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I watched the new Knives Out movie, and while the mystery plot was fun enough, my enjoyment of the movie was severely hampered by politics. I saw the previous Knives Out movie so I knew what to expect, but I do feel like this just went above and beyond. Minor spoilers to follow.
My wife was disappointed that I let politics ruin a good movie for me, but really, I think that the filmmakers honestly don't want you to view this movie as just a fun murder mystery without the context of politics. The movie is all about making a heavy handed political statement.
The movie just seemed like a pulpit for Rian Johnson to talk about how much he hates Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and various other people. I almost feel like the entire plot is really the secondary goal. The main goal of him making this was to implant and grow a brain worm in the audience that every famous rich person is connected, really part of a cabal that got what they got through no talent of their own, took advantage of individuals and the world at large, contribute nothing, and are evil, vile, worthless, and bratty pieces of shit.
Nowhere in the movie do they ever display the slightest amount of sympathy for anyone besides the detective and the poor black woman who was taken advantage of (major spoiler:or her secret twin sister ). I guess this movie really makes me feel like in order to write good compelling characters, you really have to love them, or have the capacity to love them, or maybe just respect and understand and empathize with them. Rian Johnson clearly does none of this, and his utter contempt for them just seeps through. He comes across like a high school kid writing screenplays to take pot shots at people he hates.
I don't know, I really can't believe that this movie has gotten so much praise. It really irritates me, and just seems like lazy complaining.
Other minor, non political gripe:
The movie came to a screeching halt when they decided to have the entire 3rd quarter of the movie as a flashback. I think small flashbacks are great in mystery stories, but the decision to have over a half hour told in flashback made me feel like it was dragging, and made me want it to just get back to advancing the plot.
The first movie, Knives Out, was clearly about and a celebration of white dispossession, with the final scene consisting of the Latina housekeeper who has inherited the mansion looking down on the disinherited, evil white family from the balcony with a mug that says "my house, my rules, my coffee." I haven't seen the new one yet, but it sounds like another "all the white people are evil except the detective" plot.
I dunno, I wholeheartedly agree that Glass Onion was crap -- and not just for politics, but also because there was no interesting story, there was no interesting murder mystery, there were no stakes, the spectacles in the final act served no purpose, it sold itself as a murder mystery and then disclaimed any intent to follow through, and overall consistently treated the audience with contempt. I could go on at length about all the ways the movie was shitty.
But I really liked Knives Out. It had an interesting plot, fun characters, the awful rich people were awful in very entertaining ways, and it hit a great medium between camp and drama. I also don't see its plot as being anti-rich. The patriarchal novelist earned his money, deserved his fortune, was admired by all, was a wise and benevolent figure. His horrible family were parasites on his wealth, their pretenses at business were revealed as pretenses, they were shitty to one another and to the man who created all of their wealth, and none of that works to impugn them if the original fortune isn't genuine and deserved. It had a pro-capitalist message: the wealthy guy became wealthy by creating a product that brought people joy, and built a business from it. The bad people were moochers, looters and ingrates of this well deserved fortune. Some of them were portrayed as politically right-wing, but others as left-wing. And the benevolence of the main character is established by her grit, hard work, good attitude and good moral character -- not as a product of race or victimhood, as it was in Glass Onion.
One thing both I and my (leftist) wife disliked about the original Knives Out movie was that we were supposed to empathize with the SJW girl. She was portrayed as a good character who just made mistakes. We didn't think she earned that at all, and it really just seemed to speak to the filmmaker's own positions, that he felt we should forgive her her indiscretions, but not the rest of the family.
The college student? To be honest I don't remember much about her.
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And the attractive white woman who speaks Spanish. Sure, she might be technically Hispanic, but she's probably a good deal whiter than Meghan Markle. She's got at least 50% European ancestry and judging from pictures of her father, considerably more. You'd think if they wanted to make the point they could find someone more clearly non-white, but I guess it's always better marketing to go for the hottie.
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This is like wokesters who see the boogieman of racism everywhere; they view everything as a manifestation of their obsession. Yes, the family was white, but it was also rich. To the extent that the movie was "clearly about" anything, it was about class, not race. And stories about rich people getting their comeuppance at the hands of the servants go back at least to Moliere, but probably much longer -- I don't recall much about the Greek comedies. And the trope of the rich guy leaving his money to some modest person and disinheriting his greedy relatives is obviously one which has been endlessly repeated; it does not become "about white dispossession" just because the housekeeper happens to be Hispanic (and it is not as if Hispanic housekeepers are a rarity).
But, Knives Out wasn't even about that; the family members got their comeuppance at their own hands. They dispossessed themselves. The housekeeper did not trick or manipulate them ala Moliere; she did nothing to cause their disinheritance. Had she not been around, he would have left the money to charity, or his cat, or whatever.
Sometimes a cigar is, indeed, just a cigar.
She was the nurse, not the housekeeper. And I thought it was shown, or at least implied, that she was the only person there who was interested in the guy for his own sake, paid attention to him, and was his friend, while his horrible family just leeched off his wealth.
