Comments on: Suburbicon Movie Primer and Explanation

By: Lola Bonenfant

Lola Bonenfant — Sun, 09 Jul 2023 20:56:23 +0000

I found it a disappointing movie because there were a lot of details mentioned in the dialogue and storyline that were not at all developed and hence, did not make sense. I understand that Clooney was trying to make a statement about racism but honestly, the fact that I was confused throughout the movie and the characters seemed to be making illogical decisions, just made the story less believable. Also there were a lot of unimportant details thrown here and there that added to my confusion.

#1- Why did they make Rose a twin? I was so confused as to why there were 2 Julianne Moores on the screen at the same time, I missed the first part of the movie. Really, it was not necessary for Rose and Margaret to be twins. Did they just want to explore how to have the same actress play 2 roles at the same time? It would have been less confusing if they had not been twins. Also, I find it very hard to believe that a twin would conspire to murder her own twin.

#2- I understood that Maggie was living with her sister and sister’s family before her sister was killed. Was she supposed to be helping? Was she just visiting?
Where was she sleeping? It seemed only after Rose was killed that a mattress was put in the basement, on a pool table… Where was the mattress before this? Why did they put the mattress on a pool table?

#3- Why did they keep referring to being Episcopalian? I am unfamiliar with this religion and it left me wondering if this religion is one where husbands are supposed to beat their wives? Why was their religion important to the story?

#4- Why did they include a weird sex scene where Maggie was yelling No please! and Gardner was hitting her with a ping pong racket? How did this add anything to the story?

#5- So, I think the idea was that Gardner had hired the 2 guys to kill his wife but he did not actually plan on paying them. So, when the police picked up the 2 idiots, why didn’t Gardner and Maggie identify them as the murderers? In jail, they wouldn’t be able to pursue Gardner… Was he afraid that the robbers would incriminate him in the murder? If so, it should have been explained.

#6- Did Gardner also owe money to the mob? The policeman mentioned his suspicions during a conversation with Gardner. So, this added to my confusion… were the 2 guys hired by Gardner or were they moonlighting for the mob?

#7- In the beginning, we see that Rose is in a wheelchair and when the robbers come she explains that she had been in a car accident and her husband was driving. Later on, the insurance investigator indicates that the Gardner had increased the insurance coverage not long before the car accident. To me, this made it seem like he had tried to kill his wife before. This seems pretty unlikely that someone would try to kill someone else by driving as they would likely injure themselves severely at the same time. Is that what they were insinuating?

#8- If the Uncle had a gun (which he gave to Nicky), why didn’t he use it to shoot the guy who was trying to kill Nicky? Instead, we have no idea how he kills the attacker but the uncle gets stabbed and, consequently, gets killed.

#9- Why does the uncle get Nicky to hide in a closet instead of telling him to run outside and get help?

#10- Why was the end scene one where Nicky and his neighbor friend playing catch? This is totally implausible. A child who has seen his aunt dead, his uncle dead and his dad die is not going to calmly go outside the following day and play catch with a friend, as if nothing happened.

To me, this film felt like- here are 2 stories- let’s weave them together quickly, hurry up and get it done. It’s as though they thought, with Matt Damon and Julianne Moore in tbe film, who cares about the actual plot?

If they had really wanted to make a statement, they should have made it more believable, where it would have seemed that the characters were using their brains at least a little.

I will be weary of future movies with George Clooney as director and also with Matt Damon and Julianne Moore in them.

By: Nellie Henderson

Nellie Henderson — Tue, 11 Feb 2020 23:05:13 +0000

Strangely cartoon-like film. As if a comic strip, with pared-down characters either good and shiny, or evil and disgusting. Yet this was a very brave movie to make in Trump’s America, and to release it there was extremely powerful, given the events in Charlotte and how white people’s ugliness never looks that ugly to other white people. So whites are responsible for 99 per cent of the corporate horror that is the USA. White people are responsible for most mass shootings in the good old US of A. Yet the real threat, even according to some who think themselves ‘liberal’ comes from young black and Hispanic men!? It seems these stupid theories about good and evil serve the purpose of letting the white criminals entirely off the hook. “Some very fine people” like the inhabitants of this Suburbicon place, are not at all fine with me. I think George Clooney is a self-hating white, and I congratulate him. I am another. We are right.

By: Raymond

Raymond — Sat, 07 Jul 2018 15:03:14 +0000

Not meaning it in a judgemental way (ie. was the film good or bad), I would say I was “fascinated” right from the beginning to see it out. By the end of the movie I thought the actors mainly did a great job with the script they had to work with. But the satirisation of white middle class racism, in spite of its over-the-top imagery, didn’t delve far enough into depicting its harmful reality from the “other” (Black/Yellow/Red/Muslim/etc./etc.) perspective, and actually “whitewashed” what could have been a more meaningful message.

By: Aristotle

Aristotle — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 17:13:21 +0000

My gratitude goes to you for this primer. I appreciate your candor. It’s awful to watch a movie you don’t enjoy but have to finish just because you were hooked into a rabbit hole you cannot just walk away from. There are these kinds of movie that are just awkward and/or ugly and I would rather not have watched it. A bad example is Natural Born Killers because I actually did enjoy that in a black humor kinda perspective…. but it was an ugly movie about the ugly side of humanity. And, preferably, when I’m having my mind bent, I’d rather be watching something pretty. Like Inception.