Right Out

We saw the trailer for Knives Out a few months ago and my kneejerk reaction was: "It looks like Clue: The Movie, but with better actors." And it is quite the (middling to real) star-studded cast, with Daniel Craig, Jamie Lee Curtis, Chris Evans, Toni Collette, Don Johnson, and Lakeith Stanfield. There was enough intrigue there (Don Johnson, back on camera? Jamie Lee Curtis, likewise? Daniel Craig, seemingly attempting a Southern accent?) to at least make me curious. But then, seriously, it looked like the plot of a Clue-type boardgame. I suffered through enough Agatha Christie adaptations as a kid and have never been a fan of police procedurals, be they Angela Lansbury vehicles (Murder, She Wrote makes a cameo on a TV screen) or modern, CSI-type stuff. So, I waved a hand at it, thinking I wouldn't bother.

And, then, the snowball started. Audiences were flocking to it. Critics were singing about it (97% on Rotten Tomatoes!) So, I was thinking, maybe I was being too cynical. Maybe there was something here that writer/director Rian Johnson (now famous/infamous for The Last Jedi) was onto. Maybe Daniel Craig doing a faux Louisiana drawl wouldn't be that bad for two hours? So, when the opportunity came to sit down and watch something on Amazon, we decided that we'd watch one of the nominees for best original screenplay...

So, here's where you automatically say to yourself: "Always trust your first instinct. That's why they call it an 'instinct', defined as 'an inherent inclination towards a particular complex behavior.'" My particular complex behavior? Avoiding awful fucking movies, because that's what this is. It's tedious. It's obvious. It's completely predictable. I was seriously bored halfway through it while waiting for Craig to chew through another one of his monologues, none of which are memorable, half because he wasn't saying anything interesting and half because his accent is so bad as to distract from anything interesting he might've been saying. I seriously considered just doing a La La Land and turning to Tricia and saying: "Yeah, I can't watch this." But we'd paid for it, so I kept going, in the desultory hope that something positive might happen (I think I snorted a couple times, but I'm not sure if it was at an actual funny moment or in derision at their attempts to produce one.)

Best original screenplay! This film! For writing! I can't even... OK. Back up. There are generally two ways that a screenplay gets nominated: Clever writing and good storytelling (sometimes, you get both!) An example of the first is Pulp Fiction. All you have to do is say the phrase "Royale with cheese!" and you'll get most people spewing other lines from that opening dialogue between Vincent and Jules in the car on their way to a hit job. It's a totally natural conversation between two friends/colleagues and they deliver it with aplomb. Most of the lines in the film are delivered that way and that's why most of them are memorable. That's why actors clamored to be in the 'next Tarantino' because they saw that and wanted to be the next cool cat on the screen saying that cool shit.

An example of #2 could also be derived from Pulp Fiction, given its non-linear approach and sharp camera work, but my favorite is always Blade Runner, the director's cut. Blade Runner is a brilliant example of visual storytelling. Most people, indeed, think of dialogue when they think of screenplays, but the writer is also responsible for laying the groundwork for the director to build on and Ridley Scott does an excellent job of telling the story just with what you see on the screen. The idiots at Warner Bros. decided to ruin the theatrical release by adding Harrison Ford's voiceover, but you don't need that because the story is in front of you and everything you need to know about Deckard, Rachel, Roy, and everyone else appears in the words they speak and the faces they show. Those are proper screenplays; proper stories; and, often, great films. But there's an old moviemaking aphorism: You can make a bad film out of a good screenplay, but you can't make a good film out of a bad screenplay.

Knives Out has neither of those two key aspects (dialogue, storytelling.) I can't think of a single memorable line from the entire movie. I can't think of a single moment that said to me: "Yeah. I'm watching something interesting develop here." Most of these characters are intended to be contemptible. The problem is, they have to be interesting, as well, if you're going to continue to enjoy watching them, and they simply aren't. In some ways, it reminded me of another film where the patriarch (also a writer) dies and the family comes together for his funeral: August Osage County. That had an ensemble cast, as well, and the story was similar; in that old, family dynamics reemerged and chaos erupted as people remembered just how much they can't stand each other and why they left Osage County, OK in the first place. Many of those characters, likewise, were contemptible in their own ways. But they were also human and the story was heartfelt. These characters were plastic and two-dimensional, which means that there was no depth in them to be suffused with any of the genuine emotion that came from AOC.

