Oh!
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie was an esteemed woman with
entirely too many first names. Being a woman who has published
some 60 plus of the most influential mystery novels and whodunit
thrillers of all time. Even known to cause a mystery
once or twice herself. Rian Craig Johnson was a youngster that
enjoyed all the live-action versions of many of these films.
Miss Marple caught his eye for a spell, but it was Sydney Lou May's
1974 masterpiece Murder on the Orient Express, with its all-star cast that had a particular effect on young Rian. Knives Out is a masterwork created by
some of the finest artists in front of and behind the
camera working today. But don't take my word for it, take the
word of uh. Line? What, what was his... film boy Michael
was that Knives Out is a 2019 whodunnit thriller
written and directed by Rian Johnson. The cast of this film is out of this world.
"Thank you, that means a lot." Somehow jockeying with
each other to see who can pin the thickest slice of ham to the wall. Even Frank Oz
shows up a few times. Go watch it right now if you haven't
seen it. It'll make your life better for, you know,
roughly two hours. A quick note if you still need convincing" I will be
reserving parts two and three of this essay for spoilers and the meat and
potatoes of the plot and structure, while spending part one just trying to get you
to watch this banger of a murder mystery. Luckily, there's a lot to go over just in
how this film was made. Like, wagyu beef stroganoff or
something. I'm gonna write, I'm gonna write that down wagyu … beef … stroganoff A good a place as any to start with
non-spoiler wagyu stroganoff is the cinematography in this
film by Steve Yedlin, who was previously responsible for the
throne room scene - and all of Rian Johnson's other movies,
starting with Brick. And of course, in 2015 released the
quintessential color science banger "Display Prep Demo" where Steve
finds himself around L.A. on an Arri Alexa digital movie
camera and a 35 millimeter film camera, does an absolute boatload of thoughtful
design and you know, f*** math, then puts the results side by side
to prove there can be no experiential difference between the
two - Press F to pay your respects to Christopher
Nolan. Steve is agreeing that filmmakers are
right to want to preserve the imperfections of
a film camera; example like Gate weave or luminance
value. He then replicates those values
algorithmically, like a stone cold D O double G. Sorry, I'm eating weeds all over the
place here. New approach. Steve Yedlin is a genius.
End of sentence. Steve Yedlin is a genius who is arguing that not only
can you absolutely replicate the experience of using a film camera with a
digital pipeline, the digital experience also comes with
all the benefits of shooting digitally. For example,
shooting on film requires a absolute metric ton of light,
whereas digital not so much. So, Knives Out doesn't really look like
any film I've ever seen. It is almost entrancingly wonderful
to just look at. Bonus second example: shooting on film makes hot light sources
like broad daylight through a window get a vibrant little glow around them
because hot light will impact celluloid film stock differently than a
digital sensor. This is called halation. It's a pleasing
effect of working with film. Steve just wrote up a pipeline script to
do it. So, I mean to say Steve Yedlin is not just a camera nerd, he's
THE camera nerd. Which is layer one of why this film is so much
more than meets the eye. So let's go one deeper. Look at this cast! Look, look at them.
Embrace them. Daniel Craig. Ana de Armas. Jamie Lee Curtis. Don Johnson. Chris Evans. Lakeith Stanfield. Toni Collette. Michael Shannon. Christopher Plummer. Frank Oz. All doing their absolute best Agatha Christie scenery Galactusing. Which … Agatha Mary Clarissa “Four First Names” Christie
is still also doing in the cinema. My name is Hercule Poirot and I am probably the greatest detective in the world.
The truth is that Agatha Christie movies have always done this. "Starring the greatest cast of suspicious
characters ever involved in murder."
I am going to talk a lot more in the next section about the
acting in this movie. Knives Out is an acting clinic.
The performances are part of the entire puzzle and all of it is a joy to
experience. Daniel Craig. "And yes, you are right. None of these weak alibis
and domestic squibbles answer your question." Daniel Craig. Daniel
Craig. "Our doughnut is not whole at all." Yarn. More correctly, this yarn. Rian
Johnson movies have always been clever. People definitely have larger
than normal emotional reactions to Rian's films than other movies, but
they're clever. The Last Jedi was a Star Wars movie deconstructed through the lens of a Star Wars movie. *Typing noises* This is all I hear
right now. There are simply not enough mega cast
murder mystery movies out there. It's a brilliant script that cooks on
high for an hour and a half and Jamie Lee Curtis is
like WHA? a lot and it's adorable and incredible.
