Knives Out!
It is unusual for me to devote a blog to a single work.
There are always exceptions (and should be) and in this case, my son Jonathan urged me (with appropriate bribery involved) to watch the recent film Knives Out.
There are always exceptions (and should be) and in this case, my son Jonathan urged me (with appropriate bribery involved) to watch the recent film Knives Out.
I make an exception for this film because it is exceptional in multiple ways.
Written and directed by Rian Johnson, clearly well beyond up-and-coming, with this film, he reminds me of another talent from a past age: Joss Whedon.
One of the principal characters is Harlan Thromby, perfectly performed by Christopher Plummer, as a best-selling mystery author with an extended family of sycophantic dependents, with whom he is entirely fed up and all of whom he is planning to disinherit forthwith.
He even has a throne, his own iron throne, which is certainly an intentional tribute to the one in Game of Thrones. So on his 82nd birthday, he assumes his throne and commences informing his descendants of said intentions person to person, one by one.
Which, naturally, does not go well, culminating in his untimely demise.
So how does this film this compare with mystery films based on books dating from Arthur Conan Doyle (with innumerable Sherlock Holmes films and television series per a previous blog including the recent BBC series with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, and a New York-based version with Lucy Liu as Watson (I still contend that she should have been Holmes--Shirley Holmes!).
Let me review some classics from the past. Perhaps the most famous mystery writer after Conan Doyle would be Agatha Christie Agatha Christie's beloved detective Hercule Poirot has been performed numerous times, in both films and series, by numerous actors, and all done well.
Dashiell Hammet's Thin Man and Maltese Falcon (with Humphrey Bogart) were both successful films early on, with several Thin Man sequels. Bogart came back in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, a definite classic. These films made a major star of Bogart.
Numerous other films involving detectives--either police or private--have been produced over the years, too many to list here (here's a link to the blog on this subject, with great casts in many):
https://geneayresblog.blogspot.com/2020/03/films-and-tv-series-of-private.html
But I must say (hence this special blog) that Knives Out! deserves a place among the movie greats, with a cast to match.
So, to continue:
With the sudden death of Christopher Plummer's Harlan Thromby the police of course are summoned, and arrive for a routine inquiry, basically to confirm a presumed suicide.
The family members, housekeeper, and Harlan's twenty-something personal aide-companion Marta, (from a South American immigrant family), must all be interviewed. There are several spoiled grandchildren as well.
Soon we see, through the police interviews, numerous flashbacks of family interactions with Plummer with multiple points of view often differing sharply, a la the Japanese classic Rashomon .) And the Rashomon comparison is apt.
Not surprisingly none of them take being disinherited well, nor now becoming suspects, even though it is presumably a suicide.
There is only one witness: Marta, the young Hispanic woman.
The displeased disinherited family is played by an all-star cast headlined by Chris Evans. He plays Ransom Drysdale, Don Johnson's now grown son, who has a major role to play in this film, and plays it well..
Jamie Lee Curtis, is the elder daughter, matched up with Don Johnson of Miami Vice fame. Yes, that Don Johnson playing totally out of character as a polar opposite: the loudly whining son-in-law of our deceased author.
Tagging along with the police is a shadowy figure lurking in the background, who, when finally called out by the Don Johnson character Richard Drysdale, slowly comes forward out of the shadows and into the light revealing--ta da--Daniel Craig, recently of 007 fame (imho he is the best Bond since Sean Connery). And what he does, in the role of Private Investigator Benoit Blanc, is once again, like Don Johnson, playing out of character as a polar opposite in a different way: he is leisurely, laid back, and has a charming Southern drawl.
And what he does, in his slow, leisurely way, is adopt Marta as his 'Watson' (an analogy she does not get, and in fact much of what transpires she doesn't quite get, although she is a very likable character) and proceeds to solve a mystery nobody realized there was, least of all the police....
He even has a throne, his own iron throne, which is certainly an intentional tribute to the one in Game of Thrones. So on his 82nd birthday, he assumes his throne and commences informing his descendants of said intentions person to person, one by one.
Which, naturally, does not go well, culminating in his untimely demise.
So how does this film this compare with mystery films based on books dating from Arthur Conan Doyle (with innumerable Sherlock Holmes films and television series per a previous blog including the recent BBC series with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, and a New York-based version with Lucy Liu as Watson (I still contend that she should have been Holmes--Shirley Holmes!).
Let me review some classics from the past. Perhaps the most famous mystery writer after Conan Doyle would be Agatha Christie Agatha Christie's beloved detective Hercule Poirot has been performed numerous times, in both films and series, by numerous actors, and all done well.
Dashiell Hammet's Thin Man and Maltese Falcon (with Humphrey Bogart) were both successful films early on, with several Thin Man sequels. Bogart came back in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, a definite classic. These films made a major star of Bogart.
Numerous other films involving detectives--either police or private--have been produced over the years, too many to list here (here's a link to the blog on this subject, with great casts in many):
https://geneayresblog.blogspot.com/2020/03/films-and-tv-series-of-private.html
But I must say (hence this special blog) that Knives Out! deserves a place among the movie greats, with a cast to match.
So, to continue:
With the sudden death of Christopher Plummer's Harlan Thromby the police of course are summoned, and arrive for a routine inquiry, basically to confirm a presumed suicide.
The family members, housekeeper, and Harlan's twenty-something personal aide-companion Marta, (from a South American immigrant family), must all be interviewed. There are several spoiled grandchildren as well.
Soon we see, through the police interviews, numerous flashbacks of family interactions with Plummer with multiple points of view often differing sharply, a la the Japanese classic Rashomon .) And the Rashomon comparison is apt.
Not surprisingly none of them take being disinherited well, nor now becoming suspects, even though it is presumably a suicide.
There is only one witness: Marta, the young Hispanic woman.
The displeased disinherited family is played by an all-star cast headlined by Chris Evans. He plays Ransom Drysdale, Don Johnson's now grown son, who has a major role to play in this film, and plays it well..
Jamie Lee Curtis, is the elder daughter, matched up with Don Johnson of Miami Vice fame. Yes, that Don Johnson playing totally out of character as a polar opposite: the loudly whining son-in-law of our deceased author.
Tagging along with the police is a shadowy figure lurking in the background, who, when finally called out by the Don Johnson character Richard Drysdale, slowly comes forward out of the shadows and into the light revealing--ta da--Daniel Craig, recently of 007 fame (imho he is the best Bond since Sean Connery). And what he does, in the role of Private Investigator Benoit Blanc, is once again, like Don Johnson, playing out of character as a polar opposite in a different way: he is leisurely, laid back, and has a charming Southern drawl.
And what he does, in his slow, leisurely way, is adopt Marta as his 'Watson' (an analogy she does not get, and in fact much of what transpires she doesn't quite get, although she is a very likable character) and proceeds to solve a mystery nobody realized there was, least of all the police....
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