I mean, was this supposed to be a modern Death on the Nile? Was Daniel Craig supposed to be a Hercule Poirot reference, just in case a contemporary audience hadn't seen murder mysteries from the 70s where the entire plot had to be re-told, step by step, at the end? One envisions a young Liam Neeson explaining to an equally young Jim Carrey that it's "not a ripoff. It's an homage!" in The Dead Pool (not that Deadpool...) Was Craig's Benny Blanc(o) (from the Bronx!) an homage or a parody? Were we ever going to get an explanation as to why the local cops were so willing to put up with his antics? Or why the insufferable family considered a PI some kind of voice of authority? Or why the suspicious death of a multi-million selling author wasn't immediately TV newsworthy, but his leaving all of those millions to a young, Hispanic woman somehow was, in this, our Internet age of conspiracies and Twitter hordes? Wait. Am I venturing too far outside the canned, Hallmarkian plot? Sorry. I guess I should have stopped thinking.

Every time I sit down to read a book or watch a film or an episode of a TV series, my main desire is to be told a story. It doesn't even have to be an original story. Just tell me a good one. Give me a reason to say: "Yeah. That story was good because..." This film didn't do that and, what's worse, it didn't provide any other reason (performances, cinematography, visuals) for me to think that I didn't waste two hours of my life because I, once again, didn't trust my first instinct. Every time that happens, I say: "Never again." And, yet...

Miserably good

I've only seen the original Les Miserables once. It was the 1982 version, directed by Robert Hossein, and I've never read the novel. I do, thankfully, know the story pretty well, since it's one of the fictional hallmarks of anyone that's ever been involved in progressive politics: oppressed populace with little outlet, desperate hero steals to keep his family alive, and is then pursued to the point of futility for this "crime." It's a story about economic trauma, personal obsession, and the basic ethics of society: cooperation or competition?

But I was instantly entranced upon seeing the trailer for the latest adaptation by Ladj Ly, both because it was covering a very modern premise (the immigrant slums of Paris and the general indifference shown to them by the government) and because that premise meant the story was likely going to veer pretty far from the one I already knew so well. That expectation turned out to be accurate. Thankfully, my anticipation for the quality of the story was met, as well. The story centers around a special police unit that is used to contain the projects, rather than "serve and protect", as it were. The trio of officers who carry the story spend most of their time following groups of youths who may or may not be doing anything illegal, but in true, Javert style, are determined to catch them, regardless. Competing with the police are various other entities (a community leader/racketeer; the local mosque; the thoughtful owner of a kebab shop) who are also attempting to direct the kids into what they think are constructive directions (whether for their own purposes or the actual benefit of the children.) When a confrontation between the police and their targets becomes violent and that encounter is filmed by another youth with a drone camera, it's akin to dropping the match into the puddle of gasoline.

From an American perspective, it's interesting that the encounter that the police are so determined to cover up is actually a non-lethal one. The weapon that ends up injuring one of the kids isn't really capable of killing and one could almost assume, given the circumstances, that the use of it was accidental. But, even in a situation where much of the French public is somewhere between ignorant and contemptuous of the conditions in this housing, the police are terrified that what they've done could be seen as an overreaction. I'm sorry to say that much of the American public would look at what happened as entirely justified, if not simply easily dismissed. In this instance, as in so many others, the European perspective is the more ethical one, even if the police don't generally share that perspective. But, in turn, one of the best things about the film is that Ly takes the time to show the emotional impact of the events on the three officers of the unit: the abrasive, ego-driven leader (Alexis Manenti); the jaded sidekick who grew up in the projects (Djibril Zonga); and the new guy who can't believe that this is what his job has become (Damien Bonnard.)

For all of its well-developed characters and social leanings, however, the film doesn't shy away from the action, as the final scene is both intense and compelling, dispensing with the spotlight moments that are so prevalent in Hollywood action films, which remove any doubt about the outcome. The results here, both in terms of what happens to the characters and whether any kind of resolution has been reached, are left open to question, which is almost always the ultimate sign of a good story.

There are a number of good, little details, as well; from Buzz (the drone flyer; Al-Hassan Ly) being bullied by the local girls basketball team, showing how normal the fight for hierarchical status is, no matter where kids are; to examples of The Commissioner's (Jeanne Balibar) casual corruption and opportunism; to the name of the kebab shop ("Ali Boumaye", the chant that the Zairean public issued to Muhammad Ali before and during the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974 (It basically means "Ali, murder him.")) All of these details provide a textured image of a story and a community with many facets, which shows the care and attention that Ly took in shaping the story (he was also a co-writer) and delivering the final product. I've never been a tremendous fan of French cinema, but this one stood out as exceptional and is well worth the effort of tracking down.