So I've seen enough inheritance disputes to know that the family could have accused her of "undue influence" and all the rest of it when the will was read, even without a murder mystery. Anyway, I prefer my own reading of it, that she did set them all up including the detective - blood spot on her shoe only he noticed? she can't lie because it makes her literally throw up except for the conclusion where she can manage to lie long enough so that the guilty party incriminates himself? that final shot?
She totally influenced the sick old guy, especially by fiddling around with his medication to give him 'happy shots', and wormed her way into his affections so that he'd disinherit the family in her favour; set him up to commit suicide; then let them all try and get her so that her way would be cleared with no pesky court cases fighting over the inheritance and burning up all the estate. I like to think she thinks she got away with it, then gets whammied with inheritance and other unpaid taxes (turns out there's a second and third mortgage on the big old house which, being a big old house, is a money pit for upkeep), there isn't any more money coming in because the golden goose (famous mystery author who produced an annual bestseller to keep the publishing company afloat) is dead, and she has to waste the inheritance on court cases anyway fighting over her illegal immigrant mom (tell me the vengeful family would not have called ICE the second they got to a phone), besides all the cousins and other family members who pop up out of the woodwork now that she's rich expecting her to help them all out with their money troubles and court cases.
Yes, OP referred to her as the housekeeper, and I followed along without remembering otherwise. But so do you further up lol.
Right, which is an exceedingly common trope. Which is why OP's claim that the film was "clearly about and a celebration of white dispossession" simply because the nurse is Hispanic is so dubious.
A sequel based on that reading would have been far more interesting than Glass Onion, IMHO. I believe that there is supposed to be a third film, so we can hope.
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Over the holidays, I had a relatively pleasant call with my mother. Relatively in that there were only four oblique references to my infidel status.
My wife doesn’t hear it when it happens. She is missing a few decades of history of argument via insinuation, so she leaves the call thinking it was just the nicest call, while I am ranging between annoyed and fuming.
Almost no Hollywood tv shows or movies are made by or for conservative audiences. The closest conservatives get are things like Top Gun: Maverick or Yellowstone, which aren’t exactly conservative. It’s more that they don’t treat conservatives and/or non-coastal Americans with sneering contempt. For most of the red tribe types that I know, they are primed to see microagressions in Hollywood productions. Perhaps the writers and directors are wholly innocent and just repeat what they see on n their milieu. Maybe my mother doesn’t mean to provoke me when she brings up religion multiple times in a short call. It is a significant part of her life and informs her worldview in almost every aspect. The entirety of my adult life, she has used it as a cudgel, but maybe this time she was wholly innocently bringing it up seemingly out of nowhere.
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In the same way, the writers do not believe white people are worthy of the inheritance of the country, or "the estate." Of course they are going to depict the white people in the story of not being worthy of their inheritance, and the minority character does nothing wrong in the entire film. In fact, that's a plot twist of the first film: you thought the housekeeper made a big mistake but it turns out she was completely innocent and didn't make a mistake at all. In the sequel, too, they portray the success of the white man as having been stolen from the black woman. To say that this is about class and not about race is missing the mark.
I don't think you watched the film very closely. Rian Johnson slams this over the head of the audience. There were a lot of lines and scenes that put the film in a racialized context, i.e.:
Of course, the final shot of the film is Marta looking down from the balcony with a mug that says "My House." Even National Review picked up on it, for whatever that's worth.
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You're not wrong about the woke diaspora, but I enjoyed the first movie simply due to the opening string quartet. I wish it was expanded into a full work, but it pretty much meant I was going to enjoy the movie even with the heavy-handed anti-white overtones.
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I really liked Knives Out, even though I do have a mild allergic reaction to overt woke messaging. There were several "good guy" white characters, including the old dead rich white man. Yes, the 1st-generation Latina is the one winning out in the end, it's obviously a movie of its time, but I think it did a pretty good job of being detective-movie-for-the-Trump-era. The family of humorously horrible people is very much a mix of clueless conservatives and out of touch liberal elites, and I think both sides are getting poked fun at. Also, it's just good in its own right. The clever inversion of the traditional detective story arc, while leaning into classic mystery tropes, was very well-done.
Curious to see how I feel about the sequel.
It's been quite some time since I've seen it, so I may have forgotten some details, but I don't think the family elder is a good person. Yes, the movie wants us to see him in a sympathetic light, but why should I care about the authorial intent?
His children are portrayed as an ungrateful bunch yes, but as the meme goes "My brother in Christ, you raised the children". What I see here is a story of a man who lucked into having a world-class talent in something (writing), and when his kids turned out to be only ordinary people he used his status to instill lifelong inferiority complexes in all of them. Taunting them about how they didn't manage to escape the long shadow of his fame, and when they grew up resentful and bitter using that bitterness as a proof that he was right to taunt them in the first place.
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One of my biggest issues with the first film was that we were not supposed to hate the SJW girl as much as the rest of the family, basically just by virtue of her being an SJW. Even though she did bad things, too, but she was portrayed sympathetically.
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I also agree that you can identify and critique "woke messaging" but still enjoy a film on its own merits - writing, acting, story, etc. I also enjoyed the first movie, although I was far more offended by Daniel Craig's Southern accent than I was by the film's celebration of white replacement.
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