After the slow motion of the opening scene of the black hound chasing the fallen leaves, "Blade Out of the Sheath" presents a classic and somewhat rigid suspense setting: a gothic mansion in a barren forest, scarlet interiors, ornaments of horror elements, and a throat. The cut corpse, an undercurrent surging wealthy family, a private detective with a cigar in his mouth.
Based on these familiar genre elements and art design, as well as the film's effort to hook up with Agatha Christie's publicity strategy, it is easy for viewers to think that "Knife Out" is a retro "whodunnit" suspense story. But once you are successfully tricked into the movie theater by these blindfolds, you may find that many of your presuppositions and expectations for this film may not be correct.
The mystery at the center of the film does not seem to be that important. The real suspense of "Blade Out of the Sheath" is a new attempt to imitate the previous routines and boldly subvert the rules of the game. Like a magician, the left hand diverts the audience’s attention. The right hand was brewing a grand surprise.
Although blood and murder are serious, "Blade Out" is at the same time an entertaining comedy, full of vomit and prop knives, accurate complaints, stupid and nasty characters, and Netflix and "Baby Driver". Popular culture stalk.
Under the shell of suspense stories and satirical comedies, "Knife Out" is a pungent and uncompromising comment on contemporary politics, putting Trump, immigration issues and class contradictions on the table for discussion, using a mansion and a house. The rich legacy of the pen pierced the hypocrisy of the "self-made" wealthy, and became another American story after the musical "Hamilton" that uses the genre framework to satirize the past and the present.
Suspense: Donut Hole in Donut Hole
After the era of film noir, the suspenseful stories of Britain and the United States seem to have appeared more on the small screen in the form of series. The motherland of Granny and Conan Doyle, England, is naturally an extremely fond of detective stories. In addition to Holmes, Poirot and Miss Marple being open for business all year round, they also continuously produce "Inspector Moss", "Small Town Suspicious Clouds" and so on. High-quality detective drama series. The United States has brought more industrialized genres of evergreen dramas such as "Crime Scene Investigation" and "Law and Order", but in recent years there is no shortage of breakthrough styles, such as "True Detective" which grew out of the soil of southern Gothic literature. ".
Compared to TV screens, the British and American detective films on the big screen in recent years have seemed a little barren. The new version of "Murder on the Orient Express" in 2017 should be regarded as the most pure suspense film in recent years, but it is of poor quality and lack of surprises. In the United States, the last more successful detective film may be the Gerich Pigeon. The "Sherlock Sherlock Holmes" series. In such an environment, "Knife Out" as a non-adapted non-IP purely original American detective film is particularly rare.
At the beginning of the film, although the police judged the deceased Harlan to be suicide, the extremely cruel method of death, the complicated family situation, and the famous detective who was invited anonymously all immediately convinced the audience that this must be murder. Then, the first layer of suspense in "Knife Out of the Sheath" is very clear: Who is the murderer?
The first step in deciphering this layer of suspense is the standard and stylized inquiry. In the memories of the relatives of the deceased Harlan, the timeline of the night before Harlan's murder was slowly completed. Friends who have played the script kill know that the most wonderful thing about the script kill is that each participant has a motive for killing, and in the concealment and exposure of the characters, this question has become a bit awkward. Script to kill the game.
When the lead person of the whole questioning, Detective Blanc sitting far away on the sofa, revealed his true face, the audience must have realized that there is a second layer of suspense in "Blade Out of the Sheath". The detective, who always wears a tweed suit and has a strong southern accent, has a special report in The New Yorker. He was hired by an anonymous envelope full of cash. The identity of Blanc’s mysterious employer and the reasons behind it will all be For the next two hours, it continued to bother Blanc and the audience.
After undertaking the interrogation section of the dual function of paving the story and introducing the characters, the motives of many important characters were exposed one by one . This expected number of roads must give the audience a way to fasten seat belts on the roller coaster. Of peace of mind. But at this moment, "The Knife Out of the Sheath" made a violent turn, throwing the first layer of suspense that had just provoked the audience’s curiosity straight out of the car. In the middle of the first act, it gave that seemingly Answers to the most important questions.
The truly wonderful place of "Knife Out of the Sheath" has just begun here. After ruthlessly overthrowing the presupposition, it uses the method of constantly changing the point of view of the character Marta's motivation to change the type of suspense into drama conflict, and under the juggling of emotional identification and the development of the tense plot, the audience may have forgotten the second layer of suspense. The presence.
The beauty of Rian Johnson's play is that it can make "Knife Out of the Sheath" turn a few just right turns, then return to the suspense without a trace, use the second layer of suspense to re-awaken and then overthrow the first. A layer of suspense. At this time, the audience may realize that the real key to solving all the puzzles has long been buried in the scene where the truth seems to have been revealed.
Role: Modern and Contemporary Bastard Illustrated Book
The intention of "Knife Out of the Sheath" to pay tribute to Agatha Christie is obvious, but apart from the classic family setting, retro detective method, and some reference from the narrative perspective, "Knife Out of the Sheath" and the core of Granny's works Is very different.
The film critic Anthony Lane of "The New Yorker" pointed out that the most attractive aspect of Granny's work is the inconsistency , which is to expose the ugliness and crimes little by little in the elegant and noble daily life. But "Blade Out of the Sheath" does not have such a sense of incongruity. This murder happened in an indecent puddle of mud. From the beginning, all the suspects were characterized as greedy and narrow-minded harlequins. Under this setting, "Blade Out of the Sheath" has arranged for the audience from the beginning the role as a moral insurance point of view: the deceased Harlan's nurse Marta.
