There was a time, George Clooney was considered only a handsome man from the series about doctors and the hero of the fashion chronicles. A serious actor was seen much later in it - and the Coen brothers helped in this, even though they shot Clooney exclusively in comic roles: paradoxically, this actor earned his reputation as a clever filmmaker, playing round idiots in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", "Intolerable Cruelty" and "Burn After Reading". It is time to repay.
His new and unconditionally successful (especially after the failed "The Monuments Men") film "Suburbicon" directed by Clooney following the old unrealized script of Coen brothers. In addition, brought to Venice, where he is historically worshiped and often rewarded. Furor was not only predictable, but also almost inevitable.
The script was written in the late 1980s, talks about the cozy America of the 1950s, and Clooney’s interpretation clearly indicates what is happening in the United States now. There is no surprise in leaps in time: too often today's news makes us remember the times of repression, witch hunts and the Cold War. The imaginary utopia of ideal houses in the immaculate suburb of Clooney does not build on the screen out of nostalgia. He - for the umpteenth time - exposes the American dream, showing the inconsistency, and indeed the danger of the beautiful-minded reasoning about how to restore the country’s former mythical greatness.
It is not difficult to reconstruct the situation with the original scenario of Coen brothers: having found it unsatisfactory or simply could not find the money for its implementation, the brothers reworked it in "Fargo". Clooney, with his constant co-author Grant Heslov, returned to the original source - not flawless, but loose, like many of the early works of Coen brothers. Like “Fargo”, in the center of action is a dysfunctional family, an imperceptible husband (Matt Damon) with a bad conscience and an annoying wife (Julianne Moore, who also plays her heroine's twin sister). The basis of intrigue is a crime entailing a chain of uncontrollable trouble. The performers are a pair of hired thugs-killers, the investigator is a simple sheriff. More or less new in the familiar equation seems only inappropriate guessing insurance agent (also beloved by Coen brothers and Oscar Isaac excellent here). Well, the boy, whose eyes are seen events. His timid friendship with a black peer-neighbor rather unexpectedly brings to parallel with "To Kill a Mockingbird", the most important American novel of that era, when the film takes place.
The main irony of this deadly black and very funny comedy is not that the quiet pool Suburbicon harbors heartless rascals hiding their cynicism under the facade of decency and good neighborliness, but that serves as a diversionary maneuver (including in dramaturgy). While respectable villains of all ages and genders betray torture and kill each other, the population is engaged in fighting an innocent - and generally not participating in a detective intrigue - a black family who dared to buy a house in Suburbicon "like white people". In the literal sense of the word, the whole city, waving torches and Confederate flags, arranges a rally at the doorstep of uninvited guests - and really awful crimes are happening around the nearest corner, but no one sees this. As one of the townspeople would later note, "until the blacks moved into the city, everything was quiet in our place". Perhaps the Clooney metaphor (or Coen brothers, it is difficult to say) is too straightforward, but you cannot refuse it for clarity. If you have a log in your own eye, but you do not feel like getting one, the only way out is to shout the slogan "Make America Great Again!"
https://youtu.be/eozuubLMcMc['Suburbicon' Official Trailer](https://youtu.be/eozuubLMcMc)
In the neatly staged and brilliantly shot Robert Elswit ("Boogie Nights", "There Will Be Blood") film is used, as if in dispute, numerous and varied methods of murder: a rigged car accident and poisoning with sleeping pills, a knife and a gun, even burning. Unless the snake, which the black boy gave to the orphaned friend, was not poisonous, but toothless. Many will call toothless himself "Suburbicon" by George Clooney - a modest independent comedy that is unlikely to become an effective antidote against the pseudo-patriotic propaganda of Trump's supporters. However, American intellectuals (to whom, no doubt, Clooney also belongs) know very well: there are no too small themes and heroes, there is no insignificant art. In addition, there are no ways that would not be worth applying in a feasible opposition to evil. Actually, the picture - where all the same there is a successful conclusion - is precisely about that.
The illustrations are used in agreement with the Depositphotos photobank
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