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In his new movie, Rian Johnson dusts off Agatha Christie with help from Daniel Craig, Jamie Lee Curtis and Don Johnson.
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‘Knives Out’ | Anatomy of a Scene
Rian Johnson narrates a sequence from his film.
My name is Rian Johnson, and I wrote and directed ‘Knives Out.’ So this is a scene about 45 minutes into the movie, where we first get to meet Chris Evans’ character, Hugh Ransom Drysdale. He goes by Ransom. And there’s Chris Evans, a rare moment of dogs not liking Chris Evans. You can’t really tell here, but this is a real mansion in the middle of Massachusetts that we shot in. It was a gorgeous murder mystery mansion that we just found and we shot inside and outside of it. This is LaKeith Stanfield and Noah Segan as the two local cops right here. “Excuse me. Sir, we’re officers of the law.” And here comes Daniel Craig as the eccentric detective, Benoit Blanc, and Ana de Armas as Marta. “So what’s this arrangement?” “Mr. Drysdale.” “CSI KFC?” I’m very proud right here of the staging of this, trying to stage everybody so the dialogue scenes worked. Like with this, we come in and first meet the family in this room doing this wide panning over shot to establish the geography of it. In the close up of Chris, you see Daniel coming back there. We get Toni’s entrance. “Hey. Hey.” And this is Frank Oz. Frank Oz, who did a little cameo for us. I’ll try and go through and introduce the cast a little bit. You saw Toni Collette there, who plays a lifestyle guru. This is Michael Shannon, who plays Walt, the youngest brother. Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays Linda, the eldest sister. And Don Johnson will be seen here in a moment, who plays her husband. There’s Don right there. Look at all the great sweaters. And then hanging in the background, that’s Katherine Langford and that’s Riki Lindhome. “Jacob was in that bathroom the night of the party.” And that’s Jaeden Martell, who plays the younger son. So an example of that three-shot right there, like this shot right here, figuring out how to just get everybody comfortably in frame it in a way that feels natural. This scene was one of the most fun scenes in the whole movie to shoot, just because all of these actors were together in this room. We had a couple big scenes like this, where all of these amazing actors were together, and they all got to play off of each other. “You want to go?” “You bet, Skippy, let’s go.” So, yeah, everyone kind of goes at each other here. I love this ridiculous little slap fight between the two of them. I mean, it’s kind of silly. But that’s kind of the tone of the movie. It’s a murder mystery, but it kind of, you can tell, has like a sense of humor to it. [INTERPOSING VOICES] “We got to do this more often.”
By Manohla Dargis
- Knives Out
- Directed by Rian Johnson
- Comedy, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
- PG-13
- 2h 10m
A sleek game of cat and mouse, “Knives Out” begins the hunt with a mysterious pool of blood and ends, well, telling wouldn’t be fair. The press screening that I attended was preceded by a brief video in which the writer and director Rian Johnson asked viewers not to spill the movie’s secrets. The entreaty suggests how seriously Johnson takes his own cleverly deployed twists and the challenges of keeping ostensible spoilers under wraps. The twists are kinked and amusing, although far less striking than the obvious pleasure he had making this exactingly machined puzzle box.
Stuffed with famous and blurrily familiar faces, the movie takes the shape of an old-fashioned whodunit — the kind with mystery, suspense, entertainment, a corpse on an heirloom settee and a half-dozen or so shifty suspects milling about.
As in many genre exemplars, the main setting is a stately manor with dark corners, creaking stairs and a warren of richly appointed rooms shrouded in secrets. Together, the rooms create a claustrophobic maze, though they more pointedly resemble cabinets of curiosities with jumbles of books, dead animals, laughing masks, acres of rugs and eccentric objets.
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The house itself feels like a mousetrap, which works for a narrative puzzle in which the parts keep shifting as the wood-paneled walls close in. The overall sense of confinement is perfect for the aims of a private investigator, Benoit Blanc, a honey-baked ham played by Daniel Craig with grandiose self-regard and a Southern accent that seems borrowed from Kevin Spacey. There isn’t a butler in the parlor, but there is a rather too virtuous caretaker, Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas), who worked for the manor’s imperious patriarch Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), who suddenly and rather flamboyantly croaks.
Harlan is a charming monster, a type that Plummer excels in playing, and it’s a shame that he isn’t around longer. A renowned mystery writer, Harlan has written stacks of best sellers, amassing wealth and cultivating a grasping, desperate dependence in his avaricious family. Someone clearly had a good time coming up with the titles of his tomes, which read like winking clues or chapter headings: “Vulcan’s Den,” “The Badger,” “Nick of Time,” “Ultimatum,” “This Little Piggy.” A genre savant, Johnson understands that one of the pleasures of mystery stories is how they turn viewers into detectives, eager amateur sleuths who also sift through the clues, false and not.
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