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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.
Johnson has apparently set his particular calling card as a director to be "All extremely rich people are simply irredeemable fuckups and only obtain their wealth by luck; the only people who are trustworthy, empathetic, or heroic are the salt-of-the-earth working class." No comment on the fact that the working class also correlates with Trump support in the U.S.
He even shoehorned that into STAR WARS of all things.
Which is... FINE, but he ends up making the rich characters into blatant, openly incompetent fuckups, and not just subtly ineffective, nor does he add any other facets to their character. So when he doesn't give them any moments which might allow the viewer to empathize with them and he does minimal work to humanize them, the ultimate effect (to me) is that it feels smug and nasty.
And likewise, I don't even buy that they 'lose' in the end. The irony here is that Johnson wants to have his cynical cake and eat his idealistic ice cream too. That is, he posits a view of the world where rich (but incompetent) people dominate most industries and use their influence to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. There's no way for the common man to strike at them in a way that will matter.
Then, enter Benoit Blanc, who can outmaneuver the rich dummies, see through their deceptions and machinations, and use their own blackened souls against them to arrange for their downfall, then handing that off to the enlightened everywoman to enact the final, decisive blow. Johnson works very hard to make his 'good' ending irrefutable and irreversible.
But to believe that you'd have to ignore the rest of the message that wealthy, connected people are able to use their influence to manipulate outcomes. In this world, shortly after the movie ends, all the wealthy assholes are going to hide behind expensive lawyers, bring in PR firms to spin the story, and while yes they're almost certainly financially ruined for the short term, I rather doubt they will end up serving jail time or losing 'everything.' Okay, the billionaire will probably serve a LOT of jail time for murder (but maybe not) so that's something. But in order to believe that the 'bad' people 'lose,' you have to both believe that all of them were 'bad,' and that they have fully 'lost.' And I wasn't convinced of either by the end. And that's because of the world Johnson set up for us, not my own cynicism!
He wants to push forth the idealistic vision that a smart, educated, clever interloper like Blanc, who champions all the 'right' ideas too, can assist an underprivileged, exploited commoner to win against connected, wealthy idiots through sheer effort and persistence when the stakes are high enough. But then he has to end the movie before reality ensues and the world he posited reasserts and reverses most of the alleged gains.
Side note, whilst I get that destroying the Mona Lisa as a cultural artifact to get some revenge is an iffy message, I think the core idea that the Protag had been extensively and personally wronged by the villains and thus wouldn't give a damn about destroying a mere physical possession was completely valid. A human being was killed, and you're more outraged at the destruction of a tiny little portrait?
That might be one of the few truly interesting points the movie makes.
Also, the real 'twist' wasn't one that the viewer could have reasonably guessed in advance, I think, so I find it a bit bad faith to hide so much from the viewer, rather than merely misdirect their attention so they miss or misinterpret the clues. There were NO clues as to the switcheroo, so the audience was just left in the complete dark until the flashbacks, which recontextualized everything. And that was neat, but a bit unbecoming of an actual mystery story where the audience is looking for clues. But then again, with modern genre-savvy audiences it may have been impossible to fool them if there were any clever clues hidden in plain sight, so perhaps this was the only way to pull it off.
All that said, I still enjoyed it. I don't think one can effectively deny Johnson's pure technical skill as a writer and director.
P.S. people keep saying he's targeting Joe Rogan and Elon Musk specifically, and I see why, but that seems more based on the particular cultural moment rather than the intent when he wrote or even directed it.
The billionaire asshole is much closer to a pastiche of Steve Jobs and other tech founders than Musk in particular. Especially since Musk, of all Billionaires, is not the one who would spend gratuitous amounts of money on a private island with a giant architectural abomination on display. As far as I know, he doesn't own an island, or even a yacht. So 90% of the 'critiques' in this film would roll off him anyway.
The redpill manosphere streamer character also doesn't really fit Rogan. Rogan of course didn't 'lucky break' his way into prominence, he had a lengthy career as a comedian and hosted mainstream TV shows before starting his podcast. And by and large he is known for being a genuine and empathetic guy rather than loudly spouting any particular ideological viewpoint. And given his deal with Spotify, he wouldn't need to cater to some Billionaire's whims to maintain his platform. So again, 90% of the 'critiques' in the film would roll off him.
I genuinely don't think these were the targets Johnson had in mind when writing. He wrote much more generalized sendups of a given cultural archetype and viewers projected the current pop culture bugaboos onto it.
Well except this is the same "you value property above people?" arguments made in the riots from antifa to BLM, and who has to clean up the mess after the glass-smashing? The ordinary people that the glass-smashers claim to be representing.
I can understand wanting revenge for the death of her sister, but the way it was set up was that all of them joined in the glass-smashing, and it really was only, in the end, destruction for the sake of destruction. They had all been too afraid, for various reasons, to stand up before, and the only thing they could do was be aimlessly, pointlessly, destructive.
Have you ever read the Ray Bradbury story, The Smile? That's what the idea of destroying the Mona Lisa came off as to me; destroying something that is the common heritage of all humanity just for an easy own of the Bad Guy. And making the Bad Guy sympathetic in that moment, because this is something that has meaning to him. Were it just "I'm so rich I can have the real Mona Lisa hanging on my wall", then he'd be no better than any of the rich assholes who buy great art and stick it in a vault because it's an investment that will appreciate over time until they can sell it on for a higher price than they paid for it. If it were some piece of trashy modern art (like something by Jeff Koons) that Bad Guy only bought because his investment manager advised him to do so, then go right ahead.
But this is something that apparently is meaningful to Bad Guy, something that he appreciates for its beauty and inspiration. So by destroying it, Helen has impoverished the world. And she has acted in the same spiteful, hairless ape way the Bad Guy did: one primate kills another in order to hold on to the things it has gathered together, its status in the pack. Then a bunch of rival primates turn on the former alpha and take him down, in a display of shit-flinging destructiveness. Helen is motivated by the same basic, instinctual drives that caused Bad Guy to do what he did, and nobody comes out of this looking like the better person.
Johnson's choice of the Mona Lisa is interesting, too; he could have picked some trashy modern art (if Helen wanted to burn a Basquiat, I'd have handed her the accelerant myself) but he didn't. I don't want to be reading too much into it, but I do think that there is something there about the choice of "old master art that the privileged white guy cherishes being destroyed by the Strong Empowered Black Woman".
To conclude with a quote from the Bradbury story:
Ray Bradbury, God rest the man, was a genius talent. Rian Johnson is a currently popular Hollywood hack.
While I agree that Miles Bron did value the Mona Lisa for sympathetic reasons, the ultimate reason it is destroyed is because of his own selfishness. He created the back-door to the Mona Lisa's security system just so he could look at it without glass, he put the Mona Lisa into a giant compound that was one accident away from going up in flames. What if he had the Glass Onion in normal operation mode with 50 people, and he decided to look at the Mona Lisa without glass just as a cook starts an oil fire in the kitchen? He put the Mona Lisa into an inherently risky situation in the first place, and it blew up in his face (literally) because of that.
While I do think there is something a bit dubious in destroying an important cultural artifact as an act of revenge against an otherwise untouchable murderer, I think the fact that the destruction is only possible because of said murderer's own selfishness and hubris is an important point.
For the plot purposes, it needed to be "one accident away from going up in flames" to prove that the wonderfuel was as dangerous and bad as deceased sister said it was. On the other hand, having his exotic habitat fueled by the dangerous bad wonderfuel means that he did believe it was safer than alleged; in this instance, he did put his money where his mouth was and had skin in the game. If he had sold his wonderfuel as safe, clean and green but secretly had his house powered by something else, then he could be accused of knowing it was dangerous and/or being a hypocrite.
So Johnson undercuts his own plot because he needs Things To Happen in order to make it all work out in the end. And I still think "person who deliberately commits arson" is the one with the ultimate blame. Or if I burned down your house, is it really your fault for not making sure it was as perfectly fire-proof as physically possible, even to the extent of withstanding an arsonist?
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