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Hey, film spotters, Josh and Adam. Here, Wednesdays are when we drop something in the feed from the Film Spotting Archive, and so here we go this week our twenty nineteen review of Knives Out twenty nineteen. Adam, I feel like there was a window when we were playfully recalling that, you know, the before times. I think now we're in a different period where we just pretend like twenty twenty two. I don't know, twenty twenty three four didn't exist, right,
just don't refer to them at all. But twenty nineteen sounds like a long time ago.
Spotting Archive goes all the way back to two thousand and five. We're just going back about six years. But you're right when you think about the before times, it might as well be sixty years Knives Out. Ryan Johnson now has the third Knives Out mystery coming out, and we're highly anticipating it. We thought to get ourselves ready, to get you ready for that film. Let's go back and hear our discussion of that very first movie, that
very first, highly successful movie that launched this franchise. So here is our review of Knives Out.
I'm Detective Attendant Elliott, and this is true for Wagner. We just want to ask a few questions. We understand nine of his demise. The family have gathered to celebrate your father's eighty fifth birthday.
How was it the party.
Pri my dad's death?
That was great?
Jamie Lee Curtis and Leakeith Stanfield and the trailer for Ryan Johnson's Knives Out, which opened Thanksgiving weekend. A lot of people went to see it, judging by the box office. I know I was there in the theater with Debbie and we took my daughter b two. We all had a great time with it. It's an Agatha Christie style Who Done It? Which also stars Tony Kollette, Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Michael Shannon. I'm not done yet. Don Johnson
and Christopher Plumber. Ryan Johnson well known to us as the namesake for our Golden Brick Award for his great debut film Brick. He's also, of course, some people know him as the writer director of The Last Jedi Adam. I would say that though this is a fun who done it? The moral burden of wealth really weighs heavily on this film. According to the movie's understanding of twenty nineteen America, there is a larger culprit on the loose than the specific killer here, and that culprit is privilege
and greed. So what I'd like to know. I've heard a lot of people talking about how much fun they had with this movie, and it's incredibly fun. It's dexterously cunning, immensely entertaining. Did you have more fun with the plot or the politics, because the latter is sort of what surprised me more, even though I had no idea where this movie was going plot wise.
Yeah, I'm with you. It definitely was a big surprise to me. I think there is a balance of it, but I think maybe I did, in the end have the most fun with the political commentary that we get in this film. And maybe if at some point, either this week or next, we get into a little bit of spoiler talk, I would love to talk about the final shot of this film, which is among the best
shots of the year. It's a shot that's set it perfectly by the script and it expresses visually a titanic shift that has taken place, and honestly, it's just as thrilling a moment as I had in the theater all year. But it gets to the heart of what we're discussing. And you may recall this is a month or two ago I posted in our film spotting Slack for You and Sam a comment that I heard from Ryan Johnson
on another podcast that really surprised me. And it was an interview with Joseph Gordon Levitt, the star of Ryan's film Brick and of course also Looper. He's got a new podcast called Creative Processing with Joseph Gordon Levitt, and Ryan was on the first episode. The first episode, appropriately was all about originality and imitation because Ryan has always
worked within genres. And at one point the interview and actually in this moment, they're talking about Looper and Ryan says, you have to be kind of angry about something to write a script. I think if the thing you're angry about is not something you identify in yourself, I'm always
wary of that. So he kind of goes on to say that when he's writing a film and if it has villains in it, he's thinking that it's good to always start from a place where you're not identifying with the good guy, but you're actually identifying with the bad guy. Which doesn't mean obviously that you're supporting the bad guy, that you agree with the bad guy, that you want
others to agree with the bad guy. But I think Ryan's saying there that you're not really doing the work of an artist if you're not self aware and if you aren't willing to be harshly introspective and consider all your faults and perhaps reckon with him in a film.
And it was just such a striking answer for a lot of reasons, one of them being too that if you have ever met Ryan Johnson, or even if you haven't, if you just know his kind of persona publicly and you've heard him on shows like this or others, you know that he seems utterly incapable of anger, even an ounce of anger. So it really was kind of a profound statement coming from him. And again he wasn't talking about Knives Out, but now having seen Knives Out, I
realized he absolutely could have been. Because there are two feelings that my sense is clearly coalesced together for this film. One is Ryan's appreciation of genre, especially the who done it, and the need to express his frustration with the state of things in America. There is political context that the movie directly draws on. There is a mention of our president, although not by name. There's a mention of kids being
kept in cages. There's talk of keeping immigrants like the main character in the film, Marda, who is played by Anna day Armis, and she's the caretaker, the nurse for the patriarch who is killed. There's a sense that she should at least stay in her place. And yet, saying all of that, I feel like what he's really critiquing is a general lack of compassion, a lack of humanity that shouldn't be political at all, but sadly really is.
