I have come to realize what
many of my friends and relatives have known for years – I’m not the
smartest guy in the world. Over the course of my lifetime, more than a
few truly stupid things have come out of my mouth, and I’m sure there
have been more than a few times when I have committed some sort of faux
pas that has caused my family and friends embarrassment and forced them
to consider disassociating with me permanently.
All of this went through my mind while watching George Clooney’s Suburbicon as
I tried in vain to piece together what this movie was all about. I
couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the parallel story lines had
to do with each other. Surely Clooney, working from a script by the
Coen Brothers, had an ace up his sleeve that would tie it all together
and make me feel like a dullard for not making the connection myself.
These three are very smart; surely they know more than I do about the
filmmaking process and would provide the Rosetta Stone that would lead
me to enlightenment where Suburbicon was concerned, wouldn’t they?
As it turns out, no such instrument exists.
Clooney’s
sixth film as a director is a wellintentioned but seriously flawed
cat-dog of a movie, one in which a storyline intended to examine a
true-life incident of racism was grafted upon a sharp-edged satire of
film noirs and the hypocrisy of suburban living. The trains do not meet
here, as both tales continue on separate tracks with only the occasional
intersection, producing nothing more than confusion, frustration and,
finally, apathy in the viewer.
Matt
Damon is Gardner, an anonymous corporate manager whose family falls
victim to a home invasion that leaves his crippled wife (Julianne Moore)
dead and his son (Noah Jupe)
traumatized. Hoping to aid in their recovery, Gardner’s sister-inlaw
Rose (Moore also) moves in and tries her best to bring some normality to
the household. While this is all going on, the first African-American
family to move into the community of Suburbicon (the Mayers family) does
their best to settle in. However, this is proving difficult as they are
subjected to all-night protests outside their home that are growing
uglier by the minute.
The
script by the Coens features Gardner’s story alone, a typical tale for
the Coen brothers, as the best-laid plan at its center slowly falls
apart. The story of the Mayers was added on by Clooney and his longtime
partner Grant Heslov, which is based on a 1957 incident that occurred in
Levittown, Pennsylvania. These opposing yarns simply never meld in any
meaningful way, and the shift from pointed satire to barbed social
commentary is jarring throughout as well. It’s as if two different
movies were mixed in the editing room and it was too much trouble to
pull them apart so Paramount just released this mess and hoped for the
best. Bad move.
Yes,
the sons of Gardner and Mayers are seen playing together time and again,
and the two are shown engaged in a game of catch across a fence that
separates their backyards at the end, which is Clooney’s attempt at a
bitterly optimistic ending that the film doesn’t earn or achieve. But
these are the only times these two disparate stories meet in this
attempt at profundity that falls flat on its face. If you end up waiting
for the other shoe to fall where Suburbicon is concerned, you may find yourself with a new appreciation of Waiting for Godot.
Contact Chuck Koplinski at ckoplinski@usd116.org.
