Knives Out (2019, Rian Johnson) (Patreon)

81/100

Spoilers. Also the usual disclaimer, Rian's a friend, blah blah. 

Second viewing, no change. One minor early detail that somehow escaped me the first time: Marta's mother telling her other daughter to turn off the cheesy-sounding cop show (featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a vocal cameo), and the sister eventually acquiescing: "I already guessed who did it." A sly wink at this mystery's unconventional info-dump structure, which originally found oh-me-of-little-faith questioning Rian's judgment, and even wondering whether he understood the Agatha Christie novels he'd professed to love. Those police-interview flashbacks totally threw me—giving the reader (or viewer, in this case) information to which the detective isn't privy violates a basic compact of the genre. The more we see what really went down between Harlan and his brood just prior to his death (ostensibly setting up multiple motives), the more worried I got that there'd be nothing much left for us to do but watch Blanc play slo-mo catch-up for the rest of the movie. Not an issue this time, obviously, but it was still hugely gratifying when the film's actual Hastings*-as-inadvertent-killer plot kicks in, and we're placed in the unaccustomed position of actively rooting against the celebrity sleuth. And then we get a penultimate chapter's longwinded exegesis anyway! Knives Out is just ridiculously clever at the macro level, and often hilarious at the micro; I rebusted a gut at such tiny moments as Segan's wild-eyed Thrombey fanboy shushing Stanfield during Blanc's big speech**, Shannon's Oscar-worthy delivery of the single word "No" following the reading of the will, and this gloriously irrelevant exchange:

BLANC: I anticipate the terminus of gravity's rainbow.

MARTA: Gravity's rainbow.

BLANC: It's a novel.

MARTA: Yeah, I know. (sheepish beat) I haven't read it, though.

BLANC: Neither have I. Nobody has. But I like the title.

In short, this would be among my favorite films of 2019 even if it were simply and strictly entertainment, with precious little on its mind. (Should note that I do have a few minor reservations in that regard: Craig wouldn't have been my first or even my 30th choice for Blanc, though he does a perfectly creditable job; Ransom's assault on the family finds Rian going for atypically easy laughs via profanity; as a friend pointed out, Harlan should have mistakenly believed that the tox report would incriminate Marta***, thereby ruining his plan.) Instead, it's arguably the most potent political statement of this nightmarishly xenophobic era in official U.S. policy, quietly but firmly insisting that the country doesn't exclusively belong to wealthy white assholes (or even to wealthy white quasi-allies like Meg). I've seen the film criticized here and there for being overly blunt—"the sociopolitical 'subtext' is text here," reads a comment on my previous review—but Knives Out isn't an allegory striving to cloak its intentions. Subtext needn't be opaque, and it's fine that nobody could fail to recognize that Ransom vowing to fight for "our ancestral family home" is meant to echo white nationalism, or that Blanc laughing and pointing out that Harlan bought the mansion in the '80s is a means of reminding us that virtually all Americans are recent immigrants in the grand scheme. To my mind, Knives Out's fun : theme ratio is ideally apportioned; this is exactly how an artist should respond to a dire moment in history—with wit and imagination and an appropriate degree of bald anger. And while I adore the film's final shot, as carefully set up by its second shot, it wouldn't work nearly as well for me had Rian not (a) had De Armas hold the mug in long shot with a finger covering each of its three phrases, and (b) cut to black after just the briefest glimpse of only the first phrase as she sips. That's precisely the opposite of clonking us on the head. Just enough to get it across and no more.

* I know Blanc repeatedly refers to her as Watson, but he's so blatantly Poirot-inspired that I'd feel weird using the wrong reference. And unlike Rian, I don't have to worry about bewildering a mass audience.

** A detective's theory of the case that includes the truly immortal rhetorical question "What were the overheard words by the Nazi child masturbating in the bathroom?"

*** I keep forgetting to ask Rian about this. Only plausible explanation I've seen is that Harlan assumed there would be no tox report, since blood spatter would point irrefutably to suicide; the report only exists because Ransom hired Blanc, who ordered one after concluding that something was amiss. But that's a lot of necessary conjecture for a genre that generally spells everything out, sometimes to the point of tedium.