The audience who watched the episode of "Legal High" Soy Sauce Family may have been impressed by the reversal of the role of nurse in that story. With the same stubborn old man and the same revised last wish, Marta in "The Knife Out of the Sheath" has no chance of reversing it: she vomits when she lies. On the one hand, this dramatic setting adds a comedy effect, but to a greater extent it facilitates the development of the plot and the establishment of the audience's sense of identity with Marta. In the first act, Marta, who is kind and unable to lie, tells the audience the truth of the matter, and allows the audience to stand on Marta's side without any obstacles. In this way, even when the suspense seems to have lost its magic, "Knife Out of the Sheath" successfully brings the audience into Marta's perspective both morally and emotionally, pushing the story in another direction with brand new goals and motivations.
A kind and sincere good person is a very difficult role to portray, but the role of Marta is so popular, on the one hand because of the exquisite acting skills of the actor Ana de Armas, on the other hand, thanks to "the peers set off well". In the big family of the deceased, Marta, an outsider, is the only one who cares about his understanding of his existence, and his real relatives are a bunch of stupid people and bastards with unique characteristics: cheating son-in-law, incompetent son, talking Starting from scratch is actually a daughter who relies on his father's huge funding to start a business, a mindless lifestyle blogger's daughter-in-law, a grandson who is a bitch, and a gloomy grandson who is addicted to mobile phones.
"Knife Out", the most dazzling cast of this year, perfectly interprets this group of seemingly innocent but extremely annoying characters. But this group of meticulously designed group portraits is the biggest regret of "Knife Out of the Sheath" at the same time as the achievement of "Knife Out of the Sheath" . These sparkling characters only act as suspense smoke bombs in the first act, and in the next plot. The middle gradually merged into a functional collection with a blurred face and a unified action, losing the possibility of a single role to shine. From the midpoint of the plot, the legacy reading meeting began, "Blade Out of the Sheath" walked out of the house where the story took place, leaving behind the group portrait characters, and became a three-person play between nurse Marta, detective Blanc and grandson Ransom.
Daniel Craig and Chris Evans, two actors who have been constrained in specific roles for too long, ushered in a real breakthrough in "Knife Out of the Sheath". Detective Blanc is a very interesting character. As the plot unfolds, the audience will keep swaying in the perception that he is a genius and an idiot. Whether this detective is not worthy of its name can also be established as a vivid branch. Chris just won America's Ass in "Avengers 4" and evolved into America's Asshole in "Knife Out of the Sheath", and this rich and hierarchical image of a pure young master in a bitch helps him accelerate his entry into the post-U.S. Captain era.
Politics: Immigrants, we get the job done
In the film's earliest questioning, Richard, the son-in-law of the Thrombey family, quoted lines from the musical "Hamilton" to evaluate Marta's simplicity and hard work. "Knife Out" can be regarded as a new edition of the story of "Hamilton", in which a low-powered immigrant confronts a group of high-class Americans who think they have natural privileges, and at the same time demonstrates the fierceness between the old American values and contemporary ideas. collision.
A key word in "Knife Out of the Sheath" is self-made . The eldest daughter Linda likes to emphasize that she started the company from scratch, but in fact, the only person in this family who really relied on her own struggle to achieve a class leap is the old father Harlan, who has built her own suspense novel empire with talent and dedication. Harlan represents the most classic American dream. He loves his career so much that when he is about to die, he just wants to write down this new method of death and use it in the book.
But on the other hand, his children and grandchildren are all blood-sucking bugs attached to him, and even if they are talented, they can't create their own careers. The difference in concept between Harlan and his children is the most important contradiction in the whole family. It also explains why Harlan values Marta so much: He sees himself in Marta, which is something the thrombey group of children sitting in the sky do not have. Marta standing in front of Harlan's portrait many times, and the coffee cup passed from Harlan to Marta, constantly reminded the similarities between these two seemingly unrelated characters. In this sense, Marta is the real heir to the Thrombey family, or even further, is the American who is truly worthy of social wealth.
Another key word in "Knife Out of the Sheath" is birth right . After Harlan's last wish was read out, the Thrombey family often kept the word on their lips. They believe that the superiority given to them by the patriarch in economic education and social status is their innate right, and they should naturally and undisputedly belong to the property behind Harlan and the mansion. Birth right, congenital ownership, is the sole criterion for the Thrombey family to distinguish themselves from outsiders, Americans and immigrants.
During the investigation, the Thrombey family claimed that they regarded Marta as a close family member, but in fact, no one knew which South American country Marta came from . Some said Uruguay, some said Paraguay, and some said Brazil. In the eyes of this group of natural Americans, the world may only be divided into the United States and countries outside the United States, and immigrants like Marta are just "the help" to serve them.
In the conflict of old and new ideas, the double contradiction of privilege and identity, the house where the story unfolds in "The Knife Out of the Sheath" has become a more allegorical stage. The analogy between the house space and the United States, the exclusion, hostility, and even harm faced by outsiders make "Knife Out of the Sheath" become another film after "Escape from Death" and "Are You Ready" to explore political expression with genre elements s work.
In what may be the best ending scene of the year, the kind and brave "Hamilton" Marta made from scratch, completed the invasion and occupation of space, looking down at the losers who lost their birth right and lost everything. Marta, who inherited Harlan's classic American values, may be the real American. She holding a coffee cup in her hand will become the new rule maker for this country and this house. My house, my rules, my coffee.
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