Suburbicon (2017)
INTERNATIONAL TRAILER
A home invasion rattles a quiet family town.
Director:
George ClooneyStars:
In the bosom of Suburbicon, a family-centred, all-white utopia of
manicured lawns and friendly locals, a simmering tension is brewing, as
the first African-American family moves in the idyllic community, in the
hot summer of 1959. However, as the patriarch Gardner Lodge and his
family start catching a few disturbing glimpses of the once welcoming
neighbourhood's dark underbelly, acts of unprecedented violence paired
with a gruesome death will inevitably blemish Suburbicon's
picture-perfect facade. Who would have thought that darkness resides
even in Paradise?
Language:
EnglishRelease Date:
27 October 2017 (USA) See more »Also Known As:
Субурбикон See more »Box Office
Opening Weekend:
AUD 372,446 (Australia) (29 October 2017)Company Credits
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Sound Mix:
Dolby DigitalColor:
ColorAspect Ratio:
2.35 : 1
See full technical specs »
Edit
Did You Know?
Trivia
Woody Harrelson dropped out due to scheduling conflicts.Goofs
The tape on Gardner's glasses changes.Connections
Referenced in Midnight Screenings: Tulip Fever (2017)
It’s tempting to criticize George Clooney’s
“Suburbicon” as two films that never quite coalesce into one complete
whole, which is partially true. But that might give the impression that
either film works on their own, which is false. This startling misfire
is a tonal disaster from start to finish, whether residing in the dark
comedy that retains echoes of the Coen brothers’ original script or in
the more earnestly inspirational true story of a black family who gets
run out of white America. Other than when the movie appears to levitate
for a brief period while Oscar Isaac
is on-screen, the dull “Suburbicon” lacks in witty dialogue,
interesting characters, or even visual flourishes. It is as flat as the
well-manicured lawns in the idyllic neighborhood that gives it a name.
Two stories compete for screen time but never really intertwine in the script by George Clooney and Grant Heslov, who developed a script also still-credited to Joel Coen and Ethan Coen,
so we’ll tackle them separately. In the one that’s likely to remind
people of recent events in Charlottesville and elsewhere, a black family
moves into the until-then-white Suburbicon, and instantly faces
backlash. Based on the true story of what happened to William (Leith M. Burke) and Daisy Meyers (Karimah Westbrook)
in Levittown in August 1957, this half of the movie feels like
underdeveloped manipulation. We never get to know William at all—I’m not
sure he even has a line—but we see Daisy being told milk costs $20 at
the local store and the whole family getting harassed by mobs outside
their home every night. The mobs get louder and more violent as the film
progresses to the tragic inevitable.
While the Meyers’ family
is being targeted merely for the color of their skin, a different kind
of evil is going down in the white house next door. And one has to
assume this is Clooney’s point—that murderous white people are getting
away with it while communities are blinded by racist anger—even if that
doesn’t seem like enough on which to really thematically hang a film.
While the Meyers just want to live the lives promised them in the
Suburbicon brochure, Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon) is having his family torn apart. One average night, two men (Glenn Fleshler and Alex Hassell) break into the Lodge house and chloroform the whole family, including Gardner’s wife (Julianne Moore) and son Nicky (Noah Jupe).
Mrs. Lodge dies but is quickly replaced in the family unit by her twin
sister Margaret (also Julianne Moore, of course). Nicky suspects
something strange is going on here, the killers come by Gardner’s office
with demands, and Oscar Isaac shows up after about an hour as a
suspicious insurance investigator.
The dividing line between the
Coen film and the Clooney/Heslov film is crystal clear, and one can see
the foundation of a black noir Coen comedy with a sense of humor not
unlike “Fargo” and “Burn After Reading.”
That kind of comedy is tough to pull off tonally and Clooney the
director doesn’t have the rhythm to do so. “Suburbicon” is shockingly
unfunny, mostly due to the leaden, shapeless direction of it all but
also performances from Damon and Moore that never seem to settle on a
tone or character. They’re lifeless. Maybe purposefully? As a commentary
on dull white middle America? That’s possible, but not entertaining in
any way. Only Isaac (and Fleshler a little bit) have any energy. It
feels like he just came from the set of a better, funnier, more
interesting movie.
Part of the tonal problem here is one of deeply unlikable
characters, something that the Coens excel at but other directors, even
collaborators of theirs, have difficulty managing. Gardner Lodge isn’t a
memorable anti-hero—he’s kind of just a loathsome creep. Almost as if
they recognize that, Clooney & Heslov try to tell the story through
the eyes of Nicky, but that shift doesn’t quite work either. This is the
story of a kid learning his parents aren’t perfect and all of
his neighbors are violent racists. Without any humor or interesting
characters to keep the film entertaining, that’s a tough premise for a
movie. And it’s tonally impossible to balance. It makes “Suburbicon” a
comedy with almost no laughs and a drama with no depth.
The movie even starts to grate aesthetically with an overdone score by Alexandre Desplat
and design elements that fetishize ‘50s America in an incomplete way,
stranding the movie between parody and realism. Even the great Robert Elswit’s
work here feels uninspired. Of course, it all comes back to the flaws
of a director unable to figure out what story he’s trying to convey or
an intriguing way to tell it. “Suburbicon” doesn’t so much tell two
stories that never coalesce into one—it doesn’t tell any interesting
story at all.
FINAL RATING: 3/10 FOR THE GENRE AND 1.5/10 OVERALL. What a waist of the ability of actors.
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
0 comments:
Post a Comment