Friday Yan: Before talking about this film, we must first understand the concepts of horror, suspense, thrilling, and detection of these film types and their reasons - horror is the simplest. What will happen, or when you can't see the surrounding environment of the character, the sense of fear arises; suspense is different from horror, often we know the ending of a character (for example, a person dies), but we don't know who did it. or how to do it, the sense of suspense is born; the thriller is closer to the suspense, but it is far away from the horror, because the viewer knows almost everything the character is going to do next, for example, a certain agent is going to infiltrate A certain dragon pool and tiger den, obtaining a certain confidential information from a certain dangerous person... However, due to the difficulty of the task, even in broad daylight, the audience will have a thrilling and thrilling mood; the final detection is very easy to understand, as long as there is in the movie Mysteries have to have people who solve them, and the detection line is set up from this.
Since the development of commercial films, it has mostly evolved into a mashup type of horror, suspense, thrilling, and detection. For example, there are frequent strange things in a house, which is horror; and then someone intervenes to try to find out the facts. This is horror and detection; It is found that everyone in the haunted house is strange and strange, and when each has a ghost, suspense arises; in the end, when the perpetrator is locked and a confrontation PK is formed, the thrilling drama begins... This type of mashup From a commercial point of view, you can It is said that it complies with the diverse needs of the public, but from the perspective of screenwriters, I think it is a manifestation of opportunism and lack of creative ability. The reason is very simple: when the detection in the film cannot be justified, it will help with supernatural phenomena of ghosts and gods; When the thrill is not enough to support the length of the movie, we will create some suspense and set up roadblocks, and go around the bend to the end...
So, looking at this "Knives Out", I think it is a rare and pure commercial crime detection film in recent years! Its pureness lies in its abandonment of all elements of horror and thriller; it simplifies the suspenseful roadblocks and the thrilling ending; it does not have those protracted and lengthy sensational scenes... The only thing left is to detect this line, and where is the charm of detection? Well - that's logical reasoning!
With the above understanding, "Friday Literature and Art" will make an evaluation of this "Knives Out"——
1. The purity of film as a genre film
(Purity is a general sentence: a point of view, a house, a family, what happened in black and white.)
A perspective refers to the perspective of the investigator, that is, the line of the private detective who entered the crime scene;
A house naturally refers to the large manor where the person involved lives, which is also the scene of the crime;
Family refers to the family involved in the case and the people living in the house;
A black refers to what happened on the night of the crime,
Yibai refers to what happened in the investigation after the incident;
Note that the above mentioned things are all the elements that make up the frame of the whole movie, which I think is definitely low cost, minimalism in a modern commercial genre!
Think about it carefully and you will find that there is no sub-line in this movie! There is no running plot, just a detective to investigate a case to the end.
Some people will ask whether the flashback scene of "the night of the crime" is not a secondary line?
From the perspective of space, it is correct, but from the perspective of plot, the flashback of what happened that night does not form a parallel relationship with the main detection line. What does it mean? Let’s use three classic detection movies as examples to further explain ▼
The Spanish movie "The Invisible Guest" released in 2017 has flashback shots of different people's subjective narratives interspersed in the plot. If we take the detection (truth) as the main line, then the subjective narrative line will interfere with the detection. role, therefore, they are juxtaposed;
The 1995 American movie "The Seven Deadly Sins" has more lines than detectives, and almost every main character has a sub-line, including the personal life line of the black police detective played by Morgan Freeman, including cloth The family line of the young police detective played by La DePitt... The director aims to use these multiple lines parallel to crime detection to explain the complex social issues behind it;
In "The Witness", which won multiple Oscar nominations in 1985, the police (Harrison Ford) in the play is investigating the case as the main line. The thrilling story line of killing, the thrilling type and the crime detection type form a double-line juxtaposition.
It can be said that the above three films are a combination of story lines of various genres.
▼ Look back at the "Knives Out" that is currently being shown:
Its flashback line follows the detective's thinking (equivalent to the detective who is listening to the narration of the person involved, while restoring the scene of the crime in his mind), it is progressive, and does not produce any reverse to the detection. interference.
Therefore, we can call this movie a pure "detection movie".
Since it is pure detection, then there is only one criterion for evaluating its quality: whether its logic is rigorous!
2. There are no obvious logical loopholes in "Knives Out"
The logic we are talking about here should be considered from two aspects: one is the rationality of the character's character; the other is the rationality of the case.
