Can I use this as an excuse to talk about Knives Out? I’ve been dying to talk about Knives Out.
As a big fan of detective fiction, I really enjoyed Knives Out! As I was leaving the theater I was eager to talk about what an incredible move it was to make a detective movie where the detective sucks.
At which point everyone stared at me like I’d grown a second head.
The first thing I did when I got home was look up “knives out ending explained”, which as above explained nothing and just restated the events, looking for someone who had seen what I saw.
Video after video, article after article, I was slowly forced to accept that I had been watching a completely different movie than everyone else.
The movie I saw featured an obvious parody of the genius detective character, bumbling around the edges of a tense cat and mouse between two brilliant and incredibly manipulative people who were actively playing with genre tropes to fuck with him.
Let’s establish some facts about our murder victim.
Harlan Thromby is a wealthy eccentric who loves puzzles and games. He disdains his own wealth and openly despises his family for their contentment to leech off his fortune and do nothing with their lives. And he earned that fortune by being a WORLD FAMOUS AUTHOR OF MURDER MYSTERY NOVELS.
His last day was spent gathering his entire family to his estate, where he very loudly establishes motives for all of them to want him dead.
One of his first actions on screen is playing with a trick knife people!! The same knife he uses to fake his “suicide!” The same knife Ransom will later pull from the ring of knives which represent proximity to the center of the mystery! This is not hard to figure out people!!
The way his body is conveniently destroyed, the incredibly obvious flipping the go table, the fact that Ransom could not be more of a red herring if he was dressed like a swedish fish—
The fucking inane *donut metaphor,* god, even Benoit Blanc (his name is “Blessedly Blank” guys come on!) can tell he’s only seeing the edges of what’s happening here!
Can I tangent about his accent for just a second? It’s a very overt reference to Hercule Poirot, who used his comically thick Belgian accent to get people to underestimate him— meanwhile Benoit strides onto the scene already respected and deferred to. He’s not affecting a character to enable his investigation because he doesn’t have to. He’s just Like That. He is a thoroughly and intentionally comical character! He’s not the detective, he’s the Lucky Fool.
And don’t get me started on Marta! She’s the one using her accent to make people underestimate her. You’re presented with a character who claims to be biologically incapable of lying in a MURDER MYSTERY and you just took that at face value???
She’s established during the go scene as Harlan’s equal in intelligence— This is a brilliant, strategically minded woman, and that’s just objective text! But any time she’s around Benoit she’s a wide eyed innocent victim, incapable of recognizing the Thrombey’s very obvious moves against her.
Outside of her intelligence and her apparent allergy to dishonesty, we know almost nothing about her, and one of those things has to be a lie.
Here’s the actual ending of Knives Out explained!
Harlan, sick of his wealth and his spiteful family, decides to fake his death. And because he is both theatrical and a monstrous asshole, he decides to use his “death” in order to stage a real murder mystery plot.
But he wants someone to play against, someone to match wits with, a Holmes to his Moriarty. And who else would he choose but Marta, the only person he respects?
He upsets the go board in order to swap the medicine with something harmless. He may have not even been aware Ransom switched them, it wouldn’t matter regardless.
Maybe he really goes through the whole “Oh I’ll kill myself to protect you” scene, or that may have been a complete fabrication, replacing a very tense conversation where he told Marta he was about to frame her for killing him, but if she outwitted him and escaped conviction, his fortune would be hers. The whole film is a game of go between them, with Ransom (black) and Benoit (white) representing their primary pieces.
The master stroke was Marta convincing Ransom that his attempted murder had succeeded. His actions to hide what he’d done were useful to Harlan for tying up the loose ends of his own disappearing act, but in the end they served Marta better when he became desperate enough to incriminate himself, and took the fall fully believing he was a murderer— an ironic reversal of the position he tried to put her in by switching the medicine!
When Marta stands on that balcony with the “my house, my rules” mug she’s not just a poor innocent girl who got rewarded by fate for her kindness, she’s the victor, having won this house fair and square in a contest that could have cost her everything. The Thrombey’s are beneath her, literally and figuratively.
When you recognize this deeper layer of the story it makes the themes of race and class a lot more powerful. Benoit’s paternalistic treatment of Marta is more palatable than the Thrombey’s, but he still underestimates her. Harlan’s cavalier cruelty towards his own children makes it clear they are what he made them, and echoes the actions of cruel men throughout history. And his respect for Marta as an intellectual equal doesn’t stop him from using her as a tool in his melodrama, directly knowingly putting her life at risk and telling her she can either die, or match him in cruelty and manipulation and receive the spoils.
Final note— anyone else think it was interesting that they saved the reveal on the invisible ink letter until the very end? Why not reveal the cheating earlier for more drama? Is it just kicking them while they’re down? Well, let’s look at that letter again, in light of the above, and while remembering Linda was Harlan’s favorite.
It’s time to cut the dead wood.
He’s cheating on you. I have proof. I know you don’t need to see. Untether yourself. It’s time.
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