Suburbicon

Suburbicon

I've been hearing so many good things about Thor: Ragnarok that I simply had to go and see Suburbicon.

Okay, normally I wouldn't care about what's been consistently advertised as a kind of Fargo rip-off (two of the four screenwriters were the Coens themselves, along with George Clooney and Clooney-regular Grant Heslov), but the reason I went to see it is because it was actually filmed on the street my aunt and uncle live on in Fullerton, California.

They had me come over to see the excitement that was someone filming something that wasn't a reality show in Orange County, and I was very happy to do so. My uncle and I walked around the block to see of all of the camera equipment, props, old cars, and extras that were hustling and bustling all around the quiet neighborhood. At one point we walked past a small black tent, which I thought aloud could be Clooney's video village, and sure enough Mr. Clooney himself walked out, smiled at us, and said "Hi, guys." We were thrilled. I also saw Julianne Moore eating yogurt. It was all very exciting.

So, because of this bizarre experience, we knew we had to see the movie. Then we saw the reviews, and while they were technically mixed, they were mainly bad. This was both disappointing and surprising seeing as how there was so much talent behind this movie. Clooney's proven himself to be a talented director, and with a fantastic cast and a Coen Brothers screenplay, there seemed to be no way this could have gone wrong. This phenomenon is described by Matt Sloan and Craig Johnson on the wonderful YouTube series Welcome to the Basement as a "talent bomb." But we were almost more excited to see a notably bad movie shot in Fullerton, as this would still make it memorable.

Spoilers ahead.

Now again, this was advertised as a Coen-style film, some kind of cross between A Serious Man and Fargo. It opens with a pretty terrible motion-graphics animation sequence that clearly wants to look like the opening to a classic Disney film and fails miserably, but it states that a town called "Suburbicon" has just opened and that everyone around the country is moving there, a clear reference to the creation of the suburbs in America after WWII that resulted in the "baby boom." Then a cheery mailman knocks on the door of a house to deliver mail, but is shocked and horrified to discover the owner of the house is black. He proceeds to do a lot of uncomfortable mugging to the camera, trying to do schtick, then he walks away. Okay, that was awkward. Then we cut immediately to every man in the entire town having a meeting about how to get rid of the black people. Um...what movie is this again? 

Usually when a film is going to tackle racism it's addressed in the advertising, and usually comes from the perspective of the character who is part of the disenfranchised race, religion, sexual orientation or gender, and it's usually the central plot. Instead this felt more like a trojan horse that's only a side story. Then Julianne Moore shows up, only there's two Julianne Moores. Wait, what? 

Usually when a single actor is playing twins it's played for laughs, because it's a weird thing to do. But there's no indication that this is supposed to be funny. There's just two Julianne Moores, one of which is in a terrible blonde wig and a wheelchair. Okay. Then we meet Noah Jupe, who Julianne Moores tell to go play with the "colored boy", which, although accurate for the time, still sound awful coming from hers. Fun fact, Noah Jupe, who is a child, gives the best performance in the film. The second best is Oscar Isaac, but we'll get to him. 

Jupe talks with the black neighbor kid, who is absolutely playing a black stereotype. He has a speech pattern that is very specific to the old timey movies that Clooney is trying to...parody? Pay homage to?  I don't know. That's another problem with this movie. It doesn't know what genre it is. In an attempt to be a Coen Brothers movie it tries its hand at drama, comedy, thriller, and crime and spectacularly drops every single one of those plates. But anyways, this kid is talking like a black stereotype and it was absolutely something Clooney told him to do. That's another problem with this movie. It's racist.

Usually when a film is going to tackle racism, not only is the character who is dealing with prejudice the main protagonist, they usually have a personality. Something that makes them an actual character. Here, Clooney is just using these three black actors in this otherwise entirely white movie as props for this racism sub-plot. In all the commotion of Clooney trying to prove he isn't racist, he forgot to make his black characters actual characters. The mom and the son have maybe five lines each, and the father never says a word. I guess this is supposed to highlight their innocence, but instead it's just robbing black actors of getting to portray interesting characters in a film. You know, the problem with most Hollywood films.

