<i>The Dinner</i> Is a Stew of Privilege and Resentment
Oren Moverman’s new film, in which two couples meet to discuss an incident involving their sons, seethes with toxic envy and moral decay.
Like the 2011 Steve Coogan movie , is an examination of the frailty of the human spirit structured around the ritual excess of formal dining. Instead of a fictionalized version of himself, Coogan plays Paul Lohman, an unstable misanthrope who joins his wife, his brother, and his sister-in-law for an extravagant dinner at a fiendishly expensive restaurant to discuss a situation the two couples’ children have gotten themselves into. But unlike , there are no moments of levity or extended Michaelis two hours of unrelenting nastiness, steeped in the trappings of extreme wealth and the toxic privilege it affords.
