Suburbicon

2017 · United States · 105 min

Director: George Clooney
Screenplay: George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Producer: George Clooney, Joel Silver, Grant Heslov, Teddy Schwarzman
Music: Alexandre Desplat
Cinematography: Robert Elswit
Editing: Stephen Mirrione
Production company: Paramount Pictures, Silver Pictures, Smokehouse Pictures

What the critics say

28 % Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews42 Metacritic /100

Cast

Michael Cohen

Megan Ferguson

What it is about

In 1959, the calm, all-white suburb of Suburbicon is unsettled when a Black family, the Mayers, moves in. Gardner Lodge, a soft-spoken family man, lives there with his wife Rose, who is paralyzed, and their son Nicky. One night a home invasion leaves Rose dead from a chloroform overdose. After the funeral, Rose's identical twin Margaret moves in to help care for the boy and gradually begins to resemble her late sister. As tensions rise on the street, charming insurance investigator Bud Cooper starts asking questions about a life insurance claim Gardner filed. The film blends a family drama about secrets with a portrait of a community divided by fear.

How it was made

Joel and Ethan Coen first wrote the script in 1986, soon after the release of Blood Simple, but the project took years to reach the screen. In 2005 it was announced that George Clooney would direct and star, with the Coens producing. Clooney and Grant Heslov reworked the original material and merged it with a historical story about a 1957 incident in Levittown, Pennsylvania, where a Black family faced harassment and violence. Filming began in October 2016 in California, with a cast that at various points included Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson and Oscar Isaac; Brolin was later cut from the final edit. Alexandre Desplat composed the score and Robert Elswit shot the film. Paramount released it in the United States on a budget of about 25 million dollars.

Reception and legacy

The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2017 and reached American cinemas in late October. Critics gave it mostly negative notices, and audiences stayed away: its box-office take fell well short of its production cost. Over time its legacy is tied more to its mix of noir and dark comedy than to any lasting influence on film history, and it is remembered as an uneven attempt to join two very different stories.