Okay, so then something else happens, I can't remember, then Jupe is woken up in the middle of the night by Matt Damon. For some reason in this scene we never see his face, but he tells Jupe to get out of bed because there are intruders in the house. They go downstairs, and then the music swells as Matt Damon's face is revealed, like it's Interstellar and his very presence in the movie is a twist. Even though his face and name is on every single poster for the movie, except for the one I have on here, and we could all tell it was his voice. Weird, but whatever. They go downstairs where we see the two intruders, a real life Horace and Jasper from One Hundred and One Dalmatians, and the Julianne Moores are there too. Then what is supposed to be a tense scene happens, but instead is a horribly awkward scene where the intruders force Matt Damon to make drinks and one of the intruders picks up blonde Julianne Moore and tells her to "put germs on [his] neck" which...just means letting him pick her up, then they chloroform everybody.

They all wake up but blonde Julianne Moore is missing and Matt Damon explains to Jupe that she's dead now. They go to her funeral, which I believe is the first time it's mentioned that the blonde Julianne Moore was Matt Damon's wife, and we meet Uncle Mitch, who I think we're supposed to find charming but instead he comes off as weirdly aggressive, ranting about episcopalians and then forcibly putting money in Jupe's pockets, only to then hold him upside down and pour the money out onto the street. Then they go to a suspect line up and Jupe walks in and realizes Horace and Jasper are right there but Matt Damon and Julianne Moore don't say anything, and...neither does he. Yeah, he sees Horace and Jasper, wants to tell his parents, but just...doesn't. But then he tells Matt Damon at home. Okay. Then Matt Damon says he's mistaken. Okay. Then Jupe walks in on Matt Damon and sister-in-law Julianne Moore having sex. Okay. Then Jupe hangs out with the neighbor kid again, and the neighbor kid gives him a garden snake. Weird, but I guess that's a thing kids could do. Then the neighbor kid explains he has a mason jar full of snakes. What?

Okay, I'm going to fast forward here, because getting bogged down in the details isn't really fair to the movie, even if it just casually threw out that a child who we're supposed to sympathize with has a mason jar full of snakes. Horace and Jasper harass Matt Damon at work and Julianne Moore assists in racism at the grocery store by not saying anything when the owner raises the prices for the black mother character. Then Julianne Moore is at home and Oscar Isaac shows up. Oscar Isaac is completely delightful in the two scenes he has in this movie. In this first scene, he proves that Julianne Moore and Matt Damon plotted to kill other Julianne Moore by hiring Horace and Jasper do so. That's another thing. This movie has a problem with withholding information. 

Usually when a film is going to withhold information in order to build up to a twist, it does so in a way where the movie still somewhat makes sense without that information. The Sixth Sense works perfectly well as a movie without knowing Bruce Willis is dead, and Memento works even though it's being told backwards because it's established early on that that's how the story's being told. But in Suburbicon, the movie seems completely insane without its twist information. The home invasion comes completely out of nowhere without any context, Matt Damon seems to not care at all about his wife being dead, and Julianne Moore doesn't seem to care at all about other Julianne Moore being dead. Also, the twists aren't surprising.

Usually when a film is going to have a surprising twist, that twist needs to elevate the entire film and put it in an completely different context. Fight Club is incredibly engaging for the first three quarters or so, then when the Tyler Durden twist is revealed its mind-blowing because not only was it not predictable, not only does it put together seemingly missing pieces in the story, but it also raises the movie's already insanely high stakes by giving the Narrator a new challenge that none of us thought he would face, even though he's been saying that he's been getting in his own way for the entire movie. It's good storytelling. When Suburbicon reveals that Matt Damon and Julianne Moore hired Horace and Jasper to kill other Julianne Moore, it just explains why the movie's been being weird and making no sense.

