Rian Johnson has taken an approach to his career that few writer-directors do: slowly. Starting in 2005 with the acclaimed neo-film noir Brick (starring his fairly consistent muse, Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Johnson has been building a reputation for movies with a con or “twist” plotline (The Brothers Bloom and Looper also solidifying this before Knives Out, though not so much his only blockbuster, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which was, unsurprisingly, generally panned). With Knives Out, Johnson takes the themes of the filmography he’s been building for the past ten-plus years to the next level.
One of those next levels includes the devil being in the details, like the moment a housekeeper named Fran (Edi Patterson) prepares a tray of coffee with a mug that reads “MY HOUSE MY RULES MY COFFEE”. With this simple prop, we’re given immediate insight into just how much power the patriarch of the Thrombey family, Harlan (Christopher Plummer), a celebrated writer of mystery novels, has over the rest of his brood. Yet, as we flashback to the night of his eighty-fifth birthday party, it’s clear that Harlan has been looking back upon his life and noticing that perhaps he’s made more than a few mistakes in raising his children. Some more than others, like Walter (Michael Shannon), who Harlan long ago instated as the CEO of his publishing company. Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis), in contrast, chose to build her own real estate company in Boston from the ground up as a means to prove her worth to the Thrombey name as opposed to coasting on it. Even so, her husband, Richard (Don Johnson, still alive and kicking post-Miami Vice), and son, Hugh a.k.a. Ransom (Chris Evans), have no trouble suckling from both her tit and the Thrombey empire’s–particularly Ransom, accustomed to being lavished by his grandfather. The only other child of Harlan was a son named Neil who died years ago, but left behind an equally as capitalizing widow named Joni (Toni Collette, looking more equine than usual in this) and daughter, Meg (13 Reasons Why’s Katherine Langford), the latter of whom Harlan pays good money for so that she can get what Linda calls her communist education from Smith. Though Joni is a “lifestyle guru” and “influencer,” we all know that there isn’t necessarily a consistent cash flow in this unless one is a Kardashian or Jenner. Or so she would have Harlan believe.
And as the family gathers at the party the night before he would slit his throat, each one is able to rehash a certain sound bite or incident to the police and private investigator Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig, with a Southern drawl and an inexplicably French name) that makes the latter believe there is indeed a very good reason an anonymous party hired him to join in on the investigation. So anonymous, in fact, that even he doesn’t know who it is. Despite interviewing each member of the family, it is Harlan’s nurse, Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas), he’s especially interested in. For he knows, like everyone else, that she literally vomits every time she tells a lie (a condition apparently known as “a regurgitative reaction to mistruthing”). Therefore, surely, she must hold the key to unearthing the truth. Yet Marta, having been Harlan’s nurse for so long, has learned a thing or two about how to sidestep the truth by not revealing everything–and it is key to her survival–and that of her illegally immigrated mother’s–that she not expose the events of what really happened that night to Benoit. With each family member having something to hide as well, all of them are gunning for Marta to be the guilty party once they discover she’s been the sole beneficiary named in Harlan’s will–though every one of them was counting on something from it. Except, for some reason, Ransom, largely unscandalized by this upset of a choice to inherit the family’s fortune.
Marta, more and more, wishes she had never been involved in this. That Harlan had simply let her call the ambulance that night like she wanted to. Alas, she’s gone down this quagmire of a rabbit hole, and she’s caught in the web of the Thrombeys’ lies, deceit and selfishness while she herself would prefer to just calmly watch Murder, She Wrote in Spanish with her mother. Ransom turns out to be her only ally, rescuing her from the vulture-like pecking of his family in his BMW. But, just as it is in every great murder mystery, Ransom’s aid is nothing if not a red herring.
Citing such murder mysteries as Murder on the Orient Express, Something’s Afoot, Murder by Death,The Mirror Crack’d, Evil Under the Sun, Deathtrap, Clue and Gosford Park as inspiration, Johnson takes the amalgam of these influences to revitalize a genre that’s gone unmemorably revived since Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (and maybe, to a lesser extent, this year’s Ready or Not). In fact, one could easily see Benoit Blanc being the new M. Poirot if Johnson wanted to turn his character into the type of detective appearing in a series of mystery-solving films. Johnson also took the title of the film from a Radiohead song of the same name (noting that he just felt it had a nice ring to it for a whodunit), taking it to an even more literal level by having as part of the set design a chair with a massive circular shape of knives pointed in the direction of whoever is sitting in it (making it ideal for a detective’s interrogation). Indeed, the set design is like an additional character itself, with various camera shots pausing on certain creatures and statues’ expressions to heighten the semi-parodied mood of the genre. And as the family continues to try to get its claws into Marta, they only seem to be tearing each other apart. For the mark of any truly abhorrent family relationship is one steeped in money, and the fighting over of riches when the time comes to inherit them. In this way, Johnson has not only created a worthy addition to the murder mystery category, but also to that of the class-oriented comedy of manners (and as we all know, having money does not connote having class). Thus, the thing about most mystery movies involving a cash grab is that the narrative must at some point take place in a mansion. And who tends to have a mansion but the pompous twats called rich people?
A discussion among the family about Trump and right-wing politics makes for an especially illuminating (and awkward) moment when Marta is called upon to weigh in on the subject as Richard tries to hold her up as an example of immigration done the right way: legally. This makes her increasingly uncomfortable as she (and Meg) know full well her mother is undocumented. The Thrombeys’ general faux “familialness” toward her (which makes them all feel good about themselves and their ability to embrace poor non-whites despite the fact that each one of them lists her ethnicity as a product of a different country–from Ecuador to Paraguay to Brazil–a testament to how little they actually give a shit about her) is easily unveiled when the threat of her taking their “birthright” away becomes real.
With Blanc’s seeming buffoonery and obliviousness making the case look as though it will never be solved, he uses the expression “Gravity’s Rainbow” (sure to distinguish it from the unspoken reality among literary types that no one’s ever actually read the book) to describe to her that “the terminus” of the truth always arrives. And then goes on to use a lot of analogies about donut holes and donut holes within donut holes. The question is, will any of these family members be shrewd enough to bite the final traces of guilt away? Considering that the rich are often stupid (because they simply inherit wealth instead of having to work for it), perhaps you, average Joe reader, can likely guess the answer.