Also you should watch this movie so you can watch my next two parts. They're real, they're really good, so obviously from
here many spoilers as I'm gonna dissect and
extrapolate, you know, ... everything. Automatons: things designed to appear and
mimic what it is to be human, but are woefully little more than mechanical
decorations. And also very creepy. Harlin Thrombey,
the world famous and unseemly rich mystery author,
collects these art pieces in his giant nightmare house.
Well, collected. And while simultaneously a beautiful dunk on his own
spiteful mechanical baby children. It is also a full-throated reference to 1972's Sleuth
"Think of the perfect crime." A Rian Johnson favorite, in a film
about an eccentric mystery author who lives in a house
of puzzles and automata, where a murder happens.
Oh yeah, when you, when you say it out loud I think I get the reference.
Knives Out celebrates all of it. The murder mystery film and book genre as a whole. They joke on the commentary track that
this is a movie about the world's worst criminal of all time versus the world's
worst detective because Marta pulled off a lot of
"subterfuge" without Blanc noticing, but Blanc did
notice. He literally notices the blood and
Marta's shoe the moment he meets her. "I've been doing a little
poking. You're hired on a part-time basis." You
have a movie where the greatest detective in the world is examining the
scene of a subtle situation where a caretaker
saved a man's life, but thinks she ended it. It appears to be
one thing, but then it isn't. "He's not here." But it is.
This level of genre headfake in Hollywood is entirely welcome.
Infer my meaning in as many ways as you can here, but
it's all automata. The whole movie hinges on this one scene
where you find out what happened at the close of act one. We are cheering
for Marta. Hercule Poirot this is not. The movie pivots on this
dramatic, deeply unsettling scene where Marta
believes she injected her patient with a, sorry to use
the proper medical term here, uh a metric ass boat of morphine. Okay, all emotions from the involved
parties are real probably the one scene where
the characters tell the truth to each other.
These two people that care about each other very much
have to face some tragic facts. Harlan writes down his own murder
because he thinks it's a good idea for a book later.
At the close of act one the game is not a foot, it's just sad and affecting.
Okay, wait allow me to define this in a different way. Automatons are generally
creepy, vaguely human-like dolls that perform the same pre-programmed
actions over and over again. Without the controller of the house they are lost,
unable to live life as they once did. they are all searching for:
A king's ransom I have talked in this episode already
about the mountains that Steve Yedlin has been moving for years
in Hollywood. Everyone working on this film is performing
at that level, the acting as previously stated,
is out of this world. There are so many little touches to flesh out the
characters on re-watch. Think about what all of these characters
know and when they know it. All of harlan's kids claim to be
self-made overachievers and one by one they begrudgingly reveal that that isn't
true. Project strength; hide weakness. That's the Thrombey way.
The performative outrage. "One of us killed him, one of his family
killed, no, is that what you're suggesting lieutenant?" This movie
has a third eye laser focus on making sure you
understand the emotions of any character, in any context.
Like that moment that Ransom realizes he already got away with it. "And if you think I am dumb enough to be
baited into talking family business into..."
Literally two seconds earlier "I mean well, he's done well with what
dad gave him. Really dad hands him a book twice a year and Walt publishes it." The
set design, the sound design, the acting the writing, the cinematography, the editing - I love a tight little movie with big
things to say, executed on this level. Chris Evans post Captain America
returned to playing assholes, a favorite pastime. "Eat shit, eat shit, eat shit." Think about how many characters have to
be highlighted in a cramped space for a two hour run time.
The framing of the image has layers. Generally spotlighting a single
character against many but they are all engaged in the same scene.
Harlan's painting in the landing shares frames with other people.
I, also I love that the painting explicitly changes
from angry eyes to a smile when Marta rightfully takes her place as Harlan's
soul heir. Entitlement's a hell of a drug. Maybe I'm
just saying that this is one of those movies that rewards the audience for
paying too much attention to all the little details.
Every phone and every clock in this entire movie
is set to the correct time so you can keep track of events.
It's bananas! There is a mountain of thought put into this movie and it
rewards the audience for digging deeper. "A case with a hole in the middle."
It's about the craft beyond the surprise. This is our reality. The status quo
screaming to keep things just the way they are.
The microaggressions, the pandering, the barely concealed rage.
"Immigrants we get the job done." sorry. The events of this very silly
movie are in service of a literal radical
redistribution of wealth from a self-made empire to a caretaker
with an undocumented parent. Subtle this uh, isn't.
Marta has a whole lot on her plate. I mean before, the whole whoops I switched
the bottles, but actually I didn't, but it still killed my friend ... thing.
