Knives Out

Thrombey-land
or
Ladies and Gentlemen Grieve in Different Ways

Mystery author Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plumber) is celebrating his 85th birthday in a big way. His family is celebrating at the quirky family home for the old man and—as with most family-gatherings—there are issues and squabbles. They all involve money, because Thrombey has been quite a success.

The first clue to that is that he's 85 and living in his own home, as opposed to a facility no matter how healthy he is.

The family Thrombey has done very well for itself: daughter Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis) runs a real estate empire with her husband Richard (Don Johnson), but that was done with a considerable loan from Harlan—their son Hugh Ransom (Chris Evans) left the party early after a tiff; oldest son Walt (Michael Shannon) runs the successful Thrombey publishing empire, but is dissatisfied with the elder Thrombey's resistance to selling the filming rights—he's joined by his wife Donna (Riki Lindhome) and son Jacob (Jaeden Martell); daughter-in-law Joni (Toni Collette), widow of late son Neil, has a line of beauty products and her own self-help business and is paying for her daughter Meg (Katherine Langford) to go an ivy league college.

Then, there's "the help"—housekeeper Fran (Edi Patterson) views the family with a jaundiced eye and maintains her helping attitude with a hidden stash of dope; caretaker-nurse Marta (Ana de Armas) is well-regarded by the family (even if they can't remember her country of origin) and much favored by Harlan for her good heart and her proficiency with the game "Go." After the party, Harlan, after talking privately with all the family members, retires at 11:30.

When Fran brings up his coffee, she finds his bed unslept in and undisturbed. Continuing to his attic study, she finds it very much disturbed and Harlan dead from a slit throat, bled out, his dramatic knife/letter-opener still in his bloody hand. The police think it's suicide and they are in the process—in the form of Trooper Wagner (Noah Segan) and Lt. Elliott (Lakeith Stanfield)—of interviewing the family about the events of that evening, with one addition. He is Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig, looking perpetually smug and utilizing the drawl of Shelby Foote), consulting detective of note (and "The New Yorker") who has been hired—by parties unknown—to determine if Harlan Trombley really did take his own life...or if it was done by the hand of another.

Like that double-conundrum, Knives Out is a multi-layered movie, not only in its plot, but in its timeline-juggling and presentation. There are complexities built on complexities: the mystery of Thrombey's death, which—at the beginning of the movie—is assumed to be one thing, which is called into question not once but twice for different motivations; the mystery of Benoit Blanc's benefactor as the detective is publicly seeking the truth of the first mystery, but privately is working on who hired him for the job.

He spends a lot of his time grilling the family members, not only looking for clues, but also for motivations about why he might be there. So he eyes the entire family like a smirking hawk, which, initially makes him an unwelcome guest and something of a detecting third wheel—he calms the family's fears by purring "My position here is purely ornamental."). But with the reading of Thrombey's newly-drafted will—"Think of it as a tax return by a community theater..."—the family gloms onto him to prove that Thrombey might actually have been killed, staged to look like a suicide, thus nullifying a will that would leave his family nothing.

And that's where things really get complicated. But, to say more would destroy the web of evidence, the suspicions and the dynamics going on amongst the suspected and suspecting family, as well as the timelines based on points of view that Johnson has intricately constructed like a jenga tower to tell a complicated story, while simultaneously building on it.

Now, the way Johnson has designed it, it puts some focus on the family members and the actors playing them. But, no one has more pressure put on them than the character of Thrombey's nurse, Marta Cabrera (de Armas). Of all the denizens of the Thrombey estate, she is the one closest to the old man, knowing him best and having his trust. She is also the most vulnerable—she's not family, but part of "the help." She has to be compliant and complacent, because her mother is an illegal immigrant and the Thrombey patronage keeps her employed and her mother safe. She fears any threat to that comfort, and the family, especially in the absence of the patriarch, is a hostile work-environment despite the smiles and the surface friendliness.

