Reaction Shot: Knives Out (EAT THE RICH! EAT THE RICH!)

[spindizzy]

The other thing that I went to see last week was Knives Out! I think I mentioned it before as like, sweary Agatha Christie? I really liked it, it makes a nice "eat the rich" complement to Ready Or Not! Or I guess it can join Pitch Perfect in the "That is a lot of plot-critical vomit" rec list? It's tropey and it plays with the structure in ways that make me think someone involved knows and loves the genre it's riffing on, which is what I want from stuff like this!

I've managed to avoid any major spoilers I think, but better safe than sorry.

• The way the interviews are all cut together at the start makes me happy, because it's funny and the the juxtapositions are great!


• Hands up how many people looked at the letter and IMMEDIATELY guessed what was going on with it?


• As an example of playing with the structure: it's tradition that any flashbacks you see are true and accurate; that's how you know when you've finally got the truth! And Knives Out takes that and rolls it in accidentally unreliable narrators – people who forget what they've been told, or mishear what they're told, or who want to believe that things happened a specific way, and that changes the flashback!


• (Plus: the black sheep of the family rocking in half-way through! The black sheep who is very like the deceased! THAT IS SUCH A TROPE!)


• Seriously, the entire family is full of horrible melodramatic fools, and watching them all scheming against each other was fun!
  
  • Howard Thombrey you absolute fuckmuppet.
  
  
  • Chekhov's Knives were the MOST LAMPSHADED THING but I guess he left them like that on purpose for DRAMA.
  
  
  • I liked Howard a lot, but CHRIST. That explains a lot about this family.
  
  
  • I love the way the film set up how many different motives everyone had to kill him. Especially because the people with least to hide STILL have a decent motive.
  
  
  • Jodie reminds me of someone, and I have no idea who, because my brain just kept helpfully popping up with "[Oldest sister] would look like that if she could afford it."
  
  
  • Damn, like, even the nice people in this family are fucking horrible.


• Marta is the most decent, kind human being in that film and I love her. I love that she has not signed up for any of this, but she's dealing with it as best she can! NONE OF THAT FAMILY DESERVE HER.
  
  • Like, the way that Linda and Walt both try to convince Marta that they wanted her at the funeral but were outvoted makes me want to throw down with all of them. Ugh.
  
  
  • NONE OF THEM KNOW WHERE MARTA'S FAMILY IS FROM AND THEY DON'T CARE.
  
  
  • Also fuck everyone in that argument about people crossing the border, because of course the baby white supremacist has a hysterical Trump voter for a mother, but also FUCK LINDA'S HUSBAND FOR TRYING TO DRAW A DISTINCTION BETWEEN MARTA AND THOSE "BAD" IMMIGRANTS. What ABSOLUTE fuckweasels.
  
  
  • Maybe I shouldn't judge the college kid too harshly, but I kinda feel like she stabbed Marta in the back hardest.
  
  
  • The fact that they threaten Marta with getting her mother deported is SUCH BULLSHIT and I'm honestly just impressed that the film actually went there. Like, it's a completely plausible fear, but I don't usually expect films to acknowledge the plausible fears? (See also: any film with Black protagonists in America where the police rock up at the end that isn't Get Out.)
  
  
  • "So what you're saying is that with your resources and a good lawyer, you could protect my mother? And as your resources are now my resources, I can get a good lawyer." YES, GO MARTA!
  
  
  • Marta is so bad at crime, bless her. And I know that that's because a crime writer was giving her directions and she's a decent human being, but also BLESS HER SHE IS SO BAD AT CRIME.
  
  
  • AND IT KINDA DOESN'T MATTER THAT SHE'S BAD AT CRIME, BECAUSE EVERYONE ELSE IS GOOD AT IT.
  
  
  • I don't know why the filmmakers decided to hinge their plot on her vomiting, though. I guess because it's gross and hard to hide?


• I'm still pretty sure that Daniel Craig was doing a Peter Stormare impression rather than actually trying to do a Kentucky accent or whatever the hell that was supposed to be.
  
  • ... I have this horrible feeling that Blanc was right about being the first person to offer their condolences to Mrs Thrombey. Wow.
  
  
  • I like that his entire motive for everything was to find out who hired him and why. Like, he's just a very fancy weirdo who wants answers and to be dramatic everywhere, but also who wants to be kind. He's seeing so much petty shit, and he wants to be kind.
  
  
  • But also: the police in this are not incompetent! They are all doing their jobs and getting reasonable answers!


• Okay but we're all gay for Jamie Lee Curtis, right?
  
  • I love that they don't bother to show us Linda's reaction to finding out that her husband's cheating on her, just have him show up with the start of a black eye.

Knives Out was what I wanted but BETTER because I HADN'T ANTICIPATED MARTA AND THAT IT WOULD ACTUALLY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT WE SHOULD JUST EAT THE RICH. *chinhands dreamily about how good it is*

Comments

[owlmoose]

Yes! Agree with so much of this. Especially the surprise at the political commentary and how good it is. When Marta turned the tables on Walt, I wanted to stand up and cheer.

[oracne]

I saw this with a college friend whose family is Cuban. She tried but couldn't identify any specific accent to the actress' Spanish; she just knew a few places she clearly wasn't from. Then she checked - actress and the mom-actress were both Cuban. So of course they sounded unexceptional to her!

Craig's accent sounded to me like old school Alabama.