And so I'm saying all this because I think what really did strike me about Knives Out is it's the first time, maybe we've seen Ryan take external anger and process it on screen via just internal anger, which I think is interesting. But I also don't think we can discount the internal anger part completely. And maybe at some point if we talked to Ryan, we can get into
this a little bit. But I feel like maybe he's acknowledging some very small part of himself, of ourselves that understands the Thrombief family and their sense of entitlement and their sense of privilege and how nice it is to have nice things and not have to want for anything. But also maybe it comes from Ryan, again purely speculating here, but maybe it's a sense of someone feeling like they're
not doing enough. As we all bemoan these things we see occurring around us, I think we all feel a little bit paralyzed and wonder should I be doing more instead of sitting here on a podcast right now talking about movies or radio show. Should I be out there trying to make some kind of change. And he's making movies, maybe he feels like he's not doing enough either, And I think the brilliance of Knives Out is that balance of pure entertainment that delivers completely on its mystery premise,
with that element of critique. It's a fun puzzle, as you said, with humor and twists and turns, but it also sneakily puts every single viewer in MARTA's shoes, and I can't think of anything more subversive than that.
Yeah, you're describing me as a challenge for the audience, and that's why it's doubly encouraging for me that it did so well over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, that audiences are receiving it both as an entertainment and at this other level that you're describing, and hopefully it'll continue to
reach more audiences that way. You're so right about this thing being, you know, just Crackerjack put together, and half of the fun is to realize how in control Ryan Johnson is of this story the only way and I that's how I describe my review, and I have to read it because I can't get this right. But this plays like an unreliable narrator's recollection of a drunken friends
story that they heard secondhand. But the trick is that's a compliment because all of those levels are purposeful, and we're getting each variation of that person's story exactly as we need to to be mystified and yet still entertained. So the amount of control going on in this film. Here's an example. As the suspects start recoming the party they've all gathered for this patriarch's eighty fifth birthday party, we get a shot of a cake being put down
before him with lit candles. Yeah, and depending on who is telling the story, the shot has them in yes focus.
They're telling the story of the night from them.
Their point of view, so their prey, So just a little, you know, a little way of putting us in their heads. And another example is that we get a flashback in this movie, an extended flashback, in the midst of a coin toss, so it's up in the air and we go off in a totally different direction exactly when we need to. So so there's deception and there's misperception that's built into into the movies very form. That's just a thrill to watch click into place.
Yeah, you're absolutely right. I noted that scene as well, because they're all talking to the detective and it makes sense that at that point they may know that they are potential suspects, they certainly want to paint themselves in a positive light. So when they're telling the story of the night. Of course they're going to put themselves in the position where they're being adoring with their father, and
it's not at all what really happened. But I also think it makes sense because it's not just that they're lying, and Ryan is kind of showing us that they're lying by cutting to those scenes. We know that they've all said that same thing, so it can't be real. I think it speaks overall to a sense of probably denial on their part in their recollection of the night. That's how they behaved. They've always been that adoring of their father.
That's who they think they are. And I think that the film, You're right, how much is about misperception They think they're good people or in the movie shows what they really are.
I think it's another level. They think that's how they deserve to be thought of as.
Okay, now my mind's blown. Well, yes, I know what you're getting at, and I think it's true. I also would even go back to the opening shot of the film. Do you remember the very opening this film, isn't it sort of in slow motion dogs and the dogs running. When you see these dogs running across the lawn, of the estate in slow motion, and that's the credit sequence, I think essentially, or the first thing right after you're watching it, going okay, that's a choice. What is the
point of that? But I do think maybe it gets to this idea of what you see isn't always what you think it is, because we see throughout the film that depending on who the dogs are encountering, they are either hostile and mean or they're incredibly loving. And when they're running in slow motion with no sound like that, we as viewers are going, okay, are these dogs attacking someone? What are these dogs?
And what direction are they coming? Coming towards the camera exactly, So that feeds back to your idea of this movie being a challenge. They're coming for us.
They are, And there are some great performances in this film. Obviously, the whole cast is really strong, but I do think Dearmis in particular stands out because she's playing someone in Marda who does have to have an abiding sense of goodness and innocence, but that could also be played as naivete and I don't think she plays that at all, And I do think we have to see her then
as not just this kind of saintly figure. We have to see her as a flesh and blood person, not just some angel, and I do think there has to be just a little bit of a shred of doubt about her. We think we know exactly who she is, and I don't think the movie really challenges that notion, but it has to at least introduce the idea that maybe she's not as pure and innocent as she purports to be. And the fact that there's just even enough of that hint in her performance I think is important.
Well, it's definitely the most layered performance, and that's, you know, by virtue of the construction here, every other character gets less time, except for maybe Daniel Craig's private investigator. But one thing she has to do, the trick she has to pull that she completely manages to pull off, is she has to project the fact that she has as much, if not more intelligence than anyone else who's acting like
she doesn't. But at the same time she has to make it clear that she's legitimately at a loss in this elite world. So there's a combination of being a step ahead of them, potentially a step ahead of them, while still being a step behind in other ways because of the class issues that play in the film, and
I think she manages that wonderfully. It's a great performance, and the others mostly just have you know, it's one of these films where you just if you're having have as much fun in your seat in the theater as the actors probably were doing these scenes. Yeah, sure, you're
going to be having a great time. And they have to this family, They have to project malevolence, disingenuousness, malice all and you know, and then get really dark as things start to turn and they feel more threatened, and everyone in the cast is just great at Chris Evans.