Okay, so Oscar Isaac comes over again to threaten Matt Damon and Julianne Moore into a bribe, then as he's explaining why if they killed him they'd be screwed he drinks the poison Julianne Moore made for him and dies. Then they freak out and kill him...again. But no one notices because the town is too busy rioting at the black people's house. Oh yeah, the white townspeople have been protesting at the black people's house the entire movie. But it doesn't start with rioting. It starts with awkwardly standing in front of their house, then it ramps up to them singing some old gospel song in front of their house, and then they're actually playing musical instruments both in front of their house and in their backyard. I don't think this is how this kind of thing actually went, but Clooney is really eager to prove he isn't racist so this is the movie he made. Then it becomes actual angry, violent rioting, which is an actual thing that happened a lot during this time, so this part actually feels somewhat real, but then they put a Confederate flag in the window which, while probably a thing that actually happened, feels a bit like a desperate attempt to be topical, and kinda feels like spoon feeding us that racism is bad. That's another thing. George Clooney thinks that we're babies.

Usually when a film is going to cover a taboo topic such as racism, it comes from a unique perspective that we haven't seen on film before. Get Out was a huge success and a great movie because it gave us the unique perspective of a modern black man seeing casual racism from white people who are trying way too hard to not be racist towards him. We've seen the dumb Avatar/Dances with Wolves/Ferngully story in a million things, but in Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout he addresses the topic by using jarring juxtaposition in his editing to show how "civilized" white Australians are in no way better than the Aborigines. No one gives a trite speech about it, he just has the viewer make the meal in their own head by giving them the ingredients. Both of these films offer fresh perspectives and don't talk down to their audience. But in Suburbicon we get a whole lot of everything we know already that's supposed to shock us. There's secret white meetings, people using mild racial slurs, scared mailmen, and people playing the tuba in a backyard. There's also lots of TV and radio clips clumsily strewn throughout the film that show white people in the 1950's being racist, as if we didn't already know white people in the 1950's were being racist and needed more proof of it. Clooney is talking down to the audience, arrogantly thinking we had no idea racism was a thing. By trying to be topical because alt-right groups and violent racism are still incredibly prevalent, Clooney made a really dated movie. If this actually came out in the 1950's it might be shocking, but it didn't so it isn't. One way to improve this movie would be to just have it take place in modern times. There's literally no reason for it not to, I think Clooney just wanted to make a movie that looks like the opening to a Fallout game.

Back to the story, Julianne Moore makes a peanut butter and drugs sandwich to murder her child with, but Horace and Jasper come back and kill Julianne Moore in some way, I don't remember, then they're gonna kill Jupe but Uncle Mitch saves him and has him hide in the closet with a gun. After Uncle Mitch has walked him into the closet and calmly talks him down, he turns around to reveal that he has a knife in his back. What.

Usually when a person is stabbed in the back with a sharp object, or worse, a dull object, they have a very hard time moving around and talking. But Uncle Mitch, with a warm, comforting smile on his face, talks to Jupe for around three minutes before this "twist" is revealed. Okay.

Matt Damon rides around on a tiny bicycle trying to get away from either Horace or Jasper, whichever, and then the Horace or Jasper gets conveniently killed by a fire truck because the black family's house is being burned down. Then Matt Damon comes home and Jupe tries to shoot him but his gun is empty. Okay. Then Matt Damon takes Jupe downstairs and he eats the drug sandwich, which I'm pretty sure they showed in the trailer, then he dies. Then Jupe plays catch with the neighbor kid. And that's the movie. That's how it ends. Okay.

I ended up having a lot to say about a movie that no one saw and even I'll probably forget it about in a week, but I think one of the main fears I have about this movie is more films trying to be "relevant" during the Trump presidency. The problem is that all the Trump presidency has done in terms of social commentary is bring back to the surface problems that we already knew our country had, so the white Hollywood movies that try to bank on it, like this one, will inevitably be awkward, dated, and preachy. We need more films like Get Out during this time, films that make the viewer empathize with the disenfranchised in a subtle, clever way; films that cast people who aren't the same boring straight white male protagonist we've seen a million times; films that allow the audience to do the math and come to their own realizations without lecturing them. We need smart movies from voices we haven't gotten to actually hear from, and based on the wild success of Get Out and the horrible failure of Suburbicon, I don't think I'm alone on this. But Jigsaw is number one at the box office this week, so...maybe I'm alone on this.

I'll probably see Thor: Ragnarok, a big-budget Hollywood film made by a hilarious and smart Māori New Zealander, sometime later this week.