Knives Out hides a pointed satire beneath cloak of mystery

By Katherine Monk

Rian Johnson offers Americans the perfect Thanksgiving present in Knives Out, a family-themed whodunit that bastes itself with buttery dialogue while serving up a side of oversized ham from an A-list cast. All the director has to do is sharpen his tools at the head of the table, and carve some tasty slices from a tired turkey of a genre.

Knives Out calls itself a tribute to Agatha Christie, and there’s no doubt Johnson takes his cues from the extensive Christie catalogue that set the modern template for the murder mystery novel and made Christie the bestselling author of all-time. The movie begins with a death, and ends with a family gathered in the drawing room while a detective holds court, and winnows down suspects with a wink and a southern drawl.

It’s classic Agatha in every structural way, right down to the smoking jackets and oak-panelled mansion. Yet, beneath the luxurious folds of taffeta and giddy sibling dysfunction, there’s a trap door of satire that leads to a cellar of social commentary, and the fundamental idea of inherited privilege.

Stabbing right at the heart of polarization, Johnson introduces us to the Thrombey family: A family steeped in wealth as a result the patriarch’s successful career as a crime novelist. Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) has amassed a fortune as a result of his words, and his business savvy. He’s the head of a publishing empire, and a fan of fun and games, but his children are a pack of prickly brats who’ve all got an axe to grind with Daddy.

It’s classic Agatha in every structural way, right down to the smoking jackets and oak-panelled mansion. Yet, beneath the luxurious folds of taffeta and giddy sibling dysfunction, there’s a trap door of satire that leads to a cellar of social commentary, and the fundamental idea of inherited privilege.

When he dies under questionable circumstances, it’s up to an interloping detective named Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) to decipher the clues, and nail the guilty party in the grand finale — which, as we’ve already established, takes place in the drawing room.

The very locale for this showdown is, in itself, part of Johnson’s game. Drawing rooms are an arcane remnant of an aristocratic era, when servants would draw together outside the king, or master’s, bedroom. In the Victorian era, when detective fiction and the modern whodunit took shape, the drawing room was a place for family privacy in the mansion — a place where secrets were revealed, and as the layers of decorum fell away, we’d find the bloody truth.

Johnson uses the house itself as the central assumption: An economic structure that allows for a separation of classes, and systemic limitations on the redistribution of wealth. If you think that’s a stretch, consider the actual dilemma for the star-studded clutter of characters: Who’s going to inherit the Thrombey fortune?

Will it be eldest son, Walt (Michael Shannon), the current executive in charge of the publishing empire? Perhaps, it will be the alpha daughter, Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis), a woman who’s already made her own fortune without her father’s help. Or will it be overburdened mom, Joni (Toni Collette), or the charismatic Ransom (Chris Evans)? There’s no shortage of potential heirs, but we suspect the mystery writer patriarch gave his last will and testament a twist ending.

Johnson plays with our expectations, but he doesn’t necessarily surprise us. The actual plot unfolds according to genre rules, with bits of family bickering and psychological development between clusters of reconstructed events. To keep things on track, we have the steamy locomotive, detective Benoit Blanc, chugging his way through family mendacity.

Johnson plays with our expectations, but he doesn’t necessarily surprise us.

Craig’s lazy southern drawl is the cherry on top of his pomp and privilege, and it finds a proper foil in Jamie Lee Curtis’s frank, pragmatic, voice of modern commerce. The only sympathetic character is the one everyone mistakenly refers to as “the maid” — Marta (Ana de Armas), Harlan’s care attendant, and the the last person to see him alive.

If you haven’t started putting the pieces of this puzzle together yet, there’s ample time to connect the dots before the drawing room climax, and just as much time for Johnson to deploy another plot twist. The entertainment isn’t in the denouement. It’s in the performance value of each player, and how they’re using their particular characters to explore our emotional relationship to family, and more importantly, to money.

The entertainment isn’t in the denouement. It’s in the performance value of each player, and how they’re using their particular characters to explore our emotional relationship to family, and more importantly, to money.

At times, the weight of the dual narrative makes it feel a little stilted and forced, but that’s half the point of this sharp-edged dagger-fest. We’re all playing a role, and the roles we play are determined, for the most part, by outside forces. By exaggerating the expected, Johnson makes us aware of our assumptions, our need to find an ideology that explains our own situation, and a villain to carry the blame.

@katherinemonk

Main image: The Thrombey family, Don Johnson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Chris Evans, Christopher Plummer, Toni Collette, Michael Shannon and others. Courtesy of Mongrel Media.

THE EX-PRESS, November 28, 2019

To read more movie reviews by Katherine Monk, check out the Ex-Press archive or sample career work at Rotten Tomatoes.

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