Get Out (15.)
Directed by Jordan Peele.
Starring Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones and Stephen Root. 104 mins.
All you really need to know about Get Out is that it is The Stepford Wives with black people. Chris (Kaluuya) has been invited to visit the wealthy parents of his white girlfriend (Williams) out in the country. He is sceptical about their reaction to him but she reassures him that they are determined liberal and not the least bit racist. How could they be? Her father used to be in The West Wing. So why then do they have black servants who seem oddly passive and almost lobotomised?
Cinema audiences are mighty capricious with what they choose to reward with their money. Great films go unseen, while high concept rubbish can take a large chunk out of a billion dollars even though almost nobody enjoyed them, and sometimes, a perfectly fine but largely unremarkable film will turn up at just the right time, tap into some stream in the collective consciousness and sail into enormous success. This has happened to Get Out in the States, where a film in which seemingly decent and reasonable white people suddenly reveal themselves to be monsters has kind of hit a nerve. Audiences of all races love the movie for the way it lets them release their frustrations and fears, and show that they are on the right side history.
I have just one issue with it: it doesn't make a lick of sense. Or rather the racial aspect of the big reveal about what the white people are doing out in the woods doesn't. (Obviously I can't enlarge on this without giving away the ending.) The movie though is slick enough that it might only dawn on you when you are on your way home. Getting people worked up over implausible paranoid fantasies is very in at the moment but at least Get Out does its with some style and humour.
Directed by Jordan Peele.
Starring Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones and Stephen Root. 104 mins.
All you really need to know about Get Out is that it is The Stepford Wives with black people. Chris (Kaluuya) has been invited to visit the wealthy parents of his white girlfriend (Williams) out in the country. He is sceptical about their reaction to him but she reassures him that they are determined liberal and not the least bit racist. How could they be? Her father used to be in The West Wing. So why then do they have black servants who seem oddly passive and almost lobotomised?
Cinema audiences are mighty capricious with what they choose to reward with their money. Great films go unseen, while high concept rubbish can take a large chunk out of a billion dollars even though almost nobody enjoyed them, and sometimes, a perfectly fine but largely unremarkable film will turn up at just the right time, tap into some stream in the collective consciousness and sail into enormous success. This has happened to Get Out in the States, where a film in which seemingly decent and reasonable white people suddenly reveal themselves to be monsters has kind of hit a nerve. Audiences of all races love the movie for the way it lets them release their frustrations and fears, and show that they are on the right side history.
I have just one issue with it: it doesn't make a lick of sense. Or rather the racial aspect of the big reveal about what the white people are doing out in the woods doesn't. (Obviously I can't enlarge on this without giving away the ending.) The movie though is slick enough that it might only dawn on you when you are on your way home. Getting people worked up over implausible paranoid fantasies is very in at the moment but at least Get Out does its with some style and humour.
