THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER2, 2019 77
NEWYORKER.COM
Richard Brody blogs about movies.mances are pulpy and close to overripe.
“The game’s afoot, eh, Watson?” Blanc
exclaims, and unblushingly whips out a
magnifying glass to inspect a rug. In
short, the film is all too much, as if the
director were half mocking the genre
that he reveres. While fulfilling the de-
mands of the mystery form—his plot
locks into position, with a fiendish and
gratifying click—he’s also using it to tell
a different sort of tale.
The tenor of that tale is political, and
it will be interesting to see how “Knives
Out,” sumptuous and diverting as it is,
plays in the heartland. Though Donald
Trump is not named, he is discussed, in
predictably raucous tones, and what
matters about Harlan is not merely how
he perished but how his kinfolk behave
once his influence—clever, mild, and
sportive, as you would expect with Plum-
mer in the part—is removed. The an-
swer is that they scrap like rats in a sack.
After one relative claims to have built
a business “from the ground up,” an-
other retorts that it began with a mil-
lion-dollar loan from Harlan. (Remind
you of anyone?) The Thrombeys don’t
even have the encrusted dignity of old
money; Blanc, told that he is now in
their “ancestral home,” laughs heartily
and points out that Harlan bought it
from a Pakistani businessman in 1988.
This sardonic approach is not with-
out risks, and the movie’s polished sur-
face, to my eye, bears a sheen of smug-
ness. Regardless of the whodunnit, we
are left in no doubt as to where true
villainy lies, and the title might as well
have been “Wealth Kills.” What res-
cues the film, rooting it in moral hon-
esty, is the presence of Marta. The
Thrombeys, needless to say, can’t be
bothered to learn her country of origin;
one says Uruguay, another Paraguay, and
so on. She’s foreign, and that’s enough.
What none of them are equipped to re-
alize is that she’s good, and that her good-
ness—which Blanc, being a detective,
suspects from the start—will help him
crack the case. Virtue is never easy to
depict, but Ana de Armas does a touch-
ing and plausible job, glancing nicely
off Craig, and I look forward to seeing
them both again soon for the next 007
adventure, in which de Armas takes a
major role. Will it allow her to mooch
around in sweaters, sneakers, and jeans,
as she does for most of “Knives Out”?
I fear not.W
ith an election year looming, a
dilemma has arisen. What shall
we do with the undeserving rich? Tax
’em to the hilt? Or give ’em a tax break,
to cushion the agony of affluence?
“Knives Out” leaves them bamboozled
and marooned, but, if that response
strikes you as insufficiently robust, I
recommend “Kind Hearts and Coro-
nets.” Robert Hamer’s merciless mas-
terpiece of 1949, set in Edwardian En-
gland, and screening in a new print at
Film Forum, is nothing if not prag-
matic. The cure for inequality, accord-
ing to this film, is serial assassination.
Dennis Price plays Louis Mazzini,
whose beloved mother, having married
beneath her, was cast aside by the noble
clan to which she had the honor to be-
long. After she dies, Louis decides to
hallow her memory by sidling back into
the family and becoming the Duke of
Chalfont: a simple task, slightly impeded
by those tiresome souls whose claim is
more immediate than his—or, as he callsthem, “monsters of arrogance and cru-
elty, whose only function in the world
was to deprive me of my birthright.”
Working through the list, and slaying
them one by one, will not be a problem.
Why should it be? What counts is the
manner of slaughter, and—this being
the most courteous of films—the vital
importance of never mislaying one’s cool.
Also, not a droplet of blood must be
shown. That would be intolerably vulgar.
The movie is famed for many rea-
sons, eight of them being the charac-
ters played by Alec Guinness. Think of
the Cheshire Cat leaving eight separate
smiles in the air. Given that Hamer was
gay and alcoholic—not the most com-
fortable of compounds, in postwar Brit-
ain—it is, perhaps, little surprise that
“Kind Hearts and Coronets” should have
endured as the locus classicus of sub-
terfuge, deceit, and the charm of the
unspoken. I regard it as the best Oscar
Wilde film ever made, despite its not
being adapted from Wilde. Drownings,
explosions, and poisonings, their ethi-
cal status barely mentioned, let alone
chastised, roll by like carriages in the
park. The comedy is as black as widow’s
weeds. Artfulness is all.
If you are unfamiliar with “Kind
Hearts and Coronets,” the question is
not whether making the trip to Film
Forum to see it is worth your while. The
question is how stiff a penalty should
be levied upon you by the City of New
York should you fail to do so. My per-
sonal view is that a brief prison sen-
tence would not be too harsh. There re-
ally is no excuse. THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2019 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
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