Suburbicon

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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“Surbicon” is a dark comedy written by Joel and Ethan Coen and directed by actor George Clooney. It is ambitious in scope with camerawork that is as laser sharp as a Hitchcock film. Even its fine score with echoes of Bernard Herrmann is rhythmic and engaging, but regretfully in plot and tone it is predictable, uninspired and messy in regard to human drama.

It is 1959. Gardner (Matt Damon) is a father working for a financial firm, in a setting reminicent of “Mad Men”. At first glance Gardner is the perfect father. But, as it turns out, he is cheating on his wife with her twin sister Margaret (Julianne Moore in a dual role) and involved with the mafia.

Nicky (Noah Jupe) is the shy son who listens to radio serials and thinks that danger lurks everywhere.

One night, Nick is shaken out of bed and told by Dad in a flat manner that men are downstairs but that there is no cause for alarm. He states that the men will just take what they want and then leave. Needless to say, the men intimidate the family, tie them up and put them in a death-like sleep with chloroform.

Nicky wakes up in horror. There he is in a hospital bed only to hear his weirdly calm dad explain that his Aunt Rose is near death.

Then the film switches to the mode of a comedy with Nicky’s Uncle Mitch (Gary Basaraba) horsing around with him, coupled with a zappy Aunt Margaret, who as a kind of sociopathic robot, makes peanut butter and jelly all day.

Then there is a strangely flat subplot of a black family moving next door only to face the banging of pots and pans by their hateful neighbors, but that is about it.

The film does have its pathos. The acting by Jupe is solidly entrancing recalling a young Bobby Driscoll in the noir “The Window” (1949). The film works well as a thriller if it only could focus. But then it shifts, turning to the pathology of Dad Gardner, which then shifts into comedy, showing Gardner on a small child’s bike, pedalling away bloodstained and pathetic. And then shifting yet again to the persecuted family, going about their business as if on a tranquil Sunday.

If one sees this film objectively, it leads to confusion. What genre is this film? A thriller? A comedy? Or a social commentary. It certainly has elements of all of these, but yet it leaves everything half formed in a cartoonish state.

Matt Damon has no compelling weight to be taken seriously as a disturbed person, nor does Julianne Moore. Oscar Isaac appears as an insurance investigator but he feels incidental in his shady ways as most everyone in this film, with the exception of the boy Noah Jupe, who does a fine job.

I gather the point of showing the family next door is one of highlighting the very real evil of racism, but nothing is done with this further in the film.

Everything is left without consequence with no effect and very little feeling. Every character feels unconvincing with only passing importance, as if in a sketch comedy rather then a story.

“Suburbicon” could have made a statement and definately feels a missed opportunity. With a predictable bad guy versus good boy plotline, it feels derivative. Ultimately it is hodgepodge in feeling, and will please only the most die hard of Coen Brothers fans.

Write Ian at ianfree1@yahoo.com