Racial Tension In The Film Suburbicon

1959, painted on the backdrop of racial tension in their community after a black family moves in across the street, Suburbicon tells the story of a family that looks perfect only on the outside. A violent faked home invasion leads to the death of Rose Lodge, and her husband Gardner Lodge has to try to rebuild his life and cover up the truth about her planned murder. Rose’s sister Margaret moves in shortly after her death to help take care of Nicky, their son, but he senses her intentions are not well. Margaret begins to take on not only Rose’s previous responsibilities but her old life overall by being in a relationship with Gardner and changing her appearance to mimic her deceased sister. Suburbicon tells an interesting story, difficult to
While it is easy to understand that the filmmakers want to show the dark side of someone seen to the outside world as a good quiet family man, Gardners character isn’t complex in a way that leads to good storytelling. We learn that he hired hitmen to kill his wife after he denies ever seeing the criminals who invaded his house in a police lineup. However we never get to learn what his motive was for the murder or for turning Margaret into his “new Rose”. Throughout the story his character becomes less easy to trust after we learn that he isn’t planning to pay the men he hired and he is trying to flee the country. I feel it would have made for a much more thought provoking movie if we were given his intention as that felt like the missing piece of the puzzle when it came to piecing together Gardner's complicated narrative. Although what makes the most sense is that he was probably after Rose’s life insurance money, which we learn was raised substantially prior to her murder. An insurance agents arrives at the home to clear up the red flags he sees in their paperwork, and is clubbed by Gardner when he threatens to report them for
The rest of the community is distracted, rioting in front of the Mayers household progressively causing their family more and more danger by destroying their car, attempting to light their house on fire and putting racist emblems on their house. With no one looking on the other side of the street, mayhem ensues. Margaret notices Nicky, the young son, knows too much about his father's stake in his mother's murder and hears him on the phone telling his uncle that he is in danger. We then see her crush several sleeping pills into Nicky’s dinner and invite him downstairs. Knowing the danger, we follow Nicky as he attempts to barricade the door and plans to hide till his uncle (who we never learn much about during the course of the film) arrives to save him. Gardner is out of the house hiding the body of the insurance agent he had to kill to keep quiet about their fraud and is approached by one of the hitmen demanding payment and threatening to kill his son and Margaret. It then cuts to the other hitman who is fighting with Margaret which eventually leads to her murder. Gardner offers to pay them just before the first hitman is hit by a car and dies. Gardner rushes home to find Nicky to be the only one alive and holding a gun inside a closet in case he was found by one of the hitmen. Gardner takes the gun from Nicky and in his last confusing statement, tells