Knives Out Review (Archive)

0:00This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Breakthrough the busiest time of year with the brand new Peloton cross training tread plus powered by Peloton IQ. With real-time guidance and endless ways to move, you can personalize your workouts and train with confidence, helping you reach your goals in less time. Let yourself run, lift, sculpt, push, and go. Explore the new Peloton Cross-Training Tread Plus at OnePeloton.com. Hey, film spotters. Josh and Adam here. Wednesdays are when we drop something in the feed from the Film Spotting Archive. And so, here we go this week. our 2019 review of knives out 2019 Adam I feel like there was a window when we were playfully recalling that you know the before times I think now we're in a different period where we just pretend like 2020 to I don't know 2023 for didn't exist right just don't refer to him at all but 2019 sounds like a long time ago the film spotting archive goes all the way back to 2005 we're just going back about six years, but you're right.

1:06When you think about the before times, it might as well be 60 years. Knives Out, Rian Johnson now has the third Knives Out mystery coming out, and we're highly anticipating it. We thought to get ourselves ready, to get you ready for that film, let's go back and hear our discussion of that very first movie, that very first highly successful movie that launched this franchise. So here is our review of Knives Out. I'm Detective Lieutenant Elliot, and this is Trooper Wagner. We just want to ask a few questions. We understand the night of his demise, the family had gathered to celebrate your father's 85th birthday.

1:52How was it? The party? Pre my dad's death? It was great. Jamie Lee Curtis and Lakeith Stanfield in the trailer for Rian Johnson's Knives Out, which opened Thanksgiving weekend. A lot of people went to see it, judging by the box office. I know I was there in the theater with Debbie and we took my daughter B2. We all had a great time with it. It's an Agatha Christie style whodunit, which also stars Toni Collette, Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Michael Shannon. I'm not done yet. Don Johnson and Christopher Plummer. Rian Johnson, well known to us as the namesake for our Golden Brick Award for his great debut film, Brick.

2:35He's also, of course, some people know him as the writer, director of The Last Jedi. Adam, I would say that though this is a fun whodunit, the moral burden of wealth really weighs heavily on this film. According to the movie's understanding of 2019 America, there is a larger culprit on the loose than the specific killer here. And that culprit is privilege and greed. So what I'd like to know, I've heard a lot of people talking about how much fun they had with this movie. And it's incredibly fun. It's dexterously cunning, immensely entertaining. Did you have more fun with the plot or the politics?

3:13Because the latter is sort of what surprised me more, even though I had no idea where this movie was going plot-wise. Yeah, I'm with you. It definitely was a big surprise to me. I think there is a balance of it. But I think maybe I did in the end have the most fun with the political commentary that we get in this film. And maybe if at some point, either this week or next, we get into a little bit of spoiler talk, I would love to talk about the final shot of this film. Which is among the best shots of the year. It's a shot that set it perfectly by the script and it expresses visually a titanic shift that has taken place.

3:51And honestly, it's just as thrilling a moment as I had in the theater all year. But it gets to the heart of what we're discussing. And you may recall, this was a month or two ago, I posted in our film spotting Slack for you and Sam a comment that I heard from Rian Johnson on another podcast that really surprised me. And it was an interview with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the star of Rian's film Brick, and of course also Looper. He's got a new podcast called Creative Processing with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. and Ryan was on the first episode. The first episode, appropriately, was all about originality and imitation because Ryan has always worked within genres.

4:30And at one point in the interview, and actually in this moment, they're talking about Looper. And Ryan says, you have to be kind of angry about something to write a script, I think. If the thing you're angry about is not something you identify in yourself, I'm always wary of that. So he kind of goes on to say that when he's writing a film and if it has villains in it, He's thinking that it's good to always start from a place where you're not identifying with the good guy, but you're actually identifying with the bad guy, which doesn't mean, obviously, that you're supporting the bad guy, that you agree with the bad guy, that you want others to agree with the bad guy.

5:04But I think Ryan's saying there that you're not really doing the work of an artist if you're not self-aware and if you aren't willing to be harshly introspective and consider all your faults and perhaps reckon with him in a film. And it was just such a striking answer for a lot of reasons, one of them being, too, that if you have ever met Rian Johnson or even if you haven't, if you just know his kind of persona publicly and you've heard him on shows like this or others, you know that he seems utterly incapable of anger, even an ounce of anger. So it really was kind of a profound statement coming from him.

5:34And again, he wasn't talking about Knives Out. But now having seen Knives Out, I realized he absolutely could have been because there are two feelings that my senses clearly coalesced together for this film. One is Ryan's appreciation of genre, especially the whodunit, and the need to express his frustration with the state of things in America. There is political context that the movie directly draws on. There is a mention of our president, although not by name. There's a mention of kids being kept in cages. There's talk of keeping immigrants like the main character in the film, Marta, who is played by Ana de Armas, and she's the caretaker, the nurse for the patriarch who is killed.

6:19There's a sense that she should at least stay in her place. And yet saying all of that, I feel like what he's really critiquing is a general lack of compassion, a lack of humanity that shouldn't be political at all, but sadly really is. And so I'm saying all this because I think what really did strike me about Knives Out is it's the first time maybe we've seen Ryan take external anger and process it on screen via just internal anger, which I think is interesting. but I also don't think we can discount the internal anger part completely and maybe at some point if we talk to Ryan we can get into this a little bit but I feel like maybe he's acknowledging some very small part of himself of ourselves that understands the Thrombey family and their sense of entitlement and their sense of privilege and how nice it is to have nice things and not have to want for anything but also maybe it comes from Ryan again purely speculating here but maybe it's a sense of someone feeling like they're not doing enough.

7:17As we all bemoan these things we see occurring around us, I think we all feel a little bit paralyzed and wonder, should I be doing more instead of sitting here on a podcast right now talking about movies or radio show? Should I be out there trying to make some kind of change? And he's making movies. Maybe he feels like he's not doing enough either. And I think the brilliance of Knives Out is that balance of pure entertainment that delivers completely on its mystery premise with that element of critique. It's a fun puzzle, as you said, with humor and twists and turns, but it also sneakily puts every single viewer in Marta's shoes.

7:54And I can't think of anything more subversive than that. Yeah, you're describing it as a challenge for the audience, and that's why it's doubly encouraging for me that it did so well over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend that audiences are receiving it both as an entertainment and at this other level that you're describing. Hopefully it'll continue to reach more audiences that way. You're so right about this thing being just crackerjack put together. And half of the fun is to realize how in control Rian Johnson is of this story. The only way, and this is how I describe my review, and I have to read it because I can't get this right.

8:32But this plays like an unreliable narrator's recollection of a drunken friend's story that they heard secondhand. But the trick is that's a compliment because all of those levels are purposeful and we're getting each variation of that person's story exactly as we need to to be mystified and yet still entertained. So the amount of control going on in this film. Here's an example. As the suspects start recounting the party, they've all gathered for this patriarch's 85th birthday party. We get a shot of a cake being put down before him with lit candles. And depending on who is telling the story, the shot has them in focus.

9:14They're telling the story of the night from their perspective to Daniel Craig. So just a little way of putting us in their heads. And another example is that we get a flashback in this movie, an extended flashback in the midst of a coin toss. So it's up in the air and we go off in a totally different direction exactly when we need to. So there's deception and there's misperception that's built into the movie's very form that's just a thrill to watch click into place. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I noted that scene as well because they're all talking to the detective and it makes sense that at that point they may know that they are potential suspects.

9:53They certainly want to paint themselves in a positive light. So when they're telling the story of the night, of course, they're going to put themselves in the position where they're being adoring with their father. And it's not at all what really happened. But I also think it makes sense because it's not just that they're lying and Ryan is kind of showing us that they're lying by cutting to those scenes. We know that they've all said that same thing, so it can't be real. I think it speaks overall to a sense of probably denial on their part. In their recollection of the night, that's how they behaved.

10:24They've always been that adoring of their father. That's who they think they are. And I think that the film, you're right, how much it's about misperception. They think they're good people. And the movie shows what they really are. I think it's another level. They think that's how they deserve to be thought of as. Okay, now my mind's blown. Yes, I know what you're getting at. I think it's true. I also would even go back to the opening shot of the film. Do you remember the very opening of this film? Isn't it sort of in slow motion? The dogs. And the dogs running. Yeah, across the lawn of the estate.

10:52When you see these dogs running across the lawn of the estate in slow motion, and that's the credit sequence, I think, essentially, or the first thing right after it, you're watching it going, OK, that's a choice. What is the point of that? But I do think maybe it gets at this idea of what you see isn't always what you think it is because we see throughout the film that depending on who the dogs are encountering, they are either hostile and mean or they're incredibly loving. And when they're running in slow motion with no sound like that, we as viewers are going, OK, are these dogs attacking someone?

11:24What are these dogs? And what direction are they coming? They're coming towards the camera. Exactly. And so that feeds back to your idea of this movie being a challenge. Yeah. They're coming for us. They are. And there are some great performances in this film. Obviously, the whole cast is really strong. But I do think De Armas in particular stands out because she is playing someone in Marta who does have to have an abiding sense of goodness and innocence. but that could also be played as naivete and I don't think she plays that at all and I do think we have to see her then as not just this kind of saintly figure.

11:59We have to see her as a flesh and blood person, not just some angel and I do think there has to be just a little bit of a shred of doubt about her. We think we know exactly who she is and I don't think the movie really challenges that notion but it has to at least introduce the idea that maybe she's not as pure and innocent as she purports to be And the fact that there's just even enough of that hint in her performance, I think, is important. Well, it's definitely the most layered performance. And that's, you know, by virtue of the construction here. Every other character gets less time except for maybe Daniel Craig's private investigator.

12:32But one thing she has to do, the trick she has to pull that she completely manages to pull off is she has to project the fact that she has as much if not more intelligence than anyone else who's acting like she doesn't. but at the same time she has to make it clear that she's legitimately at a loss in this elite world so there's there's a combination of being a step ahead of them potentially a step ahead of them while still being a step behind in other ways because of the the class issues that play in the film and i think she manages that wonderfully it's a great performance and the others mostly just have you know it's one of these films where you just if you're having half as much fun in your seat in the theater as the actors probably were doing these scenes yeah for sure you're going to be having a great time and and they have to this family they have to project malevolence disingenuousness um malice all and and you know and then get really dark as things start to turn and they feel more threatened and everyone in the cast is just great at chris evans chris evans another standout another standout only again because of the construction he's kind of teased at the beginning and then he finally comes in for a big scene and it's a fantastically funny scene with great lines and yeah Captain America can't get enough Captain America.

13:49He's really good at it. I did want to ask you as we're talking about the politics and how overall that seemed to be a real strength of the film. What did you make of the fact that he made it timely? Something I didn't necessarily expect from this film in terms of there being at least one conversation kind of right in the middle of this movie where the politics of the family will seem appropriate for Thanksgiving, maybe that within this family, there's a squabble about president and certain decisions that are being made, just like it's probably playing out at a lot of dinner tables around the country.

14:20We see different shades of perspectives and politics within that family. But instead of just making this sort of a political allegory, which Johnson Johnson could have. Yeah. He decides to make it blatant. I'm going to say you use the word subversive. And although overall, as I said, it surprised me that it got this political and I appreciated that about it. And I'm certainly on the side of the movie's politics. So it's not that. But I think if he had pulled back on some of those, particularly that scene you're talking about, the family discussion scene, where it almost does get to a point like we're going to hit this hot topic, we're going to hit this hot topic, we're going to hit this hot topic.

14:59I think if you let that bubble under the surface a little more, then you're getting subversive. It's still challenging as is. So your description is apt, and I agree with that. And I think that's definitely to the movie's credit. But I think pulling back on the reins a little bit and, again, letting that simmer and letting it sort of sink in underneath and not maybe put certain audience members on edge quite so directly sometimes is a little more effective. Now, I'm more than happy to sit back and watch the fireworks if that's what happens with the film. But, yeah, I think it's obviously it's a choice of modulation that the movie makes.

15:38Well, but it makes it. And we're dancing around things a little bit in terms of understanding what side the filmmaker may or may not be on. I don't think we really know that for sure until the end of the film. I think there are probably a lot of people in the theater who maybe even share the perspective of some of the characters like Don Johnson. Oh, absolutely. Who watching the scene felt like, oh, I like that my voice is being heard. He's speaking for me. He's speaking for me. The movie isn't necessarily critiquing him here. But I think it's important within the context of the entire film that that scene does play out the way it does because it does establish hypocrisy.

16:11And not just of the characters with that particular point of view. There's the most potently hypocritical character, and again, we're dancing around. We don't want to get into spoilers, but is someone who – and this speaks to the subversive point, I think – someone who is on the film's political side. Or who claims to be, yes. Well, yes. To a point. Yeah. I think we're thinking about the same. When something of hers is threatened and is, let's just say, ostensibly an ally until personal cost comes into play. That's exactly right. And those are – that's – to me, that's like a subversive needle that I think is like where the movie is at its best.

16:55I think we needed to know first where his so-called politics lie, where his so-called politics were or how he showed himself to the world and then how he shows himself when it really matters. And when you recognize that they might be coming for the stuff that is his. So in that scene, we have all the people who are talking about how, you know, real Americans pull themselves up by their bootstraps and they shouldn't want any handouts and all that stuff. Well, then when it comes time to divide up the old man's money, they seem to love the idea of them getting something that they didn't earn at all.

17:29They feel like they're entitled to a share of it. Yeah. Right. So there's hypocrisy there. I know. Two different characters. But this is what I love. We see that hypocrisy of that side. We see the other side as well. We see the hypocrisy of those who are the more liberal ones in the argument who decry the other's worldview right up until it affects them. And once it affects them, then all of a sudden they turn in to those other vipers. And we even see that in all of them in the way that they all claim to love Marta and that she's part of the family, but not one of them actually knows what country she keeps changing.

18:00They all get that wrong. One of the jokes of the film. And I think one of the best and most pointed jokes in the film. There is more we could say about Knives Out, probably if we were willing to really get into spoilers, including I would love at some point to dive into the ending of the film. And maybe that's what we'll do with Rian Johnson here. If we get him on the show in the near future is kind of break down some of those choices and specifically how he envisioned that closing scene and what he actually captured on camera. Knives Out is currently playing in wide release. We encourage you to see it if you haven't done so already.

18:36It's a twisted web. We are not finished untangling it, not yet. What is this? CSI KFC?

18:47Until I start. From December 2019, that was our review of Knives Out. on that same episode, would you believe it? A review of Greta Gerwig's Little Women. So pretty fun show. What a great movie year. And yeah, you can get to that review as well in the Film Spotting Archive if you are a Film Spotting family member. Access to the archive, monthly bonus shows and more. Those are just some of the benefits of joining the Film Spotting family. You can do that at filmspottingfamily.com. This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

19:52letter, and for the first time all in one place, the entire Film Spotting archive going back to 2005. That's at filmspottingfamily.com.