Get Out movie review

Review of “Get Out”

Reviewed by Dan McDonald

            Allow me to begin with a personal note to readers. I love this film. I want to tell people how and why I loved this film. I want others to see this film without knowing what to expect of the plot. I know that in some circles everybody is seeing this film and in some circles hardly anyone is seeing this film. I especially want some in those circles where no one is seeing this film to want to see it. If a few people go and see the movie because of this blog then I will consider that I have done a service to the public. If those who saw the movie read this blog and think I did a half way decent job of reviewing it without giving away the plot, then I will have met and exceeded my writing hopes. I would be extremely satisfied if my writing encouraged someone to see the movie or if it helped someone who loves the movie to share to another why this is one of the movies they might wish to see.

            One of the things about “Get Out” which worked for me was the dialogue that brilliantly and progressively moved the story line forward while deepening the mystery of the story being revealed. There are multiple occasions in which dialogue is accepted at face value when it first is delivered on the screen, and then later you are seeing the story line developing and realize how that one piece of dialogue earlier on contained a hint about what was the story all along just under the surface of what was being said. I am not sure that I am expert enough to say this from a technical perspective, but from my seat in the theater, I was amazed at how cohesive the dialogue was in both preparing the viewer to understand the events of the story, while also keeping the mystery of the movie suppressed until we discover with the character what the true nature of the mystery is that he finds himself facing. The dialogue begins innocently enough and able to be taken at face value. Gradually the realization takes place that some things aren’t what they seem. There is something weird about the place where we find ourselves. We are facing the events as they unfold particularly through the “eyes” of the character Chris presented by actor Daniel Kaluuya.

            As the plot deepens and thickens, Chris finds himself in a place where his mental state seems confused at the boundary lines of reality and nightmare. He is the young African American male who has a solid photography career where he is earning a bit of a name for himself. His girlfriend Rose is his supportive girlfriend driving him upstate to her family’s estate along the lake. They reach Rose’s family’s home and Chris sees the family’s black servant working on the lawn. Chris enters the home and is greeted by a father and mother who have their quirks but assure Chris he is welcome there. The conversation can be strange sometimes and Rose’s father admits his house with its eclectic taste of items gathered from other cultures, black servants, and white privilege must seem like a total cliché. Rose’s father confirms what Rose had told him earlier, her dad if he could would have voted for Obama a third time. Chris can agree with that.

            Rose has had chosen an unfortunate weekend for bringing Chris to meet her parents. Every year a gathering of friends from Rose’s departed grandfather and grandmother come to visit the family. They are mostly white and the conversation borders on weirdness. Chris finds himself trying to navigate the uncomfortableness of being Rose’s black boyfriend as Chris finds himself feeling like every eye in the place is focused on him.

            The movie story line is moved forward sometimes with a wonderful use of symbols. One of the symbols that stood out most to me in the film is a stuffed toy animal near Rose’s bed. Chris wakes up from a nightmare and as he looks to the table next to the bed he sees this stuffed toy animal. It is situated so its eyes are focused on Chris. Chris is already weirded out by how all eyes seem focused on him. The little toy animal seems momentarily quite strange. In a short time, Chris’ girlfriend Rose comes out of the bathroom and looks at him. For a moment Chris sees Rose looking at him and it seems like she is just one more person looking at him. He recovers and welcomes her. She has become his trusted lifeline in this increasingly uncomfortable setting where the boundary line between trusted reality and haunted nightmare are becoming progressively incapable of being distinguished.

            I won’t go much more into the plot line of the movie, as I still hope to encourage others to see the movie for the first time. The movie is written as a story, but it is clear that the story itself is a way for us as viewers to explore inter-racial relationships through Chris’ eyes. As I am a white man in his early sixties, this was an important perspective I would like to imagine I have tried to understand, but viewing this movie where an African-American male has written and directed the movie helped make me a passenger to the experience Chris experienced in this strange home of obvious white privilege in the isolated regions of upstate New York.

            I have only gradually understood in my older years that for many of us who are whites our understanding of blacks is shaped not so much by our being in community with a large number of African-Americans until we see each person as a unique individual. Instead we live isolated lives in predominately white communities where our perception of the other race is formed by our sterilized ideals where we imagine the African-American welcome to be a passenger within our journey through modern life.

            We speak to ourselves through our accepted ideals. Those ideals often lack depth. They are a veneer. For example often we express ourselves erasing the otherness of races. We say we believe that there is only one race, the human race. We believe that when we say it. But then something strange happens. One African-American enters our home, our work place, our community and suddenly everyone’s eyes are fixed on the African-American in our presence. If we believe in only one race, why are all of our eyes on this person of this other race we seem to deny existing?

            The reality, at least for most of us, when we are honest is that our American landscape is haunted by the frustrating feelings of failure in racial relationships throughout American history. In our white side of this haunted landscape we imagine ourselves able to navigate the difficult pathway of haunted racial relations through our precious ideals. If we can only find the right ideals we will be able to invite our African brothers and sisters to share the idealized lives we have been granted we imagine by God’s grace. We imagine our privilege to be based in God’s grace, where an uncomfortable sense for others is that our white privilege has always been rooted in a determination to establish borders for a progressively growing of white privilege where Native Americans and people of color are marginalized in their communities kept at a safe distance from us. In our idealized programs for helping the African-American we imagine our ideals can overturn the few remaining difficulties. In the end the disturbing description of the obviously dysfunctional white family seen in “Get Out” is their confidence that in offering Chris to be a passenger in their blessed lives they were in reality rescuing him from the marginalization in which they had found him. This it seems is at the heart of the inter-racial relationships haunting our culture.