76 THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER2, 2019
Daniel Craig stars as a gentleman sleuth in Rian Johnson’s film.
THECURRENTCINEMA
MURDER MOST FUN
“Knives Out” and “Kind Hearts and Coronets.”
BY ANTHONY LANE
ILLUSTRATION BY PATRICK LEGER
D
id you read the profile of Benoit
Blanc, “The Last of the Gentle-
man Sleuths,” in this magazine? If so,
congratulations. It takes a reader of rare
perspicacity and breadth to enjoy an ar-
ticle that does not exist. Or, rather, it
does exist, but only in the imagination
of Rian Johnson, the writer and direc-
tor of “Knives Out.” In this, his latest
film, we actually see a copy of The New
Yorker, turned to the page on which the
profile begins. Whether fictional fact
checkers were required to assess the va-
lidity of facts that were, in fact, fiction,
you will never know.
Benoit Blanc looks real enough. He
wears a lot of tweed. He smokes cigars
as long as fountain pens. His accent
hails from the Deep South—so deep,
indeed, that he may well have donned
it for the occasion, like a velvet waist-
coat. And he is played by Daniel Craig,
who seems mightily relieved, as ever,
to be slipping through the bars of Bond.
Blanc is asked to investigate a death.
He is unsure who hired him, for he re-
ceived nothing but an envelope of cash.
The death itself, to all appearances, is
unambiguous, although, as any fan of
murder mysteries will tell you, the pur-
pose of appearances is to confound. The
deceased is Harlan Thrombey (Christo-
pher Plummer), who, by a tasty irony,
happens to have written murder myster-
ies—eighty million copies of which have
sold, in thirty languages. On the morn-
ing after his eighty-fifth-birthday party,
he is found with his throat cut, a dagger
by his side: the very definition of red-
handed. Suicide, then. Is it possible, none-
theless, that foul play might have been
involved? Or just play? Typical of Har-
lan, to bequeath a beautiful riddle.
The party was attended by most,
though not all, of his loved ones, who
are about as lovable as the flu. Meet
Walt (Michael Shannon), Harlan’s son,
who runs the publishing empire that
has sprung from Harlan’s books. Or
Walt’s sister, Linda ( Jamie Lee Curtis),
who shares her father’s penchant for
puzzles but lacks his warmth; she sounds
snappy from first to last, although being
married to the bumptious Richard (Don
Johnson) would give anyone cause to
snap. Their son, Ransom (Chris Evans),
can’t make the birthday, or even the fu-
neral, but compensates by rolling up
later, in his classic BMW, to annoy the
hell out of everyone. And don’t forget
Joni (Toni Collette), the wife of Har-
lan’s late son, who runs a company that
“promotes a total life style” and has the
free-flowing dresses to prove it.
The youngest generation includes
Joni’s daughter, Meg (Katherine Lang-
ford), who, thanks to Harlan’s gener-
osity, is at Smith, and Walt’s teen-age
son, Jacob ( Jaeden Martell), who is de-
scribed by his father as “very political”;
Blanc, having made Jacob’s acquain-
tance, refers to him more accurately as
“the Nazi child masturbatin’ in the bath-
room.” Last, and very much least, in the
opinion of the surviving Thrombeys, is
Marta (Ana de Armas), Harlan’s nurse,
who is distraught at his passing—more
so than his relatives, whose grief is as-
suaged by the fortune that they hun-
ger to inherit. All of them, even Ran-
som, muster for the reading of the will.
The stage is set.
If you sat and suffered through Ken-
neth Branagh’s “Murder on the Orient
Express” (2017), allow me to put your
mind at rest. “Knives Out” is not based
on a book by Agatha Christie. Nor does
it properly smack of her, in spite of the
domestic setup and the sudden demise.
Much of Christie’s unwaning appeal
relies on incongruity—maleficence
emerging in the most genteel of con-
texts, like strychnine in the tea—
whereas the Thrombeys make no pre-
tense of decency. Even if they are not
to blame for the old man’s sanguinary
end, you feel confident that they’re
guilty of something.
Harlan’s residence, as somebody re-
marks, recalls a game of Clue. Dark-red
brick, tall turrets, and, in the opening
shot, two black dogs bounding in slow
motion through fallen leaves. And the
interior! Firelight flickers off carved
wood; a passageway, high up, is entered
through a trick window; and the room
where Blanc interviews the bereaved has
a bearskin on the floor, an antique can-
non, and a host of knives arranged in a
wheel, like the rays of a homicidal sun.
It is as if the production designers, dis-
patched on a décor-gathering mission,
could not contain themselves; the whole
place is deliberately stuffed to the seams,
like a gothic pastiche, just as the perfor-
