FILM
Billionaire Tears
Wealthy whodunit writer’s heirs turn on the Latina nurse
BY STEVE ERICKSON
Rian Johnson’s “Knives
Out” turns class struggle
and Trumpism into
the cozy fare of a “Murder,
She Wrote” or “Masterpiece
Mystery!” episode. Acknowledging
classism and the fact that the one
percent are usually awful people,
rather than honorable folks whose
words are gems of inspirational
wisdom, no longer seems taboo.
Look at the success of the HBO series
“Succession.” Bong Joon-ho’s
“Parasite,” which has turned into
a pop culture phenomenon beyond
the typical reach of foreign fi lms
in the US in recent years, sinks its
knives far deeper into similar subject
matter.
The hero of “Knives Out” is
Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas),
a nurse to wealthy crime novelist
Harlan Thrombey (Christopher
Plummer). Just after turning 85,
Harlan is found dead at his estate.
His middle-aged children — Linda
(Jamie Lee Curtis), Walt (Michael
Shannon), and Joni (Toni Collette
— had expected a celebration
but are now faced both with their
grief and their prospect of an inheritance.
Detective Benoit Blanc
(Daniel Craig), Lieutenant Elliott
(LaKeith Stanfi eld) and Trooper
Wagner (Noah Segal) arrive to investigate
the case. At fi rst, it appears
to be a suicide, with Harlan
having stabbed himself in the
torso and slit this throat. Since
Marta had helping administer his
medicine, she has to prove she had
nothing to do with the death. Harlan’s
children bicker among themselves,
shouting talking points
about immigration and racism.
Blanc is an American. Indeed,
Daniel Craig speaks in a Southern
accent that drawls every “I”
into a fl at “ah.” (The actor says
he based his voice on Civil War
historian Shelby Foote.) But his
name is obviously a reference to
Agatha Christie’s detective Hercule
Poirot. Most of “Knives Out”
takes place within one setting, the
large Thrombey mansion. The fact
that Thrombey is a novelist adds a
Ana de Armas and Daniel Craig in Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out,” which opens November 27 citywide.
Christopher Plummer in Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out.”
particularly meta layer to the fi lm,
with him commenting on how his
experiences can benefi t writing.
Plummer is now 89, and he brings
a full lifetime of experience to the
part. He’s old enough to feel like a
living link to the time when Christie’s
work held sway in our culture.
Given his casting as James Bond,
Craig’s performance as Blanc can’t
help resonating in the opposite direction:
he’s a dandy, dressed in
fl oral ties, with little machismo.
Johnson’s fi lms have always
been interested in playing around
with the conventions of genre. His
CLAIRE FOLGER/ LIONSGATE
CLAIRE FOLGER/ LIONSGATE
2005 debut was “Brick,” a detective
story whose gumshoe was a high
school kid. His third fi lm, “Looper,”
took to sci-fi , weaving a complicated
tale of time travel and identity
exchange that required having
Joseph Gordon-Levitt made up to
resemble a young Bruce Willis. The
clout he received from making “Star
Wars: The Last Jedi” undoubtedly
enabled him to get “Knives Out” fi -
nanced in present-day Hollywood;
by contemporary studio standards,
it’s a fairly eccentric fi lm, one more
likely to get distributed by a company
like Sony Pictures Classics
than Lionsgate.
Thrombey is a very sympathetic
character who is closer to Marta
than his actual family. He complains
that they’ve grown lazy on
the money he earned. (He got rich
by making art rather than inheriting
wealth, which may be a sign
that Johnson sees himself in the
character.) In a running gag, none
of his children can remember
where Marta is from, throwing out
different Latin American countries.
But the way she gets roped into
one argument because she’s seen
as a “good,” legal immigrant comes
back to haunt the Thrombeys. The
fi lm has one brilliant metaphor for
what it’s trying to do, aesthetically
and politically: a shot of Marta and
her mother watching “Murder, She
Wrote” dubbed into Spanish. This
is the present and future of the US,
it suggests, and Anglos had better
get used to it. But even the rich
white characters who claim to be
liberals fear money slipping away
from them to Marta — who, in fact
— is so honest that she throws up
if she tells a lie.
This is all well and good, but
watching the fi lm it sometimes
feels like the topical references
were thrown together at the last
minute after reading arguments on
social media. Still, its jokes about
donuts and dialogue about how no
one has actually read “Gravity’s
Rainbow” are a delight. “Knives
Out” is loaded with fl ashbacks,
sudden revelations, and reversals.
Its greatest pleasure lies in storytelling
about storytelling, planting
clues that pay off an hour later.
Johnson brings together a type
of detective story and upper-class
setting from 20th-century England
informed by contemporary American
politics. Instead of looking
back toward the hard-boiled fi ction
that inspired “Brick,” “Knives
Out” suggests that it’s necessary
to turn to comedy to process our
world’s unfairness. It’s light entertainment
for #theresistance.
KNIVES OUT | Directed by Rian
Johnson | Lionsgate | Opens Nov.
27 | citywide
November 28 - December 4 30 , 2019 | GayCityNews.com
/GayCityNews.com
