The Polanski Connection
I rewatched Polanski’s The Tenant a few days ago, and two scenes automatically made me think of Under the Silver Lake. I’m convinced Mitchell was deliberately referencing them.
The first is probably the more obvious one. The main character encounters what appears to be a homeless man who asks him for money. Unlike Sam, he actually gives him some, and it’s the girl he's with who tells him that he shouldn’t have. Still, especially because of the surroundings the two are walking through in this scene, the moment in Under the Silver Lake at Silver Lake, where the homeless man asks Sam for money, and then him and Millicent have a conversation about it, seems to me like a reference to this scene.
In the other scene, our protagonist – completely out of nowhere and for no apparent reason – suddenly slaps a small child (who he doesn't know!) who had been screaming. So that reminded me of Sam hitting those children. It’s worth knowing that Trelkovsky clearly seems to be suffering from some form of schizophrenia or another mental illness. The film is essentially about him moving into a rather shabby apartment in Paris and gradually losing his mind.
aken together with Under the Silver Lake, this gives us yet another reason to suspect that Sam is the Dog Killer I think. God, I love this film.