“Maybe it all means something” ruminated Ransom Drysdale (Chris Evans) after contemplating the moments he shared with his grandfather before his death. Rian Johnson’s Knives Out whodunit is full of moments where you ask your self does that piece of information, does that camera shot, does that costume choice, does that mean something?
It felt like summer. One of the key indicators for me that summer has arrived is when women start wearing floral dresses and the day of the screening they were out in full force. Guys usually don’t have much variation in their work attire so its harder to judge looking at what men wear. And Knives Out felt fresh, it felt new, it felt like a nice respite from all of the prequels, sequels, book adaptions, fairy tale retellings etc ad nauseam that we are getting bombarded with these days.
I say the film is a whodunit because the film is catapulted into action by the apparent suicide of the patriarch of the family, Harlon Drysdale (Christopher Plummer), but, the film goes from a whodunit, to a howwasitdun, to a whywasitdun, back to a whoddunit. We are taken on this journey by following the most innocent character in the film, Halron’s devoted and compassionate nurse, Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas). She only wants to look after the old man who has shown her kindness.
Harlon Drysdale created an empire writing crime detective novels and the film playfully uses all those cliches. A squabbling family full of motives and greed, that is portrayed wonderfully by Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson. They are all sneaky and crafty in their own way, they are all given enough screen time to make you connect with them but also despise them.
There is the clean-cut Detective Elliot (Lakeith Stanfield who is always entertaining), the cop that is a sycophant of Harlon’s writing, Tropper Wagner (Noah Segan), and the mercurial Southern Gentleman Detective Benoit Blanc (Danial Craig). The absurdity of Craig’s southern drawl plays well with the absurdity of the action happening around him. The whole film plays out like one of Harlon’s detective stories.
Then enter Ransom Drysdale enters and causes all hell to break loose. The bad boy of the family, but also, in some ways, the most honest person in the family. Where everyone else pretends to love Harlon, they just want his money and power, Ransom does not disguise what he is after. Chris Evans appears to relish this role as a polar opposite to the paragon of justice, Captain America, that he has been playing for the last few years. Once he comes onto the scene the story really heats up.
And then we get back to maybe it all means something. Everyone in the film wants money, power, or not have to do to much work except for Marta and Benoit. Marta only wants to do a good job for Harlon and support her mother and Benoit only cares about the truth.
It seems this film is an indictment on the film industry who spend large sums of money on proven intellectual property at the expense of smaller original films like this. Everyone is out for themselves wherein Marta and Benoit have a nobler more honourable goal. As Picasso said, “Art is the lie that makes us realize the truth”.
People care about what they are measured on and at the moment that is either Oscars or billion-dollar box offices and because of that we film-goes miss out on wonderful interesting films like this, so put on your favourite summer dress and escape the heat in a nice air-conditioned cinema and enjoy an original idea that is a really just playing with tropes from other genres that is actually a meta-commentary on the industry itself. Or you can ignore all the meta-contextual stuff and just watch a fun film with great actors, mostly acting abhorrently, and that’s a great time too.
Nov 27, 2019
Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe