Knives Out

Russian formalists distinguish between the fabula (that is the plot of a story) and the syuzhet (the way that the story is narrrated or told).  The genre of mystery and detective stories relies upon devising a narrative that creates the greatest possible distance between fabula and syuzhet.  In these kinds of a novels or films, a relatively simple plot -- X kills Y and, then, tries to conceal the identity of the killer -- is subjected to a complex syzuzhet designed to obscure the story to the point that it can not be deciphered in the "real time" that it takes the audience to read the story or watch the movie.  At some point, very close to the end of the narrative, someone has to explain the fabula, an endeavor complicated by the requirement that all misdirections employed to obfuscate the story also must be motivated and explained.  If done properly, this kind of story is highly entertaining -- we are shown remarkable and inexplicable things that are ultimately rationalized into meaning.  This meaning is also reassuring to the audience -- we learn that crime doesn't pay and that justice prevails in the world.  In Knives Out (2019 directed by Rian Johnson) a recent example of this genre, the film's theme is announced explicitly:  a kind heart that acts without guile will always triumph against the world's connivance.  Most often, this moral is demonstratively untrue, but it is worth stating and, even, a praiseworthy aspiration.  Knives Out, in fact, is doubly virtuous in that proclaims a moral that is worth stating and, further, dramatizes this concept in the context of America's conflicted notions about the value of immigration and immigrants.

Knives Out is a prestige production, built with care for the Holiday Season -- it's family entertainment in the best sense of that concept.  There is very little cursing in the film and the violence, as is generally the case in mystery narratives, is kept to a manageable, even, decorous level. The picture is intelligently scripted with engagingly eccentric characters and has a fantastic set -- a pseudo-Gothic castle atop a wooded hill that one of the character's describes as being the embodiment of a Clue gameboard.  The film is literate and it plays fair -- most of the details necessary to solve the crime are presented before the solution is explained in the picture's last ten minutes, the standard scene in which the genius sleuth sits down all the suspects and talks them through the crime.  The fabula is ingenious and the distortions imposed upon it by the syuzhet are also clever and entertaining.  The film is shallow, a cunningly made entertainment, but it delivers the goods and, as I have observed above, also preaches a sermon worth hearing.

The cast is a rogue's gallery:  Christopher Plummer is amusing as a benevolent, if overbearing, mystery writer who has amassed a vast fortune.  He is found dead by a housekeeper played by Edi Patterson, a character actor who is always excellent -- she was the best thing in the HBO series The Righteous Gemstones.  Of course, in classical detective fiction, the butler in the great manor house is often accused of the crime -- in this case, the butler's role is played by a Hispanic immigrant, Marta (Ana de Armas), the old man's nurse.  Michael Shannon playing one of two ineffectual sons is very good as is Jamie Lee Curtis (with husband acted by Don Johnson) acting the part of the eldest daughter.  Of course, the film is dominated by Daniel Craig who plays the sleuth, hired by one of the suspects  to solve the crime.  Craig's character is named Benoit Blanc and he drawls his lines in a southern accent so deep fried that someone calls him "KFC."  It's an amusing star turn -- the sort of role (Hercules Poiret or Miss Marple) that authorizes the actor to amuse himself and the audience with all sorts of odd affectations.  There's nothing wrong with Knives Out -- in fact, it is compelling throughout its length.  I can't really write about the story in more detail because this would reveal plot points best experienced in the theater.  Ordinarily, I don't care about "spoilers" and disclose plot points with impunity -- in this case, the plot points are, in fact, the entire raison d'etre  of the movie and to reveal them would be to ruin the picture.  I suspect that I will find the movie, more or less, forgettable -- this is the fate of even the best of these kinds of films.  Who today remembers the prestige version of Peter Schaffer's Sleuth (1972) It was also a handsome production with all sorts of big stars (Sir Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine) -- I saw it, enjoyed it a great deal, and, then, promptly forgot all about the film until this moment as I write this review.