Cyrus is a terrific movie. It’s also a movie that does a fine job of making the viewer feel uncomfortable. One feels embarrassed by the glimpses we’re being granted into the characters’ lives – the moments seem too private for our prying eyes.
The screening I attended had four couples. Afterwards, one left saying, “two thumbs down.” Another couple slipped out quietly, quickly. I’m not sure what they thought, but I didn’t get good vibes.
My wife and I turned to the other remaining couple – we know them well – and we all shared a “four thumbs up” moment. It’s a movie that will be loved and hated. It is a litmus test. How nakedly can characters be exposed without things becoming creepy? Answers will vary.
The movie is filled with closed doors and characters standing outside aching to peek in. The first scene follows Jamie (Catherine Keener) as she slips uninvited into the home of her ex-husband John (John C. Reilly). She pauses at his closed bedroom door. Then she barges in to everyone’s embarrassment – hers, his, ours.
John begins dating Molly (Marisa Tomei) and visiting her home that she shares with her 21-year-old son Cyrus (Jonah Hill), a home filled with doors, closed doors that unnerve us, and open doors that unnerve us by being left open. There’s even a door that “must always be left open.” John pauses at doors. He peeks inside. He quickly closes them again.
Cyrus is like a symphony of violated private spaces. John’s bedroom wasn’t safe from Jamie’s searching eyes and John and Molly first meet at a party after she follows him into backyard bushes to watch him drunkenly relieving himself.
Later, John discovers where Molly lives by following her home one night, like a private eye, headlights off and prowling up to her window for a peek. The first act of the movie plays as if everyone is a stalker.
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