Genre: Crime/ Drama/ Thriller
Runtime: 105 minutes
Year: 2017
Starring: Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Oscar Isaac, Noah Jupe, Glenn Flesgler, Alex Hassell, Gary Basaraba, Jack Conley
Description: As a 1950s suburban self-destructs, a home invasion has sinister consequences for one seemingly normal family.
I WATCHED THIS MOVIE FOR MY 2020 MOVIE CHALLENGE
WEEK 33: A MOVIE SUGGESTED BY A CO-WORKER
Review: “Suburbicon” took a long way before being released. A first version of the satirical dark crime comedy was already put on paper in 1986 by the Coen brothers, who had just finished their excellent debut “Blood Simple”. Yet the script ended up on hold for a long way. Over the years the brothers occasionally played with the idea of picking up the film again, but in the end it was George Clooney who ended up directing it. The only condition was that Clooney and his regular scriptwriter Grant Heslov were also allowed to bring their own additions to the story. Unfortunately, they didn’t succeed as well.
“Suburbicon” ‘s original starting point begins with a sudden domestic invasion of a seemingly neat American suburb in the 1950s. two robbers hold an average civilian family, consisting of a father, mother, young son and aunt hostage, with a fatal outcome as a result. This is the starting shot for a typical mix of pitch-black comedy and suspense that the Coen brothers have initiated.
It is a pleasant side effect that Clooney, as an actor, has already gained the necessary experience in working with the Coen brothers, and knows how to measure their style without too much effort. This is particularly evident in the dry comedy of the protagonists, from Matt Damon as the controlling housefather Gardner Lodge to a double role by Julianne Moore as an apparently ideal housewife. Cinematographer Robert Elswit also does an excellent job visually, with the old-fashioned film noir elements such as playing with shadows being particularly fun.
So far so good. But it turns out to be only half of the total package. Clooney and Heslov combined the original script of “Suburbicon” with another script they happened to be working on: a story of the African-Amercian Mayers family, who become victims of an incessant series of racist harassment of their white co-inhabitants in the fifties. Initially, this invites them to jokes. The opening scene, for instance, is set up as a typical American commercial for the idyllic suburbs of the time, with a postman whistling his way through a sunny neighborhood full of cheerfully playing children. when he rings the doorbell of the new residents, and the colored Mrs. Mayers opens the door indicating that she is not the servant, but the lady of the house.
That starts with amazement, however, soon ends in much greater wrongs: from constantly making noise or chanting nationalist songs to make the family feel unwanted, to refusing customers in the local supermarket. Mrs. Mayers doesn’t let herself be affected by it and doesn’t give a damn. However, this is where it starts to wring. This story doesn’t quite seem to fit in with the gloomy tone of the rest of Clooney’s film, and moreover, it doesn’t get the full attention with which it should be told. The Mayers family gets little depth and their storyline doesn’t seem to be working towards anything: we’re simply constantly aware in the background of how the family is constantly being taunted, belittled and discriminated against, while they do their utmost to ignore it all.
The idea of combining these two stories is in itself still somewhat understandable. Clooney expresses his direct criticism of the advanced American upper class, who are all too happy to point their finger at population groups with a different skin color as the cause of everything that is wrong with society. But at the same time are blind to all the problems in their own social circle. With the fact that, as a result of all the fuss about the Mayer family in the neighborhood, literally one house over, a completely derailed murder mystery goes unnoticed. The perfect, quiet, and above all family friendly suburb as the residents like to sketch is just a thin layer of appearances over a very dark cesspool of misery.
The social criticism that Clooney wants to address can itself not be faulted. Unfortunately racism remains a sensitive subject to deal with, which turns out to be somewhat unfortunate in this film. Not that humor and satire are by definition the wrong means for this theme, but they should be used in the right way. In the case of “Suburbicon”, the tone of the murder mystery does not match that of the Mayers family. Surely it remains clear that both storylines were only thrown together at a later stage, and suffer from each other’s presence.
“Suburbicon” is by no means a terrible movie. But throwing those two stories together made this movie not as good as it could’ve been.
Rating: 2, 5/ 5
