familial lullaby, Shoplifters. And much like the title implies, we indeed follow a group of petty thieves that operate as, you guessed it, a family. Although its premise warrants a Sarah McLachlan soundtrack, Kore-eda’s latest depiction of family drama is vastly more nuanced and combative than standard fan-dram fare.
For a movie about criminals who act as family (a LITERAL family, and not a Fast and the Furious family metaphor), I find it interesting that all characters are equally weighted regardless of their “rank” in the family household whether it be dad, mom, sister, brother, or grandma. I watched six separate storylines converge and diverge with each other like a broken DNA helix. No one felt more important or more powerful, and no one really wanted to be. Each character acted with his/her own agency refreshingly independent from the standard singular protagonist/household power dynamic feedback loop we get from films about family.
Its funny that many of reviews of the film are heavily surrounded on the family aspect and communality, when at the end of the day, Shoplifters, although centered around a group, is almost more concerned with the roles that individuals play within a family (father, mother, sister, brother, grandmother). Not only do the characters refer to themselves as these parts, but they have constructed social roles for them to perform to each other.
According to the film, you don’t have to be related to be a family, but you still need to play out the roles of the individuals within a family. Its very strange and particular to this film, and I haven’t seen any other “choose-your-own-family” dramas to be done in quite a deconstructive way. The film’s definition of family may be broad and all inclusive, but the opposite is also true: Specialization is what defines a family. It may not matter who plays the role of father, mother, brother, sister, or grandma, but someone has take on the label. After all, its what makes a family.
And although these characters can technically never attain the labels they so truly desire with the people they are closest to, there is one label that serves as common denominator: Shoplifters.
Characters In Search of a Story
The United States that Vice presents us with is populated by strong characters in search of a story. There is a compelling narrative somewhere in here, but it feels unstable, ready to not tumble, but melt into a puddle at any moment. I’m not really sure why this is the case, considering the vast amount of material that the movie spoon-feeds you— and, my god, is it a feeding.
In a story spanning a massive 50 years, times and dates in typewriter font, obligatory McKay 4th wall breaks, and even an unabashed Shakespeare soliloquy, are sloppily pasted together with Jesse Plemmon’s constant voiceover— a touch-and-go lecture on US History, Government, and Dick Cheney 101. It’s interesting, but interesting can only go on for so long. The film runs thick yet somehow manages to contain very little narrative substance. Vice is an vast ocean of meringue, never quite solidifying into something robust and flavorful.
That is not to say that meringue alone is never delicious. Though the film is a lot to swallow, its key players feel weighted and fully realized. The line separating parody from embodiment is a fine one, especially in terms of the mockery of politicians and world leaders that so violently bursts through screen after screen. In my opinion, Bale is so captivating that I forgot that the man on screen was not in fact Dick Cheney (and I didn’t even have a gauge of how Cheney-isms should be). And, when I did remember that there was an actor playing the Cheney on screen, I forgot that the actor was Christian Bale. I sat there and thought to myself, “Wow! That old fat guy is great!” The rest of the performances, Adams, Carell, and Rockwell (kind of) make up the squad of titans, acting as pillars holding up an unstable story about an unstable world. It’s clear however, that the burden falls on the shoulders of Batman himself.
From the choices made in piecing together Dick Cheney’s Machiavellian enterprise, Vice believes itself to be provocative. For its efforts, I will give it credit. One could argue that the shakiness of its narrative reflects the shakiness and instability of the time period at which the film is set, but let’s call a mistake a mistake. Unfortunately, the quality of Bale and his crew do not relate to the quality of the boat on which they sail. Captains are only as strong as their ships.