Review: 'Surburbicon'

I love films.

I love sitting down to make a night of watching a movie; leaving everything else at the door and getting lost in narrative for 90 minutes is my kind of bliss. Often I’ll go with a friend so there’s someone who just experienced what I did and who is able to discuss, analyse, and review it with me, but the majority of the time I’ll go alone then pass my thoughts onto others before the drive home.

For a while now, one particular friend Laura has told me I should write my thoughts down because she seems to derive great entertainment from listening to me word vomit about the latest releases. I’d just brushed it off before as a nice compliment.

Then a few nights ago, I went to see an advanced screening of Suburbicon.

For those of you unfamiliar with the latest Coen brothers film (directed by George Clooney), it tells the story of an idyllic neighbourhood through the ostracism experienced by the newly-arrived Mayers family, and the increasingly outlandish crime-spree of their Average-Joe neighbour Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon). I wasn’t aware this film was marketed as a comedy until after the fact, and it’s painful to think of what could have been had it lived up to the classification. Through these two storylines that share something you can’t quite put your finger on but fail to organically come together, Clooney tries to tackle social commentary, racism, and a murder mystery in one fell swoop, but by splitting the focus, he fails to engage any of them. Advertised as a darkly comedic, twisted tale synonymous with the Coen name, the predictable plot points and 1-dimensional characters turn what could’ve been a delightfully deviant look at the American Dream into an exercise in patience.

Set in 50s Americana, the film opens with an advert encouraging families to relocate to the paradise of Suburbicon. Complete with manicured lawns, uniform houses, and smiling neighbours, the town oozes with the kind of creepy fakery straight from the atomic bomb test village in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, so I was optimistic about the next 100 minutes. That optimism didn’t last.

Seemingly the first black family to move to the area, the Mayers (Karimah Westbrook, Leith M. Burke and Tony Espinosa) are subject to increasingly antagonistic behaviour from their white neighbours. The intimidation starts with a town meeting of the incensed community demanding the Mayers be removed from Suburbicon, and climaxes in a full-scale riot breaking out on their property, during which the family’s car is set on fire, the house vandalised, and a confederate flag is hung on a smashed window. Aside from highlighting the racist rhetoric prevalent at the time (complete with the incorporation of excerpts from a petition against the real-life Myers family by the inhabitants of Levittown, PA in 1957), this turns out to be a cinematic cul-de-sac. With the focus of this tyranny shifted towards the perpetrators rather than the victims, the whole thing reeks of contrived irony that the oppressed are not even the focus of the hate crimes towards them.

Alternately down the main plotline, what starts as a home invasion gone-wrong quickly turns into a spinning plates act for the Lodge’s as Gardner tries to detach himself from suspicion down the rabbit hole of crime that comes with covering his tracks.

Damon’s portrayal of Gardner is filled with such flat dispassion that it’s very hard for the audience to connect to him. Whether you want to feel sympathy for the grieving husband, anger at the disconnected father, or disgust at the conniving man steadfast in getting his own way, the emotions simply never come. This could also be said for the character of Maggie, Gardner’s sister-in-law (Julianne Moore). For me, her character arc should show a woman playing the part of grieving sister and helpful aunt, while maintaining an undercurrent of almost arrogance that she's got her way; the good housewife with a touch of Lizzie Borden, if you will. Instead, we see the barest hint of this characterisation before she’s replaced by a woman completely under the spell of Gardner, fashioning herself in her sister’s likeness and stripped of any agency so she can become an accessory for him to push his will. This is most obvious at the appearance of Bud Cooper (Oscar Isaac), Gardner’s insurance investigator come to rake through the suspicious red flags surrounding the death of Mrs Lodge (also Julianne Moore) and take advantage of the leverage he’s been awarded.

Possibly the most tragic element of this film is the underutilisation of Oscar Isaac. While his cocky but charming portrayal of Cooper is brief, his arrival is a breath of fresh air from the stagnant performance of Matt Damon. I was almost championing Bud through his devious manipulation, just in the hopes he would add a bit of spice to the bland exploits. This makes it even more frustrating that his death is so transparently set-up before he knocks on the door.

The death of Cooper signals the beginning of the end as things begin to spiral out of control for Gardner. While the community has been preoccupied with haranguing the innocent Mayers family, they fail to notice the slow implosion over at the Lodge residence, including an insurance agent running down the street screaming for help, an explosive crash, and Matt Damon waltzing around town covered in blood. It would be funny if it wasn’t exhausting at this point.

The story ends with the same scene it opened with; the two young boys of each family playing catch across the low fence that separates their gardens. This again points towards some link between the stories but I urge you to try to find it. As the camera pans out and the music fades, the re-use of these scenes to “bookend” the film makes it feel like more should have happened than actually did. And with that, I slowly unscrewed my face, walked out to my car, and hoped I would never again visit Suburbicon.