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Daniel Kaluuya finds himself well out of his depth in Get Out |
Director: Jordan Peele
Cast: Daniel Kaluuya (Chris Washington), Allison Williams
(Rose Armitage), Catherine Keener (Missy Armitage), Bradley Whitford (Dean
Armitage), Caleb Landry Jones (Jeremy Armitage), Stephen Root (Jim Hudson),
Lakeith Stanfield (Logan King), Lil Rel Howery (Rod Williams), Marcus Henderson
(Walter), Betty Gabriel (Georgina)
Really great genre film-making transcends its genre, while
demonstrating all its strengths. Get Out
is nominally a horror film, but strangely it didn’t feel quite like that while
I was watching it. It’s more of a horror-inflected social drama with lashings
of satire and commentary on race in America. It’s a smart, deeply unsettling
film, which really makes you think about how racism has subtly developed in
America over the past 100 years. It also manages to feel very much like a film
caught at the turning point between Obama and Trump.
Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) is a young, black
photographer dating wealthy white Rose Armitage (Allison Williams). He
reluctantly agrees to spend the weekend with her family on their countryside estate.
Rose’s parents, neurosurgeon Dean (Bradley Whitford) and hypnotherapist Missy
(Catherine Keener) are almost overly welcoming and in expressing their liberal credentials.
Chris is doubly unsettled that the Armitages’ house has two black workers, both
of whom seem alarmingly compliant. The weekend coincides with an annual
get-together the Armitage family hosts, where the guests (all rich and white)
make comments to Chris admiring his physique, build, sporting ability and
genetic advantages. Chris can sense something is wrong – but can’t even begin
to guess the mystery at the heart of the Armitage house.
Get Out is, more
than anything else, a film about racial politics in America. It trades in the unsettled
discomfiture some liberal white people feel when they actually have to interact
with a black male from a different background, and then inverts this into a
horror. But it rings true: the father so keen to be seen as liberal he uses the
phrase “my man” repeatedly, praises Obama, shows off his “multi-cultural art”, delightedly
repeats stories about Jesse Owens; the guests at the party who pinch Chris’ muscles,
and praise his physique. It feels like a situation where Chris is invited but
not welcome.
In turn, it also inverts the discomfort some black people
feel in white middle-class society. Chris finds his hosts patronising and
condescending in their desire to be seen as open-minded. He’s uncomfortable at the
black staff. Every second in the house reminds him that he doesn’t belong
there. But the genius of Peele is that this could be nothing to do with
anything except seeing a black man being constantly made aware of his
difference in an unfamiliar milieu.
Chris though, being basically a decent guy, does what any
polite person in a minority tends to do: he works overtime to put his hosts at
ease. He keeps quiet, he smiles, he laughs at jokes, he tries to gently drift away. As almost the
sole black person, he’s lost and out-of-his-depth and comfort zone (he’s
reluctant about even going). All the other black people he meets are strange –
Peel brilliantly shows the mixed messages from the servants in particular. In
one brilliant sequence Georgina, the maid, says everything is fine while
smiling and simultaneously crying. A black party guest dresses and behaves like
the rest of the white people around him: has he just completely assimilated or
is there something sinister going on here? Chris might guess more – but until
it’s too late he decides to batten down the hatches and ride out an awkward
weekend.
The house has plenty of mystery – there is a throw-away
reference to a locked off-limits basement. Early in the film the couple hit a
deer with their car: the police demand to see Chris’ ID even though he wasn’t
driving, to the outrage of Allison. It’s a brilliantly eerie opening that hints
at danger to come, both in the corpse of the deer and the suspicion of the
police. It’s a brilliant touch to explore the barely acknowledged underlying
racism of some middle-class Americans – this liberal elite would be horrified
to hear the suggestion that they are anything but open-minded, but in fact have
deeply paternalistic, two-tier beliefs that have subtly developed since the end
of segregation.
The film is played superbly by the whole cast. Bradley Whitford
brilliantly inverts his Josh Lyman persona. Catherine Keener is a sort of warm
Earth Mother figure, with darkness and control under the surface. Both
characters seem suspicious and yet are both so open and direct in what they say,
you think it’s almost too obvious to assume they are villains. Caleb Landry
Jones as their son is both full of alpha-male welcome and strange, violent and
scornful looks and yearnings. Allison Williams as Chris’ girlfriend seems a
strange presence in this household, but her honest sympathy for Chris, and her
growing realisation with him that something is wrong, is the one thread Chris
has to hang onto.
The star-turn of the movie is of course though Daniel
Kaluuya as Chris. A young British actor, he’s superb here in a reactive role, trying
to persuade himself everything is fine. His unease and insecurity are
brilliantly done, as are the surface humour and reserved politeness he uses to
disguise this. In a paranoid film, he is going out of his way to not appear paranoid.
His relief in seeing any other black people – and then confused discomfort at
their behaviour – is endlessly brilliant. As the plot progresses, Kaluuya takes
Chris to some dark and emotional places, conveying both despair, fury and pain
brilliantly.
Peele’s film is not perfect. Introduce a character as a
hypnotist and you are probably tipping the hat a little too soon – though to be
fair, Peele even lampshades this by having Chris’ friend Rod (a hilariously
endearing Lil Rel Howery) immediately point this out. The explosion of violence
when it comes at the end is gratifying, but a little too much almost for a film
about lack of power. The DVD contains an alternative ending that is, in fact,
far better and more appropriate, which continues this theme (and is what I
expected the ending to be as the film entered its final act) but was replaced
because Peele felt (he says on the commentary) it needed a more upbeat ending.
Get Out though is
both an excellent paranoia thriller with lashings of horror, and also a
brilliant satire on race in America. Trading on the comedy of embarrassment, it
has genuine things to say about how the racial divide hasn’t really gone away
at all. Both funny and also deeply terrifying, its final reveal of what is
going on is brilliant and also rings very true – as well as casting new light
on several scenes we have already seen. Peele is a first-time director – but
based on this he certainly won’t be one and done.
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