Dark side of the great American dream
SUBURBICON (Cert 15; 104mins)
IN Suburbicon, America feels rotten to the core: home of the scheming crook and land of the cowardly bigot. Director George Clooney doesn’t pull his punches in a film as tart as a squirt of lemon juice in your eye, black-hearted comedy rubbing shoulders with outraged social commentary as he lets loose a howl of despair. It may be set in 1959 but you sense that it is intended to reflect the modern world.
It is a troubling film, not least because it feels like two very different stories inelegantly soldered together. Suburbicon is based on a 30-year-old Coen Brothers script, a gleeful tale of larceny in which the best-laid plans of a devious husband go hysterically awry. Grafted on top is a tale of racial prejudice. The friendly smiles and cheery waves of suburban America conceal deep-rooted prejudices.
Suburbicon is meant to be a dream community of suburban housing that reflects all the confidence and prosperity of America’s boom years.
Everything is shiny and new and everyone is enjoying all the modern amenities. But the cracks are beginning to show in this pretty picture. The Mayers (Karimah Westbrook, Leith M Burke) are the first black family to claim their share of paradise and “concerned” white residents are seething with resentment, feeling they can’t sleep safely in their own beds any more.
One evening, businessman Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon) and his family are attacked by vicious hoodlums. His wife is killed. Neighbours and work colleagues rally round to express their sympathies and declare their horror while his late wife’s twin sister Margaret (Julianne Moore) moves into the Lodge household to help care for Lodge’s son Nicky (Noah Jupe).
It seems to be the kind act of a bereaved sister but we soon realise there is something very fishy about this whole set-up.
George Clooney is clever in his casting. Oscar Isaac is on scene-stealing form as sly insurance investigator Bud Cooper and Noah Jupe is terrific as the innocent, bewildered Nicky. But Clooney’s masterstroke is casting Matt Damon.
Damon is Jason Bourne. He is the star of The Martian who can keep calm and carry on even when he is abandoned on Mars. We trust him and we know he would never do anything underhand. That’s why his role in Suburbicon comes as such a surprise. His presence alone throws you off balance.
Elements of Suburbicon are like a Mad Magazine parody of classic thriller Double Indemnity and a jaunty energy propels the story along. Then every once in a while we are reminded of the new black family in the community and the shocking effort that goes into letting them know that they are not welcome. Something cartoonish and comic
turns deadly serious as violence takes a hold.
Very entertaining in places and always intriguing, Suburbicon still has an oil and water mix that even Clooney can’t quite pull off.
JANE (Cert PG; 90mins)
IT is almost 60 years since Jane Goodall first travelled to Africa on a six-month grant to study chimpanzees in the wild. It was the beginning of an extraordinary career that is celebrated in the elegant documentary Jane.
At the heart of the film is amazing colour footage shot by National Geographic cameraman Hugo van Lawick in the 1960s but only unearthed in 2014. We witness the bond of trust built between Jane and the chimps as they came to accept her as part of their world.
BATTLE OF THE SEXES (Cert 12A; 121mins)
Soon, they were venturing into camp to pinch a banana or two and she was observing animals displaying all the behaviour patterns, mating rituals and characteristics of humans.
Now in her 80s, Jane’s quiet intelligence and integrity shine through as she recalls her working life and continued commitment to conservation.
MANIFESTO (Cert 15; 101mins)
CATE BLANCHETT delivers a bravura tour de force in Manifesto, playing 13 characters ranging from a homeless man to a puppeteer, a punk rocker to a newsreader.
Each of them forms part of a multi-screen video installation by Julian Rosefeldt, first seen at the Australian Centre For The Moving Image and now transformed into a feature film. All of the characters give voice to a declaration of intent from avant-garde artistic movements like the Dadaists, IN 1973, a tennis court in Texas became the unlikely setting for a defining moment in the struggle for equality. The match between Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) and Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) was all about pride and glory.
Fast-talking hustler Riggs had promised to put the “show back into chauvinism” and prove that men were the superior gender, generously saying he had no problem with women on the tennis court as somebody had to pick up the balls.
Billie Jean wanted to wipe the smile off his smug face and show that women athletes deserved respect and equal prize money at the major tournaments.
The background to the story and the match are revisited in The Battle Of The Sexes. Carell is unexpectedly endearing as the incorrigible chauvinist and Emma Stone captures Billy Jean’s steely determination. The glib screenplay is often thumpingly obvious but this is an entertaining crowd-pleaser. Dogme 95 or Futurists. It sounds intimidatingly esoteric and unfathomable but is often good fun as words of revolutionary fire take on different meaning when heard in a very different context. At a family dinner, the grace takes the form of Claes Oldenburg’s I Am For An Art, declaring: “I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all.” An experimental, thought-provoking piece that brightens in the glow of Blanchett’s chameleon-like versatility.
BRAKES (Cert 15; 87mins)
BREAKING up isn’t that hard to do in Brakes, a melancholy testimony to love’s impermanence.
Working in reverse order, we witness various relationships reach the point of no return and there is a poignancy as we later learn how the couples met. It is a compendium of ultimatums, crossed wires and paranoia.
Low-budget, rough and ready, the film often feels like a series of improvised acting class exercises.
But Paul McGann and Kate Hardie shine in an ensemble cast as a couple parting company on a Hampstead Heath railway platform.
BEACH RATS (CERT 15; 96mins)
RISING British actor Harris Dickinson shows his star potential in Beach Rats, a grainy, moody drama unfolding over a Brooklyn summer. Teenager Frankie (Dickinson) is seemingly drifting through an uneventful life, hanging out with his mates and chasing good times.
But at night, he haunts internet chatrooms and hooks up with older men. When he embarks on an awkward affair with Simone (Madeline Weinstein), she is treated like a reassuring sign of his heterosexuality.
Working out who he is and what he wants is the basis of an anguished coming-of-age story.