Explaining the ‘Knives Out’ ending
Director Rian Johnson sifts through the matrix of in the sociallyrelevant whodunit Spoiler alert!
Knives Out is a whodunit with a lot more on its mind than just catching a killer. The latest movie from writer-director Rian Johnson, who dipped into mystery with his high school noir debut Brick and upended expectations in distant galaxies with Star Wars: The Last Jedi, is a playful story of money, privilege and murder. Along with its twisting, surprising storytelling, the movie engages with many contemporary topics, from immigration to social media and more.
Christopher Plummer stars as Harlan Thromby, a pre-eminent crime novelist who is found dead the morning after his 85th birthday. His entire family, whose lives depend in no small part on the patriarch’s vast wealth, could be considered suspects the formidable ensemble includes Jamie Lee Curtis, Chris Evans, Don Johnson, Toni Collette and Michael Shannon as could his young caretaker Marta (Ana de Armas). Into their midst come two local police officers (Lakeith Stanfield and Noah Segan) and an eccentric private investigator named Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig).
While editing Knives Out, Johnson essentially created a syllabus of whodunit inspirations
by posting a series of photos online of various movie posters. His finished product bursts with such references, whether Sleuth and Deathtrap, Agatha Christie adaptations or lighter genre spins like Clue and The Private Eyes. The movie also includes a glimpse ofa Murder, She Wrote episode, dubbed in Spanish, a made-up Danica McKellar Hallmark movie called Murder by
Surprise, and the voice of Johnson’s longtime collaborator Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a David Carusolike cop on a TV crime show.
But rather than some kind of hodgepodge of ideas from other books and movies, Knives Out feels singular. Johnson recently sat down to sift through the matrix of references and influences within the world of Knives Out.
What was your inspiration with Knives Out?
The basic idea was kind of twofold or threefold, I guess a whodunit that turns into a Hitchcock thriller that turns back into a whodunit at the end. That combined with and spoiler alert doing the Colombo thing of tipping the “murderer” early but setting it up in such a way where your sympathies are genuinely with that person. That creates an interesting dynamic where the mechanics of the murder mystery itself become the bad guy of the movie. The fact that the murderer gets caught is the thing that you’re dreading. And that seemed very interesting to me.
When you’re sitting down to write, do you already have a mental list of references or influences?
Generally I’m thinking less about direct influences and more just about my idea for the story and what it means to me. The times that I’ll specifically go to influences are often when I get stuck. For this one, I did go back and look at Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun and timed out how long the denouement was at the end. I was like, “How long are these things actually? Cause I have in my head that it’s like 10 minutes at the end, but I’ve written a half-hour thing.” And I went back and watched it and I’m like, “Oh, thank God, it is usually 20 to 30 minutes of actually just explaining it.” But generally if I’m drawing from something it’s kind of a deeper well, it’s something that I just love and it’s kind of already there.
Were there mystery writers besides Agatha Christie that you were thinking about?
Christie was the big one. I’ve read Dorothy Sayers. I’ve read John Dickson Carr, Conan Doyle. AA Milne wrote a whodunit. It was such a popular genre, so many people liked to try their hand at it. For me, though, I have yet to find an author who resonates with me like Christie. Mostly because of the colourful characters she creates. As much as she’s lauded, I feel like she’s still underrated.
Marta triumphs in part by being a good person and one of the big reveals in the movie is that having a kind heart makes a difference. For a genre that easily could have a much more sinister tone, why did you want that to be one of the main takeaways?
It was really important to me, because we were counteracting not only the sinister tone of the genre, but also the fact that we were going to be engaging with so much of what’s ugly about culture in 2019. I felt like to have an uncynical ending felt very important in this context.