Knives Out
directed by Rian Johnson is a whodunnit featuring an ensemble cast of Daniel
Craig, Christopher Plummer, Jamie Lee Curtis, Chris Evans, and many more.
Daniel Craig plays the role of a private detective Benoit Blanc who was hired
by an anonymous person to look into the murder of noted crime fiction author and
billionaire Harlan Thrombey. The family members and the police prima facie
conclude it to be a suicide as Harlan had a knife in his hand which leads to
the assumption that he had slit his throat.
Initial investigations by the police also showed that the pattern of the
blood flow was uninterrupted with a smooth cut which was probably because he
slit his throat himself and there was no resistance. However, Blanc thinks
otherwise. As he interviews all the family members, Harlan’s nurse Marta and
the maid, he realizes that there is more to the story. Every suspect seems to
have an ulterior motive. But they are not directly connected to the murder. On
the fateful night which also happens to be Harlan’s 85th birthday,
almost all key members of the family have had an argument with him regarding
the will. A few days before his birthday, Harlan has a talk with some of them
regarding their suspicious activities. He realizes that his family does not
love him but is only eyeing his assets. He confides in to his nurse Marta
Cabrera who is his only close friend. After the party, Marta takes Harlan to
his room where they play a board game. After this, she gives him his daily
medicine. However, she thinks she has given him the wrong drug. Marta tells him
that he might die of drug overdose. As she calls the ambulance, Harlan stops
her from doing it. He tells her that it wouldn’t be of any use. In order to not
get convicted for his death, He gives her a detailed set of instructions on how
to portray his death as a suicide. After she leaves the room reluctantly,
Harlan slits his throat. After the funeral, they move on to the will reading.
To their shock, they realize that Harlan has left his entire property, his
company and all his money to Marta. This leads to utter chaos. Marta is quickly
taken away from there by Ransom, the youngest son of Harlan and she tells him
everything. In the end, in an unexpected turn of events, Blanc finds out that
it is Ransom, the spoilt son of Harlan who killed Harlan. Ransom had switched
the drugs before Marta came into the room with Harlan. However, she had given
him the correct drugs noticing a change in the fluids. It is proved that Harlan
did commit suicide. Ransom had hired
Blanc. He planned to implicate Marta and then inherit the entire property. Blanc
exposes Ransom and frees Marta of her guilt.
The movie
revolves around the members of Harlan Thrombey’s dysfunctional family. Walt
runs the publishing house and Linda; a successful businesswoman is his
daughter. Her husband Richard cheats on her which Harlan finds out and
threatens to tell Linda. He also has a daughter-in-law Joni who is a social
media influencer and secretly siphons off money from him under the pretext of
paying her daughter Meg’s college fee. Wanetta is Harlan’s mother who later
becomes the key evidence in proving Marta’s innocence. Benoit Blanc is
supported in his investigation by officers Lt. Elliot and Trooper Wagner.
Every dialogue in the movie leads to another
crucial evidence. The cast has done a commendable job of acting out the lines
in a manner which makes the audience suspect all of them. Blanc as the
eccentric private eye deduces the real culprit by tracing back to his
conversations with the family members. Ransom is the only person he has spoken
to the least. Yet he fishes out clues by connecting what others say about him.
These are some of those lines which act as a precursor to what happens next:
“…what you and
Harlan did that fateful night seems at first glance to fill that hole
perfectly. A donut’s hole in the donut’s hole. But we must look a little closer.
We see that the donut hole has a centre in it. It is not a donut hole at all.
But with a smaller donut with its own hole.”
This points to
the fact that it was Ransom who is responsible for the murder and not Marta.
Marta had in fact saved Harlan’s life. In the initial part, Lt. Elliot tells
Blanc that it was a suicide pointing to the physical evidence. Blanc replies,
“Physical evidence can tell a clear story with a forked tongue. Material clues
can also lie or tell little about the story unless it is connected to other
unseen clues. In another scene, Blanc raises his thoughts on the complex nature
of the case saying: “But the complexity and the gray lie not in the truth but
what you do with the truth once you have it.” He sums up the essence of the movie
saying that the case is not a mere logical connection of facts to deduce the
truth but is an intricate web of events leading to the murder.
‘Knives Out’ is a
whodunit. But I think this would be trivialising this masterpiece. It contains
all the aspects of a murder mystery. Raymond Chandler describes the character
in a mystery as “largely uninhibited many of whom are two jumps ahead of the
police” The Thrombey family put up a façade of
being wealthy and successful. It is only when they realize they have been cut
out of the will they become their true selves. They constantly remind Marta of
their gratitude for Marta. Marta’s mother is an undocumented immigrant and she
fears that her mother will be deported. They praise immigrants and their
contributions for the country. They put up an act of benevolence towards Marta
similar to how a dominant power would look down on the oppressed classes rather
than seeing them as equals. The movie examines the power structures in the
society and ridicules the snobbery of the elite. It also satisfies the
Dramatica theory of Speculation and Projection. “Speculation leads a character
to expect the unlikely in the event that it actually occurs. Projection is a
means of anticipating events and situations by extending the line of how things
have been happening into the future” (Dramatica). Marta tries to hide parts of
her story speculating on what might happen in the future. It is only when she
projects the truth assuming that it will cause her arrest that leads to the
real truth from Ransom. Speculation keeps the audience on tenterhooks and the
more it lasts, the greater the excitement. It is through projection that
everything is resolved.
The film fits into the category of a mystery
as one that is detached. “The murder novel has a depressing way of minding its
own business, solving its own problems and answering its own questions” Benoit Blanc not
only solves the case but also redeems her of her guilt and poverty. He then
goes on to solve his next case. In the end, Marta emerges as the sole character
inheriting Harlan’s assets relieving herself of her struggles as an immigrant
in America.
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