1. The rationality of the character's character
The rationality here refers to: what kind of people can do what kind of things, what kind of people can't do what kind of things. For example:
The older writer in the movie (who still writes detective novels) should be the kind of person who can easily analyze from the financial bills that his children have cheated him of money all year round, not a low IQ;
Another example is the rich second generation who has been pampered since childhood. If he is kind, thrifty, and considerate, it would be unreasonable.
We can follow this logic to scrutinize each character in the play to see whether their behaviors involved in the case echo their personalities under their social identities.
In this way, I did not find any obvious loopholes in the character's character in the film.
Of course, if you think about it this way, you will inevitably fall into the mindset of labeling "one person", but this is an unavoidable flaw in pure genre films. He must label the characters in order to start the game of solving the case. The function of each piece The role must be fixed, just like the fixed function of the housemaid, "When she tells a lie, she vomits."
2. The rationality of the case
After the character functions of the characters are fixed, the rest is whether the logic between what each of them did in the case (or the information disclosed by each person in the police interrogation) is reasonable and sufficient to cause a crime. If it happens, will it not be seen by the detective (or the audience) at a glance.
In other words, the more rigorous the logic between each link involved in the crime, the stronger the "suspense" produced by the film. Let's take an example from the play:
There is a culprit behind the scenes in the play. Originally, the culprit can greatly shorten the time to solve the case due to the fact that the maid cannot lie (referring to calling an ambulance directly after the accidental injection of anesthesia). However, the kindness and wisdom of the old writer plus the maid The timidity and weakness of the two caused the two to create a common lie to cover up.
It seems that the character is covering up for himself, but the director is actually covering up the culprit behind the scenes, in order to enhance the difficulty and viewing pleasure of logical reasoning from the detective's subjective perspective.
The behaviors caused by the characteristics and flaws of all characters constitute the complexity of the case. This is the logical starting point for the creation of detective films.
Looking at the rationality of the case of "Knives Out of the Sheath", it is relatively rigorous, but it does not prove that there are no loopholes. For example, the timing of the maid's vomiting is just right; No foreknowledge... (These are not the point of discussion, not to mention)
In addition, when it comes to narcotics, we have to mention two other very important things in crime detection films. These two things determine the quality of such films, that is, props and lines.
3. "Knives Out of the Sheath" basically did not waste a prop or a line
The meaning of not wasting a prop and a line means: the design function of each line is prepared for solving the mystery of the case. Note that the role we are talking about here is not the role of composition, nor the role of montage, but the role of solving puzzles. for example:
The turntable full of knives is quite cool from the perspective of composition, but its role in the plot is not only a decoration, it may also be a murder prop, or a key to solve a mystery...
Almost every detail, prop and line in the detective movie is worthy of the audience's attention, pondering, and suspicion! Conversely, we can use the closeness of props, lines and cases to judge the quality of a crime detection film. From this point of view, I think Knives Out is enough to be a textbook.
Of course, this is just one of the criteria.
4. What is the value of "Knives Out"
Looking at this "Knives Out of the Sheath", I think its commercial considerations are relatively bold. After all, those feelings of fear, horror, and thrilling heartbeats are generated by the audience's instinct, and they don't need to be brainstormed. But the detection reasoning is different, the fun of watching a movie will be greatly reduced when you are distracted! This may directly affect the box office and public opinion orientation.
Of course, a single type of detection seems outdated to the public and not exciting enough.
In addition, from the perspective of ideological depth, abandoning the element of fear also abandons the opportunity to symbolically express the character's heart (art movies often use horror to highlight the characters' hearts), but this is what anti-type art films should do. The attraction of non-pure detective films.
I think it is meaningless to talk too much about the social value and ideological height of a detective genre film. No one will care how a game of chess played by two masters will help the real society. The game reasoning process generated by the chess game itself is its worth it! It's exciting enough!
If it weren't for the E-MAIL, BMW, and iPhone that appeared in the second half of the movie, I really thought this movie was about twentieth-century England! The movie is a closed aristocratic family space, and the detectives are also dressed in retro. Obviously, the director is deliberately abandoning the social and political nature of the movie, intending to simplify the movie and let the audience's attention focus on the crime detection itself.
From this perspective, "Knives Out" seems to skip the stylization and ideology of "Seven Deadly Sins" (directed by David Fincher) and "No One Survives" (Agatha Christie's novel). It really comes back to the pure reasoning fun of "Ehren Poe".
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