George Clooney
Suburbicon

THE REVIEW

Some time ago, Donald Trump (who notoriously never gets anything right, not even by accident) had the nerve to call George Clooney "a lousy actor" dedicated to "horrible movies." Now, he may not be Cary Grant, but let's not get carried away. Obviously the criticism (harsh and, in classic Trumpian style, boisterous) stemmed from the fact that Clooney, being liberal, has always considered Trump the worst President of the United States (and frankly, it’s hard to blame him). And, with ups and downs, his films are certainly not all horrible, at worst just a few less successful ones. This "Suburbicon," which came out in 2017, may not be a masterpiece, but it's a pleasant surprise, definitely a movie worth seeing.

It is not a comedy, but you'll laugh; it's not exactly a thriller, but there’s a mystery to solve. An old, never-developed Coen Brothers script was dusted off by Clooney and brought to the screen with considerable directorial skill (especially through excellent direction of the actors), aided by a remarkable cast: Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Oscar Isaac, Jack Conley, Tony Espinosa. We are in 1959, in Suburbicon, a quiet small town (the most classic of American small towns) where nothing noteworthy has ever happened. The Mayers, a Black family, arrive in the peaceful village, shocking the population—though they do nothing out of the ordinary: they are Black, and that's enough to shake up the white respectability that pervades Suburbicon. Protests against them begin to mount, while the Lodge family, their neighbors, fall victim to a robbery (in which they are also held hostage), but the criminal (in fact, the criminals) escape without a trace. The Lodges—Papa Gardner; Wife Rose (in a wheelchair); Son Nicky and her twin sister Margaret—witness the death of poor Rose, due to a chloroform overdose, but no one wants to report the perpetrators of the robbery (in fact, at the police station, they prefer not to identify any suspects at all). Why? What's going on underneath?

This is Clooney's sixth film as a director, and it’s clear that the themes close to his heart, such as the simmering racism among a white population that believes itself spotless but has way more skeletons in the closet than it appears, are “mixed” with a typically "Coen-esque" black humor (the script dates back all the way to 1986, after the making of "Blood Simple," and the mood, so to speak, is roughly the same) that, on one hand, feels a bit familiar (an issue evident from the very first scenes), but on the other hand, shows Clooney perfectly at ease in a film as engaging as it is fun (despite the fact that in editing, all scenes featuring Josh Brolin were cut because, according to Clooney, besides breaking the film’s rhythm, they would have further underlined its grotesque side). The ending is like a cartoon, the pace is frenetic, and many storylines start out as one thing and turn into something else: the racism shown toward the Mayers, initially conceived as small-town buffoonery, turns into tragedy, and no situation is fixed by any of the main characters but only by the intervention of chance (Clooney in a very fatalistic mode).

Here and there, something clashes a little (the ending where the future is placed in the hands of children: too banal) and maybe, at times, the underlying cynicism is not kept in check as it should be, but these are details. It's a film that deserves to be rediscovered, especially considering the poor (if not nonexistent) audience success the movie had upon its release despite its presentation—complete with much fanfare from the press—at the Venice Film Festival.

Julianne Moore is excellent in a double, surprising role. Wonderfully detailed period recreation.