When American suburbia became so toxic a subject in popular entertainment is hard to pinpoint. These negative depictions have long been a significant contribution to film and television dramas for decades, but there are more dystopian narratives about 1950s suburban settings, or which pointedly emulate them – than from any other era. Curiously, many of these films critical of the 1950s have been made during the last two decades or so by filmmakers who weren’t alive then. Don’t Worry, Darling like most 1950s style dystopian narratives has a bright, cheerful, convivial surface. However, it’s not long before the lush, well-maintained “carpets” (so to speak) start growing with vaguely sinister lumps of danger. Everything can’t be magical and blessed for long. Tragedy always hovers just around the corner in a 1950s suburbia playbook.
Don’t Worry, Darling concerns a young couple, Alice and Jack Chambers (played by Florence Pugh and Harry Styles) who live in a remote, supposedly idyllic 1950s desert community where the pretty wives pass their time socializing by the community pool with cocktails and gossip, while their husbands dutifully work on a secret project at the headquarters in a restricted area outside of town. It’s never clear whether the project is a government/military concern or from a private source. The wives don’t question their husbands about this, but everyone is enthralled (or are supposed to be) with the Palm Springs-type community founder Frank (Chris Pine).
Frank is thought of as charming and affable to most around town, but Alice nurses suspicions about him and this utopia he has created. We’re never sure if there’s anything redeeming about him or if he’s Satan incarnate. Alice knows something is seriously awry when her friend Margaret becomes a pariah after her young son died under mysterious circumstances in the desert – where nobody is supposed to be wandering around. Tragically, Alice sees Margaret commit suicide leading to a cover up which threatens to destroy this community ironically named “Victory”. High-concept communities like Victory from Don’t Worry, Darling or films with similar themes such as The Stepford Wives (1975) and The Truman Show (1998) are always enticing, have idyllic settings promising lives of comfort and privilege, but cannot function without the tight control and micromanaging of a charismatic guru or a secretive executive clique.
In fact, narratives like Don’t Worry, Darling cross the line into religious cult territory although they don’t have actual religious fervor. Obsession with a heavenly deity is anathema to the leaders of the aloof, self-contained worlds of Victory, Stepford, or Seahaven Island. Gods of technology are the only ones that occupy the lofty pedestals and are to be revered by all in the company towns. One point that was quite intriguing to me was how the residents of Victory were pointedly warned to avoid traveling into the desert beyond the town boundaries. It became like the forbidden fruit of the one tree that Adam & Eve were not supposed to touch in the Garden Of Eden.
If there is a religious overtone to Don’t Worry, Darling this would be it. For those that defy this major command to not venture into the desert – the consequences have almost biblical proportions. Although Don’t Worry, Darling is an absorbing story with an attractive, talented cast and a compelling mystery, the story raises more questions than it answers, especially since we obviously want to know what is so secretive going on, as though Victory is sinister like the fabled Area 51. We never do find out exactly what is going on out there in the “empty” desert, just what point the story is making, what it’s striving to achieve.
