The Box Office:
In another round of “Gosh, Paramount just can’t catch a break,” the beleaguered studio is attempted to end the year on a high note with three prestige pictures and one pure mainstream pitch. mother! fizzled at the box office (although it has earned $41 million worldwide), and the next two prestige pictures both star Matt Damon. That would be fine, save for the fact that the actor has found himself mixed up in the current Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal, with allegations (since somewhat walked back) that Damon helped cover up the story a decade ago.
Sure, his infamous “whitesplaining” incident in an episode of Project Greenlight didn’t hurt The Martian, but the Weinstein affair has essentially dominated the press narrative for George Clooney’s directorial offering, just as it may well dominate the run-up to Alexander Payne’s Downsizing in December. That’s okay because Paramount has a surefire hit with Daddy’s Home 2 in two weeks, which stars, uh, Mel Gibson in a key supporting role. And you thought Justice League had problems? That brings us to Suburbicon, which opens this Friday in what I’d argue is a somewhat low-profile debut for such a promising picture.
The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival to mixed reviews, and as we know movies of this nature (adult-skewing, non-tentpole, not necessarily crowd-pleasing) are at a comparative disadvantage even compared to three years ago. Absent much in the way of Oscar buzz or positive narratives, this one may struggle. The good news is that director George Clooney usually makes a point to keep his budgets in check when he makes old-school, adult-skewing studio programmers like this. I don’t have the exact budget for this one, but I’m betting that Clooney didn’t spend too much of his investors’ money.
The Review:
There are three distinct movies somewhat at war with each other in Suburbicon, and only two of them really mesh together while the third essentially sabotages the overwhelming narrative. To wit, the George Clooney-directed film, written by a discarded Joel and Ethan Coen screenplay (from 1986) isn’t content to just be a nasty bit of suburban film noir. The film also contains a subplot loosely based on the true story of Daisy and William Myers, an African American couple (with a young son) who moved into a lily-white suburban neighborhood and were greeted with jeers, vandalism and riots from their tolerant Northern neighbors.
At a glance, the story of the Myers is itself ripe for a cinematic telling, even if it didn’t have a conventional three-act structure (they lived in the home for four years and protests just trickled out after about two years). So, while Clooney and friends may mean well in exposing the outright racism present in supposedly liberal enclaves, the choice to use that story as topical seasoning for a black comedy about duplicitous white folks feels like a metaphor for Hollywood’s feelings on racial inclusivity in general. It’s no better than using George Washington Williams as a sidekick for an otherwise unremarkable Tarzan movie.
While the film opens with the Myers (Leith M. Burke, Karimah Westbrook and Tony Espinosa as their young son), it is not remotely their story. Burke, as the patriarch, gets not a single line of dialogue while Westbrook and Espinosa are around as topical seasoning. Either Clooney and Grant Heslov think they are making bold statement about how racism distracts from the hidden evils of white suburbia, which wouldn’t have been a shock even in 1959, or they are using real-life racism to give an extra punch to their otherwise quirky black comedy. Either way, it’s a stunning miscalculation and hamstrings an otherwise enjoyable romp.
Suburbicon is a story about a middle-class dad (Matt Damon) who attempts to cope with the home invasion murder of his wheelchair-bound wife (Julianne Moore). I guess this is a first-act spoiler, but you can probably guess that Gardner and Aunt Margaret (also Moore) had something to do with it. Noah Jupe is terrific as the young son, and the film’s best moments are when he’s dealing with the unthinkable truth about his father and his aunt. At times, with its "child’s eye view" of the crime melodrama and racial strife, it feels like Clooney is trying to craft a more cynical take on To Kill a Mockingbird.
Had that been the entire movie then the Myers’ subplot might have been applicable (Espinosa gets the most dialogue among his family) as part of a child’s-eye view of societal bigotry and parental betrayal. But, perhaps because Matt Damon and Julianne Moore are movie stars, we also get a bunch of scenes of Damon and Moore doing their best to dig themselves out of a hole. This stuff is not without entertainment value, and it picks up when Oscar Isaac shows up as a suspicious insurance investigator. But the emphasis on the adults just makes the racial strife subplot look that much more exploitative.
Away from would-be Oscar contention and away from the current conversation about racial and gender inequities in mainstream Hollywood, Suburbicon is an entertaining potboiler that looks great and boasts a fine cast. Even within context, Matt Damon’s growing reputation as maybe not the greatest wonder boy in Hollywood history is put to good use (his final scene belongs on a highlight reel). I may have been offended by how the film appropriated painful black history for seasoning in an otherwise lily-white crime melodrama, but I was mostly entertained and it’s at least one-third of a great movie. Whether that counts as a recommendation is up to you.
I like what Clooney was going for, but he didn’t quite pull it off. Ironically enough, while Suburbicon may not be the movie we need right now, it may well be the movie we deserve.