All the actors have a fine time chewing their respective scenery, but de Armas has the toughest role, playing someone "with a good heart" in a den of thieves while not looking like a victim but also looking competent. De Armas has to go through so many moods that swing back and forth like a pendulum, fading into the background, lest she betray something to the family. She must become simultaneously suspect and detective in order to protect herself and her family. It's a tough job, and de Armas pulls it off charmingly.

Knives Out carries out the time-honored game-plan of the mystery genre, but twists it in a gordian knot. to build audience expectations and then pulls the rug out from under them, staying ahead of the amateur sleuths who are trying to outguess the already-worked-out scenario. At the same time, it's a Christie-an exploration of the foibles and frailties of the upper crust, who are only too ready to break through and fall into the goo, and showing how far things can descend when greed is bad...not good.

A Boy and His Dog

A Boy and His Dog (L.Q. Jones, 1975) L.Q. Jones (real name Justice McQueen—his stage name is the name of the first character he played in movies) is most well-known as a quirky character actor, usually playing rangy, seedy types in westerns for the likes of directors like Sam Peckinpah—he was part of Peckinpah's stock company—and Robert Altman--he played the character based on Chet Atkins in Altman's last film, A Prairie Home Companion.

But in 1975, he also joined the director pantheon, putting together A Boy and His Dog, a low-budget high-concept picture based on the 1969 sci-fi story written by Harlan Ellison. That story, "Blood's a Rover,"* tells the story of a young adult male in a post-apocalyptic world whose only companion is a telepathic dog or "Rover," named "Blood." Blood sniffs out food and women for Vic, reads minds, and communicates telepathically...but only with "Vic." It's a bizarre story with an odd little twist, and is one of Ellison's best-known tales.

The film Jones made of it is simultaneously satiric, savage, sassy, and right on the edge of burlesque as Vic (a very young, pre-"Miami Vice" Don Johnson), and his pooch (voiced by Tim McIntire) roam their post-nuclear countryside that bears a passing resemblance to the world of Mad Max,** with mutants and squalor. The film is gritty, low on aesthetics, but bears a witty screenplay (with contributions from Ellison, Jones, and producer Alvy Moore) with clever dialogue, even if the concepts behind the movie are rather...base. At one point, Vic is lured by one of his female victims (Suzanne Benton) to an underground society of American nostalgists led by Jason Robards, who appear to have stepped right out of the River City, Iowa of The Music Man,*** except, of course, for the deranged robots, goon squads, and man-milking machines (the society is sterile and Vic is "utilized" to provide genetic material). Young Vic must make a choice between this semblance of civilization, monogamy, and the scorched-earth policies above ground.

In fact, the undergound scenes are where the movie loses a lot of steam—mostly because they don't have the prickly dynamic between Vic and Blood (Blood calls him "Albert" merely to annoy him, and has all the good lines of the movie), as Vic is something of a hormonal moron and Blood is cultured and appears well-read, with a wry sarcasm that McIntire doesn't overdo. Their scenes together have a tendency to crackle, despite Johnson's only acting against a canine co-star and the vocal component added in post-production.

Ellison's attitude towards it is rather strange, initially saying that it was a good adaptation, but then turning on it as misogynistic (especially for its gut-crunching last line). An odd sentiment from the story's creator as that is all reflected in his yarn in the first place. And yet the author has gone on and produced sequels to the original story without any attempt to disown the political incorrectness of the original. I guess he felt Jones was too blasé about subjects Ellison had second thoughts about. Still, Jones' vision of a post-holocaust nuclear society has stayed relevant for decades.  As the poster says "it's a future you may live to see!"  

And see again in movie after movie.

* Taken from a line from A.E. Housman's "A Shropshire Lad"

** Jones' post-apocalyptic garage-sale look preceded Mad Max by three years, and The Road Warrior, which it resembles by five years.

*** All of these residents are heavily made-up in what I thought at the time was clown make-up, but I realize now is reflective of the look of rosy-cheeked painted-over family portraits. The undergrounders are heavily made-up to compensate for the lack of sun.