Movie Review: 'Suburbicon'

Matt Damon stars in Suburbicon as Gardner, a man in debt to the mob and desiring to get rid of his wheelchair bound wife, Rose (Julianne Moore) so that he can be with Rose’s twin sister Margaret (Julianne Moore). Caught in the middle of Gardner’s scheme is his son, Nicky (Noah Jupe). When after Gardner’s wife is murdered, Nicky goes along to the police lineup, he spies his father intentionally failing to identify the killers. Here is where the façade of his father’s life comes tumbling down.

Meanwhile, in an entirely separate movie, a black family, the Mayer’s, has moved in next door to Gardner and his family. Suburbicon is set in the 1950s and so, naturally, the neighbors don’t take kindly to the sudden integration of their suburban enclave. While Gardner is plotting, and committing murders on one side of the fence, the rest of the neighborhood is busy trying to run the Mayers’ out of the neighborhood on the other side.

In some version of Suburbicon these two plots meet and make sense together. In this version of the movie however, the only connection between the plots is via editing them into what is only ostensibly the same movie. Somewhere, we can assume, these plots are meant to comment upon one another and make some deeper, metaphoric point but the whole final product that is Suburbicon is so muddled that it’s impossible to make out what that metaphoric meaning might be.

It's rare to watch a movie that has no tone or momentum. Suburbicon is a movie that just sort of happens in front of you. I watched the first hour of Suburbicon waiting for the movie to actually begin. I just assumed at some point that the movie would coalesce into some sort of identifiable narrative with identifiable characters and it just never happens. The film cuts between plots willy nilly and yet cannot find momentum even in chaotic dissonance.

I genuinely feel like I have never seen a failure quite like Suburbicon. A fine director and some terrific actors came together and crafted something utterly baffling and yet strangely mundane. It’s unquestionably a movie I cannot recommend and yet it is not so bad that I can sit here and rag on it all day. Suburbicon is too polished and professional for me to be too hard on it and yet it is an entirely stillborn narrative with meaning so muddled and confused that it’s almost hypnotic in its failure.

Matt Damon is not really, the lead in Suburbicon, though I described him that way. The film has no real focus on any one character. Noah Jupe’s Nicky seems to have the most recognizable arc as a child who watches as his illusion of family is shattered but Nicky is such a passive character it is impossible to consider him the center of the film. Damon’s Gardner has, perhaps, the most screentime but Gardner is so inscrutable and squirrelly that you never get a good sense of what he believes is at stake. You can infer the stakes but Gardner somehow remains a mystery.

Damon does have a few moments where he elevates the movie, especially a chilling final monologue to his son, but a couple good moments of acting can’t make up for a whole movie that fails at every turn to tell a cohesive story. Julianne Moore is far more lost at sea than anyone else in the movie. Playing twin sisters, she is little more than a failed visual gag, as in ‘haha, isn’t weird that a guy had his wife killed so he could run off with her twin sister?’ Turns out, no, it’s not particularly funny. Peculiar and a little confusing but never funny.

Even the title is elusive and baffling. When I first heard the title, "Suburbicon," I assumed the film was some sort of 50s sci-fi parody where people from modern time had found a way to recreate a 50s small town to play out some sort Eisenhower era fantasy that would quickly unravel through violence and dark humor. I kept waiting for it to be revealed that all the action was taking place in our time and not the 50s and that "Suburbicon" was the name for some bizarre experiment.

Nope, Suburbicon is meant to be believed to be an actual name for a town. The film’s trailer only adds to the confusion as its mechanical, instructional video tone indicates something comically sinister about the town. But no, it’s just a town in the 50s. Nothing more.

Suburbicon began life as a Coen Brothers screenplay and herein may lie the problem. As demonstrated in films as various as A Serious Man, Raising Arizona and Burn After Reading, among so many others, the Coen Brothers have a unique knack for combining dark themes and comedy. The Coen’s have a hard-won talent for the absurd and their ability to meld violence and dark themes into something absurdly hysterical is unmatched by any other filmmakers. It’s easy to see where the Coen-y touches of Suburbicon are and how George Clooney lacks the ability to mine those moments.

Don’t misunderstand, I think George Clooney’s directorial talents have been proven by his exceptional Goodnight and Good Luck and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, but those were films he helped to conceive. Clooney is too much of a straightforward thinker for the kind of twisted absurdity that the Coen’s specialize in. Clooney is terrific at being directed toward the absurd by the Coen’s when they are behind the camera but Clooney himself thinks in too much of a linear fashion to adapt the Coen’s brand of perfectly calibrated lunacy.

Suburbicon is a completely misconceived adventure. Nearly everything in the film is a complete failure of tone, atmosphere and especially comedy. Nothing in Suburbicon is funny though you can sense where the joke is supposed to be. As Matt Damon rides that too small bike away from an explosion in the trailer you can sense what was meant to be funny but try that in the context of the story of Suburbicon and that same scene elicits more of a confused raise of the eyebrow than the chuckle that is intended.