What happened here? What is this travesty? Hang on, let me rattle off the names of the people involved with this travesty: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Oscar Isaac, the great composer Alexandre Desplat, and last, but not least, Joel and Ethan Coen. How did this happen? Suburbicon is a complete train wreck. An absolute dumpster fire that is trying to do too much. What is the purpose of this film? Is it a whodunit? I hope not, because you’ll figure out the “whodunit” of this tale about 20 minutes into the film. Is it a statement about the inequality in our past social and racial structures and how those inequalities are still relevant today? If so, then why does that story line feel like it is just tacked on as a mere afterthought, with each cut to the Mayers family (which this story is based around) feeling extremely jarring and out of place? The foundation of this film’s problems lies in its trying to do too much. As a result, it doesn’t do anything well and creates an extremely messy and unorganized film.
Let’s talk about the good of this film, even though there isn’t much. First off, the production design in this film is good. There was a good amount of care that went into crafting the sets of this film, and it does a pretty good job of capturing 1950s suburbia. This is about the only thing director George Clooney really nailed.
Oscar Isaac steals the show as far as the acting is concerned. He is having a blast as the insurance agent, and he shines despite his extremely limited screen time. He’s only in this 104-minute film for about 10 minutes, but he provides some much-needed relief because by the time he shows up I had already figured out that this is a bad film. I think he realized this was a bad movie, too, because he is screen-chewing to the max in his brief role (and I love it).
Finally, the first five-ish minutes of the film are amazing! The initial satire on past (and present) racial biases was on point. The film opens with your very stereotypical 1950s-esque mailman delivering the day’s mail to suburbia and when he gets to the new neighbors who just moved in, the Mayers, he’s shocked to discover they are black. After the entire block loses its mind over this, we cut to the best scene of the entire film, in which a roomful of angry townspeople complain over the city council’s attempt to integrate a family of color into their community. A lot of racial tropes we still see today are used, and for the first few minutes of the film we have a very sharp and smart commentary about racial and social structures both past and present. Unfortunately, the film has an abrupt downhill cut from this story line to its main story, a whodunit you figure out almost immediately.
When I go to a whodunit film, I usually try not figure out the story before it happens on the screen. I like to be surprised at the end when the curtain is pulled back. However, Suburbicon’s whodunit story line is so blatantly obvious I managed to figure it out very quickly, without actually spending any energy to try and figure it out. This film is depressingly predictable.
The film also tries to tell its main story from a child’s perspective, similar to The Florida Project, which came out recently and is far superior to this travesty. All Suburbicon did in this storytelling aspect was remind me just how great a film The Florida Project was, because boy, does this film fail miserably here. The kid, Nicky, (played by Noah Jupe) is exposed to some of the most terrible sights a kid could possibly be exposed to. The things he sees should scar him for life. But does the film even bother to acknowledge this? Nope. He’s fine, he’ll brush off watching people literally die in front of him! George Clooney and Joel and Ethan Coen, y’all wrote this pile of garbage. If you’re going to try and tell this story from the perspective of the kid, you need to acknowledge how these extraordinarily traumatic events are affecting him! Oh, he puts a piece of wood in front of his door to keep the bad guys out. Nailed it!
This whodunit story line doesn’t mesh with the systemic racism story line at all. They are not even remotely related, and the only way they even connect with one another is when Nicky has a few conversations with the Mayers kid, Andy (Tony Espinosa). But these conversations feel tacked on; they seem like they’re only there because Clooney/the Coens figured out these two story lines didn’t mesh together, so they added some dialogue between the kids to “patch it up.”
The acting, beyond Oscar Isaac, is pretty bland. And that’s saying something when your leads are Matt Damon and Julianne Moore. The score does nothing to add to this film. This happens a lot in film nowadays, but it’s not supposed to happen when the great Alexandre Desplat is scoring your film. I was shocked and depressed to discover he was the composer for this movie. A man with a staggering eight Oscar nominations since 2007 (and one win) is not supposed to compose a score this forgettable. Honestly, this entire movie can be boiled down to one word: messy.
Suburbicon is disorganized, a film without an identity. There are some great people involved with this movie; they have made great films in the past, and will do so again. But this is the very definition of a misfire.