Chris Evans another standout.
Another standout, only again because of the construction. He's kind of teased at the beginning, and then he finally comes in for a big scene and it's a fantastically funny scene with great lines, and yeah, Captain America, I can't get enough Captain America.
He's really good in it. I did want to ask you, as we're talking about the politics and how overall that seemed to be a real strength of the film, what did you make of the fact that he made it timely something I didn't necessarily expect from this film in terms of there being at least one conversation kind of right in the middle of this movie where the politics of the family, well it seemed appropriate for Thanksgiving, maybe that within this family, Yeah, there's a squabble about a
president and certain decisions that are being made, just like is probably playing out at a lot of dinner tables around the country. We see different shades of perspectives and politics within that family. But instead of just making this sort of a political allegory, which Ryan Johnson could have, yeah, he decides to make it blatant.
I'm gonna say, you use the word subversive. And although overall, as I said, it surprised me that it got this political, and I appreciated that about it, and I'm certainly on the side of the movie's politics, so it's not that, but I think if he had pulled back on some of those particularly that scene you're talking about, the family discussion scene where it almost does get to a point like we're gonna hit this hot topic. We're gonna hit this hot topic, or we're gonna hit this hot topic.
Think if you let that bubble under the surface a little more, then you're getting subversive it's still challenging as is. So your description is apt and I agree with that, and I think that's definitely to the movie's credit. But I think pulling back on the reins a little bit and again letting that simmer and letting it sort of sink in underneath, and not maybe put certain audience members on edge quite so directly, sometimes it's a little more effective.
Now I'm more than happy to sit back and watch the fireworks, sure, if that's what happens with the film, But yeah, I think it's a yeah. Obviously, it's a choice of modulation that the movie.
Makes well, but it makes it, and we're dancing around things a little bit in terms of understanding what side the filmmaker may or may not be on. I don't think we really know that for sure until the end of the film. I think there are probably a lot of people in the theater who maybe even share the perspective of some of the characters like Don Johnson. Oh, and watching watching the scene felt like, oh, I like
that my voice speaking for me. The movie isn't necessarily critiquing him here, but I think it's important within the context of the entire film that that scene does play out the way it does because it does establish hypocrisy, and not just of the characters with that particularly, there's point of view.
There's a hip the most potently hypocritical character. And again we're dancing around, we don't want to get into spoilers, but is someone who and and this speaks, you know, to the subversive point. I think someone who is on the film's political side, or who claims to be yes, well, yes to a point. Yeah, I think we're thinking about the same when something of hers is threat until yeah, and is let's just say ostensibly an ally until personal costs.
That's exactly right, and those are that's to me, that's like a subversive needle. That that, I.
Think is where I think we needed to know first where his so called politics lie, where so called politics were, or how he showed himself to the world, and then how he shows himself when it really matters, and when you recognize that they might be coming for the stuff that is his. So in that scene, we have all the people who are talking about how, you know, real Americans pull themselves up by their bootstraps and they shouldn't
want any handouts and all that stuff. Well, then when it comes time to divide up the old man's money. They seem to love the idea of them getting something that they didn't earn at all. They feel like they're entitled to a share of it. Yeah, right, there's hypocrisy there. I know, a different character, right, but this is what I love. We see that hypocrisy of that side. We
see the other side as well. We see the hypocrisy of those who are the more liberal ones in the argument, who decry the other's worldview right up until it affects them, and once it affects them, then all of a sudden, they turn in to those other vipers. And we even see that in all of them, in the way that they all claim to love Marta and that she's part of the family, but not one of them actually knows what country.
Sure, it keeps changing, they all get that wrong.
One of the jokes of the film, and I think one of the best and most pointed jokes in the film. There is more we could say about Knives Out, probably if we were willing to really get into spoilers, including I would love at some point to dive into the ending of the film, and maybe that's what we'll do with Ryan Johnson here if we get him on the show in the near future, is kind of break down some of those choices and specifically how he envisioned that
closing scene and what he actually captured on camera. Knives Out is currently playing in wide release. We encourage you to see it if you haven't done so already a twisted whib.
We are not finished untangling it, not yet.
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On from December twenty nineteen. That was our review of Knives Out on that same episode, would you believe it? A review of Gretegerwig's Little Women, So pretty fun show. What a great movie year And yeah, you can get to that review as well in the film Spotting Archive. If you are a film Spotting Family member, access to the archive, monthly bonus shows, and more. Those are just some of the benefits of joining the film Spotting Family. You can do that at film spotting Family dot com.
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