Suburbicon (2017)
Country: GB/US/CHI
Technical: col/2.39:1 105m
Director: George Clooney
Cast: Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Oscar Isaac, Noah Jupe
Synopsis:
In 1950s America, the outrage of a suburban community over the arrival of a negro family blinds it to the fact that, in the house next door, the respected banker father is plotting with the sister-in-law to 'off' his wife and collect on the insurance.
Review:
Clearly occupying the same narrative terrain as Blood Simple and Fargo (and The Ladykillers), the Coen's script should have sensed its own superfluity. All the more so since, seeming to position itself as comedy more than tragedy, it should have recalled that it was precisely The Ladyykillers (and Intolerable Cruelty) that revealed the writers at their weakest. The painful truth is that we do not for one minute swallow any of it, whether the fact that sister would betray sister, much less murder sister, or have so different civil rights views than sister; or that the father would switch from one to the other (why not marry the right one?) and contemplate his son's demise; or that Uncle Mick would use such language in the Eisenhower decade; or that a banker would have access to two such low-lifes in such a town; or that a community would picket a coloured family night after night and attack its own police force; etc etc. It's not the outlandishness that we mind (Pleasantville was outlandish; Edward Scissorhands was outlandish), it's the lack of an inner logic, structure and consistency of tone. In the end, for all its liberal Left good intentions, one is simply annoyed by it.
Country: GB/US/CHI
Technical: col/2.39:1 105m
Director: George Clooney
Cast: Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Oscar Isaac, Noah Jupe
Synopsis:
In 1950s America, the outrage of a suburban community over the arrival of a negro family blinds it to the fact that, in the house next door, the respected banker father is plotting with the sister-in-law to 'off' his wife and collect on the insurance.
Review:
Clearly occupying the same narrative terrain as Blood Simple and Fargo (and The Ladykillers), the Coen's script should have sensed its own superfluity. All the more so since, seeming to position itself as comedy more than tragedy, it should have recalled that it was precisely The Ladyykillers (and Intolerable Cruelty) that revealed the writers at their weakest. The painful truth is that we do not for one minute swallow any of it, whether the fact that sister would betray sister, much less murder sister, or have so different civil rights views than sister; or that the father would switch from one to the other (why not marry the right one?) and contemplate his son's demise; or that Uncle Mick would use such language in the Eisenhower decade; or that a banker would have access to two such low-lifes in such a town; or that a community would picket a coloured family night after night and attack its own police force; etc etc. It's not the outlandishness that we mind (Pleasantville was outlandish; Edward Scissorhands was outlandish), it's the lack of an inner logic, structure and consistency of tone. In the end, for all its liberal Left good intentions, one is simply annoyed by it.
Country: GB/US/CHI
Technical: col/2.39:1 105m
Director: George Clooney
Cast: Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Oscar Isaac, Noah Jupe
Synopsis:
In 1950s America, the outrage of a suburban community over the arrival of a negro family blinds it to the fact that, in the house next door, the respected banker father is plotting with the sister-in-law to 'off' his wife and collect on the insurance.
Review:
Clearly occupying the same narrative terrain as Blood Simple and Fargo (and The Ladykillers), the Coen's script should have sensed its own superfluity. All the more so since, seeming to position itself as comedy more than tragedy, it should have recalled that it was precisely The Ladyykillers (and Intolerable Cruelty) that revealed the writers at their weakest. The painful truth is that we do not for one minute swallow any of it, whether the fact that sister would betray sister, much less murder sister, or have so different civil rights views than sister; or that the father would switch from one to the other (why not marry the right one?) and contemplate his son's demise; or that Uncle Mick would use such language in the Eisenhower decade; or that a banker would have access to two such low-lifes in such a town; or that a community would picket a coloured family night after night and attack its own police force; etc etc. It's not the outlandishness that we mind (Pleasantville was outlandish; Edward Scissorhands was outlandish), it's the lack of an inner logic, structure and consistency of tone. In the end, for all its liberal Left good intentions, one is simply annoyed by it.