Matt Damon is determined to maintain a normal life, no matter what extremes it takes, in ‘Suburbicon,’ a darkly poignant comedy about America.
Some artsy heavy-hitters to see in theaters: ‘Suburbicon,’ ‘Sacred Deer’
ARNOLD WAYNE JONES | Executive Editor
jones@dallasvoice.com
The fall movie season is heating up just as temperatures are cooling down, with the release this week of several amazing new films. Wonderstruck plus two more you need to put on your watch list.
Suburbicon. The Coen Brothers have a storied history with violent, shocking but subversively funny social commentary, starting with Blood Simple and going through Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, Fargo and, without the humor, No Country for Old Men. But this film, which they co-wrote but didn’t direct (George Clooney did that), is one of their most subversive. Into a white-washed planned community in 1959 move the Meyerses — a black family whose presence on these Episcopalian streets causes an uproar among the “I’m-not-a-racist-but” middle class American Dreamers who do everything they can to drive these quiet, respectful people out. It first seems like this will be a riff on A Raisin in the Sun, and it sort of is, except the Coens then tell a parallel story of the Lodges (Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Noah Jupe) who are the subject of a home invasion that goes all-but-ignored by the neighbors dead-set on blaming all the ills of the world on the Negro race.
That “doubling up” is the subtle theme of the film — and not just the plot. From Moore playing identical twins to the many “pairs” that pop up visually to the obvious references to the classic film noir Double Indemnity, Suburbicon paints a darkly sinister portrait of how easily folks in Middle America can fool themselves into thinking they are always in the right, the victims of the Others. It conjures comparisons to Hitchcock as well as Lynch with the nervous-titter style that is so deftly a Coens trademark. In a Trumpian dystopia where white supremacy becomes normalized, it’s an unnervingly relevant dissection of how we got where we are.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Even more unnerving is this latest film from Yorgos Lanthimos, the brilliant Greek director of The Lobster and Dogtooth. Like the Coens, Lanthimos’ ethos is instantly recognizable (although it owes a lot to Kubrick): A flat, formal presentation that at first seems dully silly but which escalates into a kind of horror. In The Lobster, Colin Farrell played a lonely man in a future where, if you weren’t coupled, you were mystically transformed into an animal; Farrell’s possible fate is even darker here as a gifted cardiologist whose friendship with a young boy (Barry Keoghan) forms the fulcrum on which important choices must be made. I hesitate to say more; it’s fully 45 minutes into the film before you understand the direction it’s headed, and a surreal fantasy element is treated as ordinary. Suffice it to say that as a Greek, Lanthimos is familiar with the myth of Iphigenia and the nature of grand tragedy in a way modern storytellers can only imagine. The performances are flatly delivered, but geniusly so, with Farrell, Nicole Kidman and Keoghan all superb. This is heady, hilarious, shocking cinema. You can’t look away.
Wonderstruck and The Killing of a Sacred Deer now playing at the Angelika Mockingbird Station; Suburbicon now playing a Landmark’s Magnolia.