Which is probably the best dedication you could make to the genre on behalf
of Agatha Christie. By the 1960s she herself was disavowing her own
characters, but did you know, she thought Hercule Poirot
was a self-absorbed, ego jockey. Hercule was the most police. He judged everybody so harshly
that no one was good enough, except for David Suchet’s Hercule Poirot, he’s a good boy. You, you're
you can stay. I think it's a huge deal that Benoit Blanc
mostly solves the case, at least understands what the
important piece of it is, on the first day and realizes that solving the case
isn't synonymous with doing the right thing. "It is an immovable fact that I killed Harlan. Yes you did, yes he did, yes you
are, but a donut hole in a donut's hole." Knives Out is the movie where Hercule
Poirot finally wasn't a dick about it. And they said all of that, while
simultaneously making one of the most immensely entertaining movie watching
experiences of the 2010s. Before the decade where the we couldn't
do that anymore. Wait, hang on, how are you supposed to
segue out of that? Our doughnut is not whole at all, the
whole picture Ransom switched Harlan's vials and tried
to hide it, thereby having to do a murder to cover it up.
He's responsible for one death and carried out a second.
The missing piece. When you watch this movie for the first time it sticks with
you in a way that movies don't, necessarily,
often do. And I think it's kind of important to keep in mind that Ransom
was not the only person removed from Harlan's will. All of
Harlan's family was removed from his will. Hugh simply
found out first and had the opportunity to do something about it. When I
think about Knives Out what comes to mind was not that Ransom did it it's
that any one of Harlan's family could have committed
these crimes, if they'd been the one to find out. They
all have motive, they're all prone to outbursts of anger when they don't get
their way. The Thrombey clan "Knives out, beaks bloody, you're a pack of
vultures at the feast." "You know, I don't fear death,
but oh god I'd like to fix some of this before I go." Harlan's death
is tragic, he was going to be fine Marta had saved him despite ransom's meddling.
But short that missing piece of the donut,
he gave his life to save hers or so he thought. "Pay attention,
your mom is still undocumented she'll be found out and at best deported
and your family will be broken. But we're not going to
let that happen are we, huh?" Very Shakespearean all of this.
The oops oh no, death, but really the beating heart of this movie from Marta
to Benoit to Harlan himself, God rest him, is
empathy. Marta realizes the mess she's making, not
aware of the reality of the larger situation at all and turns herself in.
Marta was following what Harlan assured her was the way to handle this and she's
willing to renounce the entire inheritance to do the right thing. It's
Benoit that tells all these bougie diaper commandos to
stuff it. "You have not been good to her. You have all treated her like shit."
Maybe in some weird cosmic way we're all Alan's assistant falling asleep when the
Thrombey's talk in circles for hours to Alan about how Harlan
could not have intended for this to happen. that his entire
empire belongs to them, not Marta. An assistant played by Kerry Frances
who manages to steal scenes from Jamie Lee Curtis and Frank Oz.
So, uh. Turn down for what!" And everyone in this movie
is great, they're fantastic, but in some ways it all comes back to
Harlan. He has clearly been trying to get through to his family about hard work,
and earning their own place in the world for years. He loves his family
enough to say no, there's a lot of layers in this movie beyond just the surprise.
For a big whodunit it's amazingly rewatchable revealing new layers of
itself each time you watch it, and supplying
clickbait videos with arrows on their thumbnails for years to
come. A film that plays in the sandbox that Agatha Christie and
many, many others played and invented in for years
and years. A beautiful homage that stands on its own two feet.
Knives Out, a film for anyone with four first names. Did I write that down wrong?
Oh and the whole movie functions like a hot sweater catalog,
so it also has that going. Should I've made that layer eight?
Sweaters. Layer, layer eight: sweaters. oh I'm out of time, ahh. Hello! Thank you for watching all the way
to the end of the video. Uh, special shout out to all these cool
names in the pretzels tier on our patreon. Patreon.com/movieswithmikey supports everything we do with FilmJoy just like Christopher Woo, and Braedin
Jared, and Andy Bates, and Matt Bufano and that
should have been something, the title of my memoir. Uh check out our
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and the cast of Deep Dive shot during quarantine. There's only four
episodes, three of them are up right now. Youtube.com/hotquest.
Tracy Jones, Mike Laidlaw, Bednar Paqueno Bananas! I, man my pronunciations is bad. Walrus, Adam Muto, Kevin Hocter, Sarah Meaden,
Andrew Hackard, Bret Brizzee, Brad Leclerc, Lord Hosk, Jakub